4 ms·
Can't we just kill half the cells periodically until there is no more cancerous cells ?
by hhjj 11y ago
Can't we just kill half the cells periodically until there is no more cancerous cells ?
- carterehsmith 11y agoWe can, but that kills the patient.
- ubernostrum 11y agoOne of the approaches used in chemotherapy is drugs which disrupt cell division or associated processes. Which means the cells dividing most frequently (i.e., cancerous cells) are the ones hardest hit by the drug. Though this does affect other cell types which divide frequently, which is why chemotherapy patients lose their hair (hair follicles need rapid cell division) have digestive problems (digestive cells divide rapidly) and can suffer immune-related issues (bone marrow divides rapidly).
- ubernostrum 11y agoThis is not far off from what much traditional chemotherapy actually does. The approach is to literally poison yourself, and hope that as a whole you can take more of it than the cancerous cells can.