• Question: Why can't scientists monitor cell division constantly (throughout someone's life) and see if they can spot early signs of cancer through this?

    Asked by to Ramya on 22 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ramya Bhatia

      Ramya Bhatia answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      Interesting question
      A human being has approx 100 000 billion cells in the body. Can you imagine the amount of work it would be to try and monitor the cells for all the people in the word? Because we cant do this, each one of us needs to be very aware of our own bodies and look for any signs that might tell us that our body is not functioning properly, for example, lumps on our skin or swelling in the body. The more aware we are , the quicker we can detect diseases and cancer. For some internal things in the UK we have organised screening programmes so the doctors can do exactly this- such as breast cancer screening, cervical screening, prostate screening etc

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