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Cancer Is An Evolutionary Mechanism To 'Autocorrect' Our Gene Pool, Suggests Paper (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Two scientists have come up with a depressing new hypothesis that attempts to explain why cancer is so hard to stop. Maybe, they suggest, cancer's not working against us. Maybe the disease is actually an evolutionary 'final checkpoint' that stops faulty DNA from being passed down to the next generation. To be clear, this is just a hypothesis. It hasn't been tested experimentally, and, more importantly, no one is suggesting that anyone should die of cancer. In fact, it's quite the opposite -- the researchers say that this line of thinking could help us to better understand the disease, and come up with more effective treatment strategies, like immunotherapy, even if a cure might not be possible. So let's step back a second here, because why are our bodies trying to kill us? The idea behind the paper is based on the fact that, in the healthy body, there are a whole range of inbuilt safeguards, or 'checkpoints,' that stop DNA mutations from being passed onto new cells. One of the most important of these checkpoints is apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Whenever DNA is damaged and can't be fixed, cells are marked for apoptosis, and are quickly digested by the immune system -- effectively 'swallowing' the problem. No mess, no fuss. But the new hypothesis suggests that when apoptosis -- and the other safeguards -- don't work like they're supposed to, cancer just might be the final 'checkpoint' that steps in and gets rid of the rogue cells before their DNA can be passed on... by, uh, killing us, and removing our genetic material from the gene pool.
Ducking cancer.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Cancer cuts down the number of living beings with genetic defects / genetic weaknesses and as such, it is a natural population control mechanism
of course these 'defective' genes get passed-on.. people usually have their kids before they get cancer. the only exception being the unfortunate kids who get sick young.
How does that explain post-menopausal cancers and cancer being more prevalent in individuals who are past their reproductive prime?
This theory might hold water if we saw some / most cancers set in before breeding age. But since we're usually seeing cancers at 60+, and damn near no one has kids after 60, this doesn't rise to the level of freshman-commons type musing.
If the theory was true, most cancers would have to occur before the peak of reproductive age, not after
Uh then why would cancer affect mostly old people? to remove people from the gene pool you would want cancer to be most effective in younger people in child-bearing years or earlier. What evolutionary advantage does cancer have on old people?
My brother died of cancer and I can assure you his DNA was good. Not just my bias either: he had an I.Q. Of 160, was a brilliant musician, and a great humanitarian. What utter and complete bullshit.
Most cancers occur in later (post childbearing) years? This is according to the American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/acs/grou...
I think it's always good to look at an problem from different perspectives and while thinking of cancer as an evolutionary protection against passing down defective genes is interesting, I'm not sure that it's a valid hypothesis.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Projecting intention on natural processes is idiotic.
as that is a cancer on the world?
Calling cancer a "checkpoint" suggests that it has a purpose. This in turn suggests a Designer. Evolution, on the other hand, suggests that life is simply a survival of the fittest in a sea of random chance. Are these scientists suggesting that they now believe evolution is driven by purpose?
But most cancers are due to lifestyle or external stresses of the body and are usually expressed past the natural fertile age. Since we are throwing hypotheses, I hereby argue that cancer is actually a small rebellion against the multicellular community called the body, which have failed to protect the rebellious faction. The cells decide to do it alone like a survivalist going into the woods, away from the grasps of the government. Cancer modelling using political and population dynamics, free of charge.
You're assuming reproduction on a "human being" level, the cells in you are constantly replacing worn out and damaged cells.
Unfortunately, that strategy for limiting damage to the gene pool only works if you die before you've passed on your genes. What about someone who has had children, passed on their genes, then develops cancer and dies ? Now does nature benefit ?
As many have pointed out, if this were true, it would have to overwhelmingly affect the young, not the old. The opposite must be true: cancer exists because people died of everything else before cancer could begin to cause significant problems. Now we've mostly cured or mitigated all those other causes, cancer can happen because it's never previously been subjected to evolutionary pressure.
As others have pointed out the idea is flawed as it would require death to occur before childbearing. But would it not be evolutionarily advantageous to have a 'self-destruct' mechanism that deploys after having children when food and other resources might be scarce? Live just long enough to bear and raise children, but then die and cease consuming resources, leaving more for your offspring? If resources are rich, stress on the individual is low and cancer may be avoided. If resources are low and stress on the individual is high, cancer kicks in and removes consumers, leaving more resources and lessening stress on the next generation.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
... it makes you turn orange.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm refusing treatment for anything other than skin cancer.
