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50 free Cancer Awareness trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Cancer is one name for hundreds of diseases, and its story runs from a Roman physician's word for a swelling to a Nobel Prize for teaching the immune system to fight back. Along the way come a surgeon who linked soot to tumours in the 1700s, a wartime poison that became the first chemotherapy, and a marsupial whose cancer spreads by biting. These 50 questions cover the biology of tumours, the landmark discoveries behind screening, vaccines and targeted drugs, the awareness days and ribbon colours that mark the calendar, and the athletes, presidents and performers whose diagnoses changed public understanding. Cervical and ovarian cancer get their own share, from the smear test's inventor to the global elimination targets. Play it to test what you know, or print it for a fundraiser quiz night or a health class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animals carry 20 copies of a tumour-suppressor gene that humans have once, explaining Peto's paradox?
Elephants
African elephants have 20 copies of the gene, Asian elephants 15 to 20, and preserved mammoth DNA shows 14, while humans, manatees and hyraxes carry one.
Q 02Which Australian marsupial faces extinction from a contagious facial cancer passed on by biting?
Tasmanian devil
The Tasmanian devil's facial tumour is one of the very few cancers that spreads like an infection, and it is almost universally fatal to the animals it reaches.
Q 03The first chemotherapy drugs, tested on lymphoma patients at Yale in 1942, came from which First World War weapon?
Mustard gas
Mustard gas destroys fast-dividing blood cells, which is exactly what the Yale team wanted to do to lymphoma when they began secret human trials in December 1942.
Q 04Pierre Curie strapped a tube of which element to his arm for ten hours, and the burn suggested a tumour treatment?
Radium
Radium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in December 1898, and Pierre's self-inflicted burn pointed the way to using it against cancerous tissue.
Q 05In 1775 Percivall Pott tied scrotal cancer to soot lodged in the skin of which workers, the first occupational cancer?
Chimney sweeps
Chimney sweeps gave medicine its first proof that an environmental carcinogen causes cancer, and the disease is still called chimney sweeps' carcinoma.
Q 06Which year's Surgeon General's report on smoking and lung cancer was released on a Saturday to protect the stock market?
1964
The 1964 report was published on the second Saturday of the year to minimise the hit to American stock markets while maximising coverage in the Sunday papers.
Q 07BCG, the century-old tuberculosis vaccine, has been the standard treatment for early cancer of which organ since 1977?
Bladder
BCG has been the standard of care for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer since 1977, preventing recurrence in up to two-thirds of superficial cases.
Q 08Which Albuquerque chemistry teacher's lung cancer diagnosis, the day after his 50th birthday, opens Breaking Bad?
Walter White
Walter White is told he has inoperable Stage III lung cancer and will likely die within two years, which drives him to cook methamphetamine for his family's security.
Q 09Whose cervical tumour cells, taken without consent in 1951, became the first immortal human cell line?
Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks died months after the biopsy, yet her HeLa cells still reproduce indefinitely in labs worldwide, and her family learned of them only in 1975.
Q 10Which former US president announced at 90, in August 2015, that melanoma had reached his brain, then lived to 100?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter began treatment at once and lived more than nine years beyond the diagnosis, becoming the only US president to reach 100.
Q 11Steve Jobs refused surgery for nine months after his 2003 diagnosis of a rare tumour in which organ?
Pancreas
Jobs's islet-cell tumour of the pancreas was the rare treatable kind, and his biographer reports he later regretted trying diets and acupuncture first.
Q 12Lance Armstrong was diagnosed at 25 in October 1996, three years before his first Tour de France win, with which cancer?
Testicular
Armstrong's testicular cancer had already spread when it was found, and after recovering he founded the charity now known as the Livestrong Foundation.
Q 13Terry Fox ran 5,373 km across Canada on an artificial leg in 1980 before cancer stopped him; what was the run called?
Marathon of Hope
Q 21After Chernobyl in 1986, radioactive iodine in milk caused thousands of cancers of which gland in local children?
Thyroid
The thyroid concentrates iodine, and an estimated 95% of the iodine-131 children swallowed came from milk, so the youngest got the highest doses.
Q 22Hazel and Augustus, teenagers who fall in love at a cancer support group, lead which 2012 John Green novel?
