Q 01/05

Which animals carry 20 copies of a tumour-suppressor gene that humans have once, explaining Peto's paradox?

A) Elephants

B) Blue whales

C) Giraffes

D) Hippos

Answer · why

A) 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 o...

Q 02/05

Which Australian marsupial faces extinction from a contagious facial cancer passed on by biting?

A) Red kangaroo

B) Common wombat

C) Eastern quoll

D) Tasmanian devil

Answer · why

D) 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 i...

Q 03/05

The first chemotherapy drugs, tested on lymphoma patients at Yale in 1942, came from which First World War weapon?

A) Chlorine gas

B) Mustard gas

C) Phosgene

D) Tear gas

Answer · why

B) 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 De...

Q 04/05

Pierre Curie strapped a tube of which element to his arm for ten hours, and the burn suggested a tumour treatment?

A) Polonium

B) Uranium

C) Radium

D) Thorium

Answer · why

C) 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 tissu...

Q 05/05

In 1775 Percivall Pott tied scrotal cancer to soot lodged in the skin of which workers, the first occupational cancer?

A) Coal miners

B) Blacksmiths

C) Chimney sweeps

D) Lamplighters

Answer · why

C) Chimney sweeps

Chimney sweeps gave medicine its first proof that an environmental carcinogen causes cancer, and the disease is still called chimney sweeps' carcinoma...