of treatment that can kill them without harming some of our normal cells. Radiation treatment is no exception to this rule.

Thus, it is never possible to destroy cancer deposits with radiation without injuring nearby normal tissues. This means that radiotherapists are faced with the same challenge every time they plan a person’s treatment—how to produce the greatest possible damage to the cancer growths without risking dangerous

or otherwise very serious reactions in the normal tissues. In

Meeting this challenge, they firstly exploit those differences between cancer and normal tissues which make the cancer, on average, more vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation. Secondly, they plan the treatment so that the cancer cells receive a higher dose than any normal cells and so that tissues which can give rise to dangerous or otherwise serious reactions receive a smaller dose than tissues whose reactions are less troublesome.

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