A Reasonable Commentary on Why a Cure for Cancer Has Not Been Found Yet

We haven’t found a cure for cancer because it’s not a single disease.

In the most recent SciShow video, host Hank Green explains in detail what cancer is, how it invades the body, the types of treatments currently available, and why a cure for cancer hasn’t been found yet.

Cancers may look the same on the outside, but each one developed differently in their own way and can originate in any type of tissue. We haven’t found a cure for cancer because it’s not a single disease. If we’re gonna beat ’em we’re gonna have to take on all of the cancers one at a time. After the challenges start with the basics here. First we’ve got to figure out what cancer actually is. We didn’t think of cancer as one thing because we have one word for it. But the word cancer really refers to lots of different conditions that have a few similarities. The main thing cancers have in common is uncontrolled cell division. …So it’s true we haven’t found one cure for cancer yet but that’s kinda the question wrongly asked. There is no cancer to cure, there are lots of cancers we need to cure. Advances in things like DNA sequencing mean that even though there are as many cancers as there are cancer patients but soon there may be as many cancer treatments as there are cancers.