Is lung cancer and throat cancer contagious?

Many people view cancer as an infectious disease, as if cancer cells can be transmitted through contact or other media. Many netizens are asking, can laryngeal cancer and lung cancer be transmitted? Doctors say that this is impossible. Let's take a closer look.

Doctors say that advanced lung cancer is not contagious. Clinical data prove that patients with advanced lung cancer are not the source of infection. Lung cancer is a malignant tumor that loses normal cell morphology and dynamics due to the abnormal proliferation of local cells under the action of various carcinogenic factors. Cancer cells discharged through sputum rapidly degenerate and necrotize due to the evaporation of sputum water. Even fresh sputum requires various nutrients and specific conditions to make cancer cells grow and reproduce in vitro. Scientists often need to go through multiple experiments to succeed in cultivating a living cancer cell, so cancer is not contagious.

In addition, the theory of viral carcinogenesis gives another explanation. Cancer cells are not transmitted from one person to another like bacteria and viruses. To the human body, other people's cancer cells are a kind of foreign matter. The body can kill other people's cancer cells through its strong immune rejection ability. Therefore, other people's cancer cells cannot be transmitted to one's own body.

Some people have raised doubts, why do multiple people in some families get lung cancer or other tumors one after another? In response to this question, doctors have also given an explanation: the occurrence of lung cancer or other tumors in a family one after another may be related to the fact that family members share common genes and they may be in the same carcinogenic environment, such as smoking, exposure to radioactive substances, etc. This is also a possible factor that causes family members to develop malignant tumors one after another.

In short, cancer is not contagious. What people call contagion is a disease that spreads from one person to another through some means. Contagion must meet three conditions: the source of infection, the route of transmission, and the susceptible population. Clinical data prove that cancer patients themselves are not the source of infection.