system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does radiation cause cancer?
gpt
The kind of radiation that can cause cancer is called ionizing radiation. This is radiation that has enough energy to break the bonds between DNA bases. When the bases are broken, our cells have mechanisms that can repair them. But, these mechanisms are not 100% accurate. They're good, but they're not perfect. So, if enough bonds get broken and have to be repaired, eventually there's a mistake. Or, realistically, a bunch of mistakes. If it's the right kind of mistake (or wrong kind, depending on your view), it will cause the cell it occurs in to begin dividing indefinitely, without regard to the other cells around it. This mass of indefinitely dividing cells is a tumor.