Centuries of viewing the disease as incurable and limited options for treating it, made cancer a disease that people were afraid to talk about. But it is hard to wage war on an enemy that can't be named, and the war on cancer brought it out of the closet. Today, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are very effective, and improved surgical techniques have increased the range of approaches for dealing with cancer. Lung cancer is the leading cause of premature death.
Cancer is still, in many ways, a mysterious enemy.
It is actually a category covering hundreds of different diseases, all related to the abnormal growth of cells in organs or tissue. This happens when the genetic information in a gene becomes garbled, and cell multiplication runs out of control. It can occur due to exposure to radiation or chemicals, or simply because the instructions contained in a gene become scrambled due to mutation, either spontaneously or as a result of environmental factors. The perception that cancer is the result of multiple flaws in the DNA of a cell is a departure from the traditional view of cancer as a disease based on the location of a tumor. Recent genomic research has opened the door for gene-based diagnosis of cancer, and opened a window on fighting cancer at the genetic level after it occurs, hinting at the possibility of creating vaccines.