The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars takes its title from Cassius's line in Julius Caesar, and Green wrote it after working as a student chaplain in a children's hospital.
Q 23Which US president signed the National Cancer Act on 23 December 1971, launching the so-called 'war on cancer'?
Richard Nixon
The Marathon of Hope lasted 143 days and ended when the cancer that had cost Fox a leg spread to his lungs, yet the annual run in his name continues worldwide.
Q 14Bob Marley's fatal skin cancer, diagnosed in 1977, began under the nail of which body part?
Right big toe
Marley's right big toe carried acral lentiginous melanoma, a form that hides under nails and on soles, and he refused amputation on religious grounds.
Q 15Which aggressive brain tumour was found in John McCain in July 2017 after surgery for a blood clot above his eye?
Glioblastoma
Glioblastoma also killed Ted Kennedy in 2009 and Beau Biden in 2015, and McCain returned to the Senate less than two weeks after his brain surgery.
Q 16Which original Saturday Night Live star, Gene Wilder's wife, died of ovarian cancer in 1989 after misdiagnoses?
Gilda Radner
Gilda Radner's widower honoured her wish that her illness help others, co-founding the Gilda's Club network of cancer support clubhouses in 1991.
Q 17Which Big Brother star's death from cervical cancer in 2009, aged 27, sent young British women rushing for screening?
Jade Goody
Jade Goody learned of her diagnosis live on the Indian version of Big Brother, and the screening rush that followed reversed a decade-long decline among women aged 25 to 29.
Q 18Which first lady, the first Argentine ever given chemotherapy, died of cervical cancer in 1952 aged 33?
Eva Perón
Eva Perón was told she had appendicitis while her doctors hid the real diagnosis, and evidence suggests she was given a lobotomy to ease her final months.
Q 19Which cancer of the lung lining, caused by asbestos in over 80% of cases, appears about 40 years after exposure?
Mesothelioma
Mesothelioma risk extends to families: washing the clothes of someone who worked with asbestos raises the chance of developing it.
Q 20Which radioactive gas, seeping from soil into basements, is the top cause of lung cancer among US non-smokers?
Radon
Radon is a step in the slow decay chain of uranium in rock, and the EPA rates it second only to cigarettes as a cause of lung cancer overall.
Richard Nixon's war on cancer aimed at a cure through research funding, and it was echoed in February 2022 when Joe Biden relaunched his Cancer Moonshot with the goal of halving the cancer death rate within 25 years.
Q 24Which colour ribbon, first made as lapel pins in 1997, is the international symbol of childhood cancer awareness?
Gold
Gold was chosen because it is a precious metal, a colour meant to reflect the most precious thing in our lives, and it is worn through September's awareness month.
Q 25Which colour is the official symbol of ovarian cancer awareness, worn on the first Friday of each September?
Teal
Teal is said to stand for strength, hope and unity, and the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition asks supporters to wear it on Wear Teal Day during September's awareness month.
Q 26World Cancer Day, run by the Union for International Cancer Control, marks a 2000 Paris charter on which date?
4 February
The 4 February date marks the signing of the Charter of Paris against cancer by President Jacques Chirac and UNESCO's director-general at a world summit in 2000.
Q 27Macmillan Cancer Support's biggest fundraiser, worth £16.8 million in 2023, asks Britons to host what each September?
A coffee morning
The World's Biggest Coffee Morning funds a charity founded in 1911 by Douglas Macmillan after his father died of cancer.
Q 28Which spring flower did the UK charity Marie Curie adopt as its emblem in 1986, selling it every March?
Daffodil
The daffodil was picked as a resilient, life-affirming symbol with a joyful yellow, and the Great Daffodil Appeal is now the charity's flagship campaign.
Q 29The Pap smear for cervical screening, invented in the 1920s, is named after a physician born in which country?
Greece
Georgios Papanikolaou of Greece began the research in 1923, and the test still carries the first syllable of his surname a century later.
Q 30Cervical Health Awareness Month, when the US National Cervical Cancer Coalition pushes screening, falls in which month?
January
January's awareness month focuses on the one common cancer that a vaccine and a routine smear test can almost entirely prevent.