• Question: Can you "catch" cancer?

    Asked by samjoeliam to Marianne on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi samjoeliam.

      For the most part, the answer to your question is no.

      However, there are a couple of caveats to that.

      There are some viruses that, when in the body, can contribute to the beginnings of cancer – for example human papilloma virus (HPV) that can cause cervical cancer (but that does *not* mean all cervical cancer is caused by HPV *or* that all HPV infections will cause cancer!).

      Then there are the hepatitis viruses, that often lead to liver cancer over a long period of time.

      We now have vaccines against both of these kinds of virus and that should mean that the number of cancer cases caused by people getting infected with them should go down.

      In addition, a more gruesome idea, there is one kind of cancer (that I’ve heard of) that is actually transmissable via the cancer itself (rather than being caused by a third agent like a virus). It’s a dog cancer (so don’t worry about it!) located in and transmitted by the penis.
      Here you go! http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9713-riddle-of-infectious-dog-cancer-solved.html

      But no, generally, you can’t “catch” cancer – it develops due to mutations in the genome that accumulate over the lifetime and/or are inherited and therefore present from birth.

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