Why do some people get cancer while others don t?
We are not completely clear why some get cancer while others don t when they are exposed to the same types of cancer causing agents, called carcinogens. With a few cancers there seems to be an inherited factor which increases someone s risk of developing that cancer. For most cancers, it is believed that because of individual differences, some individual s cells will develop cancer with little exposure to a carcinogen while other s cells require greater exposure to develop cancer.
