Understanding Cancer

What you'll learn

Course overview

The topic Cancer is profound and multifaceted. In reality, despite considerable advances in research and technology, it remains somewhat of an unsolved mystery to medical science. Even today, the media is full of confirmation of the ¿mystery¿ status of cancer. For example, the following article was published in the New York Times in August of 2006. The moment when a cancer begins to spread throughout the body's metastasis has always been the most dreaded turning point of the disease. Without metastasis, cancer would barely be a blip on the collective consciousness. Fewer than 10 percent of cancer deaths are caused by the primary tumor; the rest stem from metastasis to vital sites like the lungs, the liver, the bones and the brain. Though chemotherapy and other treatments have lengthened the lives of people with metastasized cancer, no drugs have been specifically formulated to halt the process. That is because metastasis has remained something of a mystery until the last five years or so.