system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does chemotherapy work?
gpt
In very very basic terms, chemotherapy is usually a cocktail of drugs that are really toxic to dividing cells. If cells divide a lot and quickly, like with cancerous cells, then it has a worse impact than on cells that divide very slowly or not at all, like brain cells. The idea is that even though you are poisoning your own cells, which you are and which causes the various nasty side effects of chemo, the poison is effecting the cancer worse than it is effecting you, and so the cancer will die while only making you very sick.