Cancer is not something that you can catch. It is not passed on from one person to another like the common cold or the flu, and it is not something that you can get from eating tainted food, like the bacteria E. coli (which causes infectious diarrhea). That is to say, cancer is not an infectious disease and is not contagious.
Some-times cancers will happen within a certain area or com-munity, sometimes called a cancer cluster. In these cases, however, it is usually because a common poison or environmental factor is present that caused people living close together to all develop cancer. In other situations, the presence of cancer in your father or mother may mean that cancer is passed on in families.
These cases are usually due to a genetic mutation, but these happen only in a minority of cases of cancer. Some cancers are associated with a viral infection, like the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is associated with cervical, vulvar, and vaginal cancers, and is trans-mitted by sexual contact. However, not all women with HPV develop cancer and not all cancers are traceable to HPV. Endometrial cancer is not associated with HPV.