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Using Nanoparticles To Improve Chemotherapy
sciencehabit writes with good news involving cancer research. From the article: "Chemotherapy drugs are like a shotgun. Even though doctors are just aiming for tumors, the compounds hit a variety of other places in the body, leading to side effects like bone marrow damage and hair loss. To improve their aim, researchers have tried to package these drugs inside tiny hollow nano-sized containers that can be directed toward tumors and bypass healthy tissues. But the size, shape, and makeup of these 'nanoparticles' can drastically affect where and when they are taken up. Now, scientists have surveyed the landscape of some 100 different nanoparticle formulations and shown that when a conventional chemotherapeutic drug is packaged inside the best of these nanoparticles, it proves considerably more effective at fighting prostate cancer (summary; article paywalled) in animals than the drug alone."
What you are saying is valid but does not relate to radiation causing cancer. It relates to say, radiation flat out killing you from destroying your body's critical tissue faster than it can regenerate and keep you alive (say, membrane of the lungs for instance, lining of the stomach or intestines, etc). You can be exposed to tons of radiation but never get a random cancer causing dnamutation, or you could be exposed to only normal radiation and get a random cancer causing dna mutation. Sorta like how a person can be shot 10 times and live (say arms legs shoulders no vital organs or arteries), but a person shot in the head has a tendency to die. While it only takes one, statistically speaking bullets are bad for your body (each has a statistical chance of being a critical hit, the more hits = greater overall chance). Roll a 6 sided die, if you roll one you die, 1 in 6 right odds right? Now roll 2, if either one rolls a 1 you die, now 3... your chances increases as the number of rolls increases.
Radiation causes many different types of mutation. Some of its good (drives evolution for instance), some isn't good but not particularly harmful (breaks cell wall, cell dies, meh, cells die all the time). In those cases radiation exposure damage isn't linear, your body is able to cope with so much as a time.
But Cancer is different. Cellular damage from radiation isn't particularly rare, but among that mutation is somewhat rare (speaking lots of ionizing incidents and lots of cells in a body here, so bear with the definition of "rare"). Cancer is a RARE form (or forms if you will) of mutation which causes a cells otherwise limited reproductive (splitting) cycle to become unlimited.
Normally when DNS strands split they lose a Telomere, eventually the splits run out of telomeres. In the case of say skin which replenishes all your life, a adult stem cell from your bone marrow enters your blood stream, it becomes the "first" skin cell of this splitting process, it will then over time split about 20-30ish times to produce a whole lotta cells. If the Telomere chain didn't get shorter, this would go on for ever, ie, you'd get a lump that grew larger and larger and larger.
A little bit of cancer isn't good for you due to the "grows forever" thing.