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You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hi shortwaivers, Aaron Scott here, and today we're exploring a disease that has plagued humans since, well, the evolution of humans, cancer.

Which Cancer Epidemiiologist Mariana Stern says at its core is caused by mutations in our

DNA.

What typically happens is that one mutation happens and it stays there and then another one happens and then those

cells start to acquire certain characteristics that allow them to proliferate more than they should.

And that's how we end up having a mass of cells,

which is what we call a tumor.

And as long as the disease has been in recorded history, people have been trying to treat it.

From the first description of cancer in an Egyptian text thousands of years ago,

humans have tried using pace, salts, teas, and cauterization to care cancer, just to name a few.

One milestone came in the 1700s when an English surgeon connected cancer to a clear environmental cause. In this case, chimney sweep. and a minimum age for chimney sweeps. And although avoiding the hazard might prevent cancer,

if you got it, the options for actually treating cancer were pretty minimal.

Cancer was a death sentence. People would not be given a long time to animal. of Southern California. And she says that for a long time cancer was often treated

with surgery. So the idea was let's remove the cancer and and that will take care

of it but then it was recognized that just removing the cancer often did not cure people

because cancer cells were being left behind.

Left behind to potentially grow back.

Then around the turn of the 19th century, physicians discovered that radiation could treat

cancer, but in some cases it could also cause it.

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