Editor’s note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, writer and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a contributor to WRAL TechWire, taking a serious as well as entertaining world of possibilities for the world and the human race.
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My sister died this week.
Even though we know that everyone will die, each death can still have a huge impact on family and friends. In this case I am experiencing the death of my younger sibling, so it additionally acts as a reminder of my own mortality.
My sister died after a long but ultimately futile struggle with cancer.
Since this column is about the future and this experience is very fresh, it begs the question: will humanity be able to conquer cancer anytime soon?
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Let’s start at the beginning
What is cancer?
Cancer occurs when the DNA in a cell is damaged in a specific way to create a cancerous cell. This damage causes the cell and its children can start duplicating without the cell’s normal restraints. A tumor or growth starts with one cancerous cell and enlarges. In the worst-case scenario, the cancer metastasizes (this is also known as Stage 4 cancer), spreading itself throughout the body.
What might damage the DNA to create a cancerous cell?
Ultraviolet light in sunshine is a leading cause of skin cancer. Cigarette smoke is a leading cause of lung cancer. Exposure to too much ionizing radiation can cause many types of cancer.
Alcohol from alcoholic beverages can cause liver cancer, breast cancer and several others. Why alcohol? Because the body converts alcohol to something called acetaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen. Carcinogens are chemicals that cause DNA damage and cancer.
We talk about different kinds of cancer: skin cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer and so on. There are 200-ish different types of cancer that can form in the human body, resulting in about 600,000 deaths per year in the United States. Cancer is the #2 cause of death behind heart disease.
Therefore, if we could block all 200 different types of cancer, completely eliminating cancer from the face of the Earth, then 600,000 people in the United States would live longer, much happier lives. They would also avoid the agony and suffering often associated with cancer and/or unpleasant things like surgery or chemotherapy. Even if we can’t end them all, stopping just one cancer – lung cancer – would save 130,000 Americans per year.
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What might the future hold?
For example, what if scientists could develop a vaccine that would protect us against cancer? The same mRNA technology used in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for Covid shows promise for creating cancer vaccines as well. You might recall that an mRNA vaccine for Covid causes your body to produce Covid’s spike proteins, teaching your immune system to attack spike proteins. Then if you catch the Covid virus, which is covered in spike proteins, your immune system attacks the virus immediately and keeps you from getting sick. A cancer vaccine would be similar, trying to target some specific aspect of a cancer cell in the same way.
A second option involves CRISPR gene editing. One idea is to take T-cells – a natural part of your immune system – out of your body and then tune them to attack cancer cells by editing a gene or two.
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Scientists can develop new forms of treatment. A recent addition that is still fairly rare is called proton therapy. The idea is to shoot a beam of protons into your body so that the protons come to rest inside a tumor. These protons then destroy tumor cells. For example, in the case of brain cancer, the protons can kill the tumor instead of using invasive surgery to cut out the tumor. Proton therapy itself is cutting-edge, and then who knows what scientists will develop next?
Some scientists are studying other mammals. For example, whales and elephants do not get many cancers, even though their enormous bodies have far more cells than humans do. The reason seems to lie in enhanced tumor suppressor genes in the animals’ cells. Perhaps some of the technology found in their cells can be adapted to humans?
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What about today?
All of these ideas are innovative and fascinating, but they will take time to fully bake. Is there anything we can do today to avoid cancer? The big push right now is cancer prevention. Prevention is much easier, less painful, and less expensive than cancer treatment once you have a tumor. Here are some of the obvious things to consider if you want to cut back your personal cancer risk:
- If you smoke, stop smoking
- Use sunscreen to cut UV exposure to your skin
- Limit or eliminate alcohol consumption
- If overweight or obese, lose weight
- Eat more plants instead of meat. Broccoli and berries are where it’s at
- Especially avoid processed meats like hot dogs and lunch meat
- Exercise more
- Avoid toxic chemicals since many of them are carcinogens
- Get screened to find cancers early
- Take steps to reduce inflammation
Are scientists going to eliminate cancer tomorrow? No. But new therapies and approaches are emerging every year, and there are steps you can take today to reduce your risk. Clever research, Artificial Intelligence, and increased science funding will one day lead us to the ultimate goal of zero cancers worldwide.
