“In the United States, about 40 percent of us will eventually get cancer bad enough to be diagnosed. And autopsies suggest that virtually all of us will be nurturing incipient thyroid cancer by the time we die. Among octogenarian and nonagenarian men, 80 percent carry prostate cancer when they go. Cancer is terrible, cancer is dramatic, but cancer isn’t rare. In fact, it’s nearly universal.”
--David Quammen, Harpers, 4/08
Does the fact that others might be secretly happy that they can’t get cancer, mean that I, might secretly wish that they had it. After all, common wisdom tells us that it is not contagious. The word “contagion” has a repellent ring. We take it as an article of faith that cancer is not infectious. But if cancer is not a virus, some scientists see an association between virus’s and some cancers. Similarly, chemical exposure has been linked to cancer, but we don’t think if it as a kind of poisoning. Unlike renal and coronary diseases, which are marked by organ dysfunction, cancer is the result of cellular reproduction gone haywire.
What’s interesting is that the single tumor-of-origin is produced by the victim and not by some outside source. These replicant mutations, cells run amok, are obsessed with wildly reproducing to the point of ignoring the host organism (yes, like a parasite).
Which brings me back to the hidden glee of the contagion free. So far, medical research confirms the comforting belief that cancer is a solitary phenomenon. It is the self-originating character of the first rogue cell that sustains our faith in science. And so too do cancer’s victims suffer in the solitude of knowing cancer can’t be caught, it is ultimately, and inexorably the victim’s fault.
But what might Darwin have to say in this? Well yes, I know, he’s dead. But what if he weren’t. What if he said a cell is a simple organism, and more, that if cells are analogous to species, they evolve. And what if he made the further supposition that (yes, like a parasite) since they depend on inhabiting a host animal, it would seem likely they mutate toward a capacity to be passed along from host to host, towards transmission.
The malignant tumor’s circumvention of the immune system, as well as external defense mechanisms, like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are achieved by a relentless mutation, reproduction, and proliferation. Darwin would say that these tumors are the “fittest” of the malignant.
--David Quammen, Harpers, 4/08
Does the fact that others might be secretly happy that they can’t get cancer, mean that I, might secretly wish that they had it. After all, common wisdom tells us that it is not contagious. The word “contagion” has a repellent ring. We take it as an article of faith that cancer is not infectious. But if cancer is not a virus, some scientists see an association between virus’s and some cancers. Similarly, chemical exposure has been linked to cancer, but we don’t think if it as a kind of poisoning. Unlike renal and coronary diseases, which are marked by organ dysfunction, cancer is the result of cellular reproduction gone haywire.
What’s interesting is that the single tumor-of-origin is produced by the victim and not by some outside source. These replicant mutations, cells run amok, are obsessed with wildly reproducing to the point of ignoring the host organism (yes, like a parasite).
Which brings me back to the hidden glee of the contagion free. So far, medical research confirms the comforting belief that cancer is a solitary phenomenon. It is the self-originating character of the first rogue cell that sustains our faith in science. And so too do cancer’s victims suffer in the solitude of knowing cancer can’t be caught, it is ultimately, and inexorably the victim’s fault.
But what might Darwin have to say in this? Well yes, I know, he’s dead. But what if he weren’t. What if he said a cell is a simple organism, and more, that if cells are analogous to species, they evolve. And what if he made the further supposition that (yes, like a parasite) since they depend on inhabiting a host animal, it would seem likely they mutate toward a capacity to be passed along from host to host, towards transmission.
The malignant tumor’s circumvention of the immune system, as well as external defense mechanisms, like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are achieved by a relentless mutation, reproduction, and proliferation. Darwin would say that these tumors are the “fittest” of the malignant.
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