No thanks. Quality of life and burning cash reserves are both big deals to me.
My mother's body was so far gone she couldn't even donate it to science like she wanted to. All they could take were her eyes (she had a cataract fixed in one, but not the other).
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
This isn't a logical conclusion. Yes, evolution explains cancer, but the article gets it all wrong. Cells evolved to specialize and limit their consumption of resources for the greater good of the community. It's actually somewhat of a remarkable adaptation because natural selection is generally a competitive process. The cells that cooperate and differentiate generally aren't the strongest cells individually, at least in microbes that exhibit competitive and cooperative behaviors. Cancer occurs when cells undifferentiate and cease to be cooperative, which eventually has the effect of starving them of resources from the host organism. However, the accumulated damage necessary for cancer occurs over time and therefore cancer is most prevalent after childbearing years. The authors might argue that cancer removes these invidivuals from the population so they're not competing for resources. However, aging is more than sufficient, so I don't think cancer serves a purpose in this way. More likely, there simply is no mechanism by which resistance to cancer at later ages can influence the propagation of one's genes. There isn't an evolutionary mechanism to eliminate diseases that occur later in life, otherwise cancer probably would be much rarer.
But the new hypothesis suggests that when apoptosis -- and the other safeguards -- don't work like they're supposed to, cancer just might be the final 'checkpoint' that steps in and gets rid of the rogue cells before their DNA can be passed on... by, uh, killing us, and removing our genetic material from the gene pool.
Couldn't the exact same argument be made about suicide?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Immortal cells run amok due to mutation of immunity to death chemical isa actually the simpler answer.
What a miraculous poisonous world we have made for ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
One-time Hitler youth.
Usually long past our genes are a threat (or way too late to have made an impact). this would be sensible only if cancers occurred most frequently in the young but that's clearly not the case.
Many cancer tumors are caused by viruses, so no, this theory is not quite it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If cancer is autocorrect, it's very buggy and broken, as it most often doesn't correct the message until after it's already been sent. I could buy this idea if cancer killed most of its victims before they were able to procreate, but that's simply not the case.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The hypothesis is just plain stupid and take its roots in the idea the body or an intelligent design is making decisions about the ADN. This is a syncretism of two opposite ideas. The evoution is not intelligent and is not making conscious decisions, otherwise it is creationism and intelligent design. No wonder the hypothesis is not experimentally verified, it is flawn.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Evolution requires the species propagate, longevity being a side effect of evolution. The longer we live the more genetic errors accumulate at the replication stage, leading to cancer. What we need is a new form of error correction mechanism that works at the DNA level.
Cancer is basically a result of faulty DNA copying - it happens when multiple anti-cancer systems fail in a cell. That's it. Ascribing it some kind of a purpose is pure teleological fallacy. Stuff doesn't need to happen "for a reason".
Cancer happens in cells that generally aren't germ-line cells, that is apart from testicular and ovarian cancers. (and many of those are stromal cells, not germ-line)
There's no evolutionary advantage in killing someone with bowel cancer. Those faulty genes wouldn't be passed on. It just doesn't make sense.
published in a b.s. journal.
Do they have perfect DNA ? Explain that Mr. Scientician !
If cancer is designed to clean the gene pool of defects, it's failing, because cancer attacks middle-aged and old people, AFTER their genes have already been passed along. I might accept this for childhood cancers that MIGHT terminate that genetic sequence. But most 40+ year olds have already had children if they were going to.
Good to see science is proving a comedian's theory from the 1980's correct.
The biggest threat to our survival from a genetic standpoint is the eugenics being practiced against us by our religious and political systems to make us supporters of the administrations. This is so prevalent that cancer would be epidemic as a solution.
If you want to cure the cancer.
That does not make much sense. The only situation this would work is for testicles/ovaries cancer (and only hypothetically for the second of those). Damaged DNA in any other part of the body has exactly zero chance of being passed to the next generation.
Evolution cannot choose to do ANYTHING. It cannot PLAN anything, it cannot CORRECT (or self-correct) anything.
Claiming that it corrects anything is a joke, since there can be no such thing as "correcting" when there is no such thing as "incorrect" (in any sense of that word). Any idea of correction requires the idea of an error, which implies a plan/design which has not been followed and a goal in danger of being missed.
