Cancer is a sickness; it is also referred to as malignancy. There are more than one hundred types of cancer. One cause is damaged or faulty genes. Our genes are what instruct our cells on what to do. Genes are encoded with DNA, and anything that harms or affects our DNA can increase the risk of cancer. But many genes in a cell have to be damaged before it can become cancerous. Cancer is most commonly caused DNA damage over a person’s lifetime. You can also get it by specific genetic faults inherited from a parent, yet it is very rare. We all have a slight variation in our genes that can increase or decrease the risk, by a small amount. Age is a factor of cancer; the older you are, the more of a chance, that you will develop it. The …show more content…
With the prevention of other diseases, we live a lot longer; increasing our chances. Cancer can also be prevented by lifestyle changes. These include giving up smoking, enjoying the sun safely, eating a healthy balanced diet, limiting alcohol, keeping physically active and sticking to a healthy bodyweight. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) receives its research fund from Congress. The NCI’s budget for 2013 was 4.8 billion dollars. The funding goes towards trying to find a cure for the most common types of cancer.
Cancer is a multi-billion dollar industry. Even with Congress funding the NCI, they get extra funding money from places like NIH Institutes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Defense, state and local governments, voluntary organizations, private institutions, and corporations spend huge amounts of money on cancer-related research. But where is this entire money going? The doctors claim that they know what causes cancer, how they grow, and how they spread. Yet they have no cure… They state that they have an idea of how to stop it, but the researching in the lab is slow; although last year, they had over 4.8 billion dollars to help pay for