• Question: Why does cancer research need to raise so much money?(is it expensive to find a cure?)

    Asked by marema to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by roseandellie.
    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Yes, research can be very expensive, especially the kinds of research that needs lots of equipment.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Unfortunately, most of the equipment we need is very expensive, as are the chemicals and other things we need for experiments. So, yes, doing research to try and find a cure for cancer is very expensive.

    • Photo: Gioia Cherubini

      Gioia Cherubini answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      hi marema,

      cancer research (but I would say research in general) needs so much money, because there are so many things that we don’t know and we don’t understand about cancer 🙁 And doing research is very expensive. To give you an idea of how much it costs, almost every experiment that I do in the lab costs at least 100£ and on average I do about 3 experiments a week! And this is also why we have to think a lot and plan carefully the experiments that we want to do, because we don’t want to waste money.

    • Photo: Leo Garcia

      Leo Garcia answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Doing research into finding ways of treating cancer is expensive. Money is required to buy lab equipment, drugs, chemicals, animals for testing, imaging systems and, most importantly, to pay the salaries of the researchers! Also, because the problem is so complex, people will be researching cancer for many years yet – so we know that the cost is only going to increase with time. Fortunately, lots of kind people give money to cancer research charities, and we get some government funding.

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