Darwinian evolution has no purpose and no goal. It cannot try to do anything, does not seek any particular outcome, and does not care about results. People all too often fall into thee trap of pretending that evolution is an actual thing in and of itself rather than just the description of a mechanical process. This in-turn leads to the misstep of thinking that evolution wants something, or has a goal, or a plan and thus to the equally false idea that any particular thing can be more- or less-evolved (a judgement only possible if it had a direction and one could judge progress in that direction, which it does not and therefore one cannot). Darwinian evolution is just a mechanism like a spring or a gear, except of course that it has no designer.
A new slant on eugenics, forgetting years of findings on epigenetic. Bravo!
So cancer is just natures way to create the perfect healthy chernobylian chain smoking asbestos worker?
Cancer Is An Evolutionary Mechanism To 'Autocorrect' Our Gene Pool, Suggests Paper (sciencealert.com)
I thought that was halitosis.
You don't believe in things being teleological do you?
Smoking, chemical exposure and sunlight?
Popped up to assure the gay community didn't have an opportunity to expand. Except, gays can't procreate.
Never mind...
meme has never been more suitable
Mutations that enhance the ability to make/sire babies in the short term but are actually deleterious in the long term will be preferred by evolution. For example storing fat in times of plenty lets one ride out cycles of famine/plenty. But the fats clogging the arteries eventually kill you, but by that time the body has made more babies.
Cancer is no more the "final checkpoint" "ultimate back stop" than heart disease or arthritis or lions.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"...cancer just might be the final 'checkpoint' that steps in and gets rid of the rogue cells before their DNA can be passed on..."
So why do the majority of cancers strike after one's childbearing years?
I didn't know Trump was pretending to study cancer now too.
The vast majority of cancers are age related and strike after our prime reproductive years. Moreover, the "problem" this prevents is not present in our reproductive material. If this is an evolutionary byproduct, it is spectacularly bad at it.
I had heard a theory some time ago that a perfectly healthy human body should not get cancer. We poison not only our environment but our food supply, which makes it rather unavoidable in many cases, and also rather impossible to validate that theory unless we move to another planet, or live in a bubble.
That said, our societies, governments, and even our planet is rather reliant on the current death toll, so solving this particular issue for the human population to reach the next billion plateau may ultimately cause more problems that it would solve. This is also the reason blatant killers like tobacco, alcohol, and even all-you-can-eat buffets that provide a turbo-charged vehicle to cancers, addictions, and heart disease are all legal in our society. The reality is we rely heavily on not only deaths caused by these top-tier killers, but also rely heavily on the profits created by our attempts to treat or cure them. Any profit measured in the trillions didn't get there by accident, and it certainly doesn't stay there for that reason either, which tends to question our true motivation to "cure" our current death toll.
If you were to ask Mother Earth what she thinks, her answer is simple. Humans are the cancer.
Interesting theory, but can't possibly work this way. Why? Because in order for this trait to benefit organism and its offspring one has to die and stop reproducing. This cuts your reproductive fitness by 100%, so no amount of benefit short of immortality would make up for such drawback.
... the backspace key.
Given that most cancers develop after a person's childbearing years.
The mutated DNA doesn't get passed along to descendants, unless it's in the gametes or their precursor cells.
Nah, saying, "Hold my beer and watch this," and getting killed in the process is nature's way of thinning the herd. Sadly, we have a monstrous tort system that's feeding the desire to save people from themselves only to breed more stupid people. And the tort bar ensures that they get lots of money for being stupid.
This hypothesis doesn't make much sense. In evolutionary terms passing on "faulty" genes is its own punishment. There's really no mechanism I can imagine that would select for cancer causing genes. I could see it if the mechanism was very ancient, from the time when cells were more colony than single organism.
Read Dr. Mary's Monkey to learn about how the SV40 monkey virus accidentally ended up in the polio vaccine. Over 100 million doses were administered before anyone realized and corrected the issue. SV40 causes cancer later in life which explains the explosion of cancer in the previous
Someone should tell these researchers that cancer isn't able to kill plants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Another problem with this article is that it seems to say that "cancer" is a single disease. There are lots and lots of different cancers, so saying that "cancer" is some kind of unified mechanism is bizarre. There's not a lot of relationship between lung cancer and leukemia, except that both involve mutations and failed apoptosis.
Have you read my blog lately?
Like everything with science, if it is not testable and provable, it is just a guess to get their article read and your name known.
My thought is that cancer at its core is a bit error that is disabling apoptosis (cell suicide in response to its neighbors telling it to). Once a cell ignores apoptosis, all bets are off as to what that cell will do. It's free to reuse any genetic code that's available just like a virus can.
