Question: Why are scientists taking so long to find a cure for cancer? I heard they are using nano particles which is amazing? But they said that about 3 years ago and are still making no progress? Why can't they finish the project fast?

Ian Stephenson answered on 25 Jun 2014:

First off you can’t do medical work quickly. First you find a substance that looks interesting, and you test it in the lab. Then maybe you do animal tests (another topic but lets just let that go), then you apply to small scale human tests, that has to be approved, and then you can give your treatment to a small number of people. Then you need to see what happened to them. Then you crunch the numbers, and apply to do a larger test, and repeat until you have a drug or treatment that is approved for general use by doctors.

Even if they found the perfect cure it would take YEARS to get through that process. While that sounds like a bad thing, its really for the best – before these sorts of restrictions all sorts of people had crazy ideas of what could cure you, and sold medicines which simply didn’t work (ironically these are often referred to as Snake Oil, after a brand of medicine which claimed to contain oil from snakes, but actually didn’t. There’s some evidence that some oils from snakes actually can be beneficial!)

however in the case of cancer its a bit more tricky. Cancer isn’t one disease but hundreds (or more) different ones. Every case is different, as the cells which are causing problems aren’t invading cells, but the actually patients own cells. Each patient has their own unique cells, so their cancer is unique too.