cancer

[leugi]

I wanted to know what cancer was so i did some research, and most websites tell us that cancer is a name for various diseases in which old cells that get their DNA damaged start to divide uncontrollably, instead of dying, but i wasn't so convinced that this is necessarily true, i wonder how they know that the DNA becomes damaged. We know now that the DNA works by some sort of switching on and off system, i which some genes are sometimes turned on and sometimes off, and i wonder what if that is what is happening to old cells, instead of the part of the gene that tell that cell to die some other part turns on and tells it to divide, could this be possible?