/lit/ - Literature

A Theory of Cancer

I've been thinking about cancer. Namely, its importance in the theory of evolutionary biology. Cancer is typically framed only in clinical terms as its disease factor, a scourge of medicine that must be eliminated. The unfortunate reality is that cancer is inevitable as it is a direct byproduct of the principles of cellular division.

It runs deeper than that. I propose a theory in which there is a microevolutionary struggle between noncancerous and cancerous cells that plays out at the proteinic and genetic levels of selection. Cancer is fundamental to the evolution of multicellular organisms. Multicellular organisms are not perfect unities of function but actually communities of "allied" cells, which, if the wrong mechanisms broke down, would then "rebel" and go rogue. Cancer is therefore a form of rebellion or cellular anarchy in which cancerous cells seek to privilege their own local division out of sync with the regulated harmony of the overall organism.

Of course an animal is a group effort and without this careful cooperation the implicit biological planning disintegrates. The cancer cells divide chaotically and wantonly because they are no longer coordinated by the carefully balanced cellular signalling mechanisms which keep everything in order. Ultimately this is why cancer proves fatal.

The worrisome potential implication of this view of cancer is that it is statistically inevitable. All cells want to behave like cancer and divide endlessly until they fill up the whole universe. But the structural unity of the organism requires that this lust to replicate is suppressed for the survivability of all. However, through entropy or genetic coding errors, eventually those controls which keep the cellular division switches off or on where necessary break. And if the switch is left on, the cell becomes cancerous.

Mathematically, the odds of this happening in a sufficiently sized population approaches 1. Trillions upon trillions of cells, and many, many more genetic coding events, any one of which could misfire and allow a cell to greedily declare its independence as cancer.

Cancer represents a reversion of biological complexity to the prokaryotic phase of constant and disorganized uncontrolled division. Cancer is when eukaryotic cells start behaving like bacteria in multicellular organisms.