Preksha Dhyana Human Body Part 2

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 79

The experimental evidence seems to indicate that in some manner DNA play a fundamental role in cancer. The nature of this role is obscure. There is considerable evidence also that a virus plays a strategic role in the onset of at least some human cancers, but whether viruses are causative factors in all cancers is not known. Further evidence seems to indicate that virus invasion (or DNA mutation) will not result in cancer, unless certain contributing factors called carcinogens are present at the same time. Certain chemical substances such as mycotoxins (poisons produced by fungi) have been shown to be carcinogens. Exactly how they act is still unclear.
Immune system is also involved in the prevention and development of cancer. It is believed that little cancers are continually getting started, being recognized as foreign, and then being killed by the body's defence mechanisms' before they can cause trouble. In a cancer victim, however, the defence mechanism has somehow failed to recognize the cancer cells as foreign and has allowed them to multiply unhindered.
For years the standard treatments for cancer have been surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. If the cancer is caught before migration, a cure can be affected by cutting out the affected tissues and any sorrounding ones suspected of harbouring cancer cells. Deep-seated cancers may be destroyed by exposure to radiations. Finely focused beams of X-rays, radio-active cobalt, gold and other radiation-sources are used. Recently laser beams which can be focused far more sharply than X-rays have been used. One of the problems with chemotherapy is that drugs kill not only cancer-cells but normal ones as well. The drugs may be so toxic that doses sufficient to eradicate cancer also kill the patient. In "combination chemotherapy” an antidote is given in sequence to resuce the patient from the drug's toxic effects.
1. See "B and T cells" in this chapter.
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