• Question: What happens to our defenses when cancer occurs?

    Asked by Bruno to Max on 9 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Max Jamilly

      Max Jamilly answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      Hey Bruno. Awesome question! You’ve hit on a really interesting point. One of the reasons cancer is so dangerous is that it comes from INSIDE us. Normally the immune system defends the body against dangerous infectious from OUTSIDE the body – viruses and bacteria and so on. But cancer happens when a group of cells lose control and start copying themselves much too quickly, so they grow and grow and take over the healthy tissues in the body. The immune system tries to kill these balls of cells (called tumours) but the tumours are quite good at hiding.

      The kind of cancer I work on is called leukemia. It’s especially bad for our immune defences because the cancer grows in the bone marrow and prevents a person from making normal white blood cells. Without white cells, the immune system is a lot weaker so there’s a big risk of other infections.

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