if poison can destroy cells could it destroy all the bad cells that cause cancer?

Question: if poison can destroy cells could it destroy all the bad cells that cause cancer?
- Keywords:
  cancer,
  cells,
  poison
Asked by ruby reade to anuantony, Duncan on 6 Nov 2017.
- Duncan McNicholl answered on 6 Nov 2017:
  
  The easy answer is yes it could, and does.
  
  The hard answer is that that’s not really what we want. Cancer is a disease that happens when your own cells start to grow out of control, and reproduce more and more and more until it starts causing problems. The problem with that is that because they started out as your own cells, it’s really difficult to tell them apart from the good, healthy cells. If you put poison in your system, it will kill the cancer cells but also the healthy cells, and you can end up doing more harm than good. That’s actually what we do if you have something called “chemotherapy”: the medicine we give you is a carefully chosen poison that destroys cancer cells more than other cells, and it can shrink a tumour right down, but the healthy cells it kills means that you feel sick, and your hair can fall out, so it’s not a very nice treatment to have.

Question: if poison can destroy cells could it destroy all the bad cells that cause cancer?