• Question: How do you find cures for diseases?n

    Asked by pranay900 to Alexis, Dr D, Helen, Jasmine, Mario on 18 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by thans017.
    • Photo: Andrew Devitt

      Andrew Devitt answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      This is one amazing question.

      If you can understand how the disease is caused, then you can try and solve the problem. And to understand disease, you need to understand how the body works properly when it isn’t diseased.

      So if you know a disease is caused by a bacterium, you can avoid the bacterium, or treat with antibiotics if they are available.

      If the disease is caused by lifestyle (eating too much rubbish food and getting obese) then you can prevent it my looking after yourself. This is how we can manage our risk. This works also for smoking and lung cancer.

    • Photo: Jasmine Penny

      Jasmine Penny answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Great question! Like Andrew says, you need to understand the disease you are working with as much as possible. You start by looking at how it is caused. Once you know that you can look at ways to deal with how it is caused. This could be by developing medicines to kill the organism that causes the disease or looking at ways to prevent the disease spreading. Or it could be as simple as looking at how you live, to reduce ‘risk factors’ (things that make it more likely you’ll develop a disease).

Comments