Consider that metastasis, the migration of cancer cells, is how we all got our start. After we were conceived, the fertilized egg migrated from a free floating organism in the fallopian tubes to attach itself to the uterine wall. Cancer uses those routines.
Once at the uterine wall, the fertilized egg sends out signals to the uterus to build a blood network to feed the egg. Cancer uses those routines.
The egg grows in an organized fashion into us. Perhaps because cancer has disabled apoptosis, it grows into a disorganized mess. Apoptosis is a pruning mechanism that keeps cells from varying too much from their neighbors. Sort of an HOA on steroids.
Consider that roughly 10^9 cells engage in cell divisions every day, that each cell has to copy around 10^9 base pairs which entails a huge number of parallel processes that have to coordinate during mitosis and it's amazing we don't all die from the errors that are bound to arise.
Individualism, liberty and capitalism cause cancer, not ionizing radiation, free radicals and mutagenic chemicals. Have I satisfied your academically necessary Marxian lusts?
This message is brought to you by Karl Martell. EDUCATE YOURSELF.
So basically our race and species, which society tells us we should care about over ourselves (you have to wonder why), is more important than our lives.
Anyway it can't be correct that cancer is needed to improve the gene pool. In fact eliminating anything from the gene pool a bad idea. Eliminating cells is fine because they are clones mostly. Apoptosis occurs in cells of which there are a trillion in duplicate. Ok let's say for example and hypothetically, someone (not me) may have a gene for trolling on slashdot, which you may find annoying and want to eliminate. But what if they also have a gene that is useful in an upcoming robot war? You can't write off an entire genome because of a few bad genes. Eliminating a entire organism is very different than strategically than eliminating a single cell.
Anyway this is a moot point, we have the technology now to edit and fix bad genes.
Eliminating genes from the gene pool should only be done as a last resort. Many people who get cancer are intelligent, useful, and productive members of society. Cancer doesn't target the people who are no good for the tribe. Therefore, it makes no sense evolutionarily for cancer to be a useful weeding process. Cancer itself is the result of bad genes, it doesn't result in death because evolution is helped by it.
Cancer does not protect us against "bad genes".
Telomere shortening, leading to programmed death of the individual - now that protects against people getting too old and reproducing while they collect age-related mutations.
There is nothing useful about cancer - cancer is simply a failure on the cell level. Hard to fix does not mean it is in any way useful.
At this point most people already passed on their DNA. No use "checkpointing" after that moment.
Evolution is an emergent thing, a blind watchmaker as it were. It does not do things with a means to an end in mind.
So many scientists make this mistake in basic thinking and it leads them to ALL SORTS OF BOGUS, WEIRD AND RIDICULOUS CONCLUSIONS!
This my friends, is why intelligent design should never be taught in schools, because it makes this sort of idiocy seem like it is real science. If it is not based on evidence and does not stand up to peer review, it is out the window people!
People generally die of cancer decades after they passed on their genes.
Biologist here.Forget the fact that most cancers occur post reproductive age. Enter stage left: the fact that even more cancers--virtually all--occur in somatic cells that are not destined to be inherited. They are not in the germline. So the flawed DNA that tripped the signal was never going to be inherited to begin with. How did no one pick up on this during reviews?
How can it affect evolution, when most people get cancer when they are old and past their prime reproductive years? The damage has been done by then. Silly.
First dismissed this hypothesis because it ignored fundamental aspects of biology and evolution. One, variants occurring after reproductive age are not inherited. Two, variants occurring outside of germ cells (virtually all oncogenic mutations) are not inherited. These Are major flaws. However, a somatic cell that has accumulated enough mutations to go rouge would frequently be present in an individual whose germline has also accumulated a positively correlated
number of mutational hits. So it is at least conceivable as a "canary in the coal mine scenario". When the bird croaks, it's time shut it all down. Can this be selected for? It would be group selection, and the burden of proof for such a scenario is much higher because the math is not as kind to it.
Has cancer ever come from a precursor to an egg or sperm cells? In women at least all egg cells have already been produced by the time they are born.
Cancer occurs through out the body in cells which do not propagate to future generations.
At best you can have evolutionary pressure which kills people predisposed to developing terminal cancer. In other words they have a flawed immune system with trouble naturally identifying and eliminating certain cancers. Basically this would be a birth defect of ones cancer immune system.
But cancer is ultimately a runaway process. Everyone will develop it sooner or later depending on how long they live. Our bodies produce at least six cancerous cells a day. The body has the tough problem of identifying them before they get out of hand. The mutations that accumulate naturally are distinct from the mutations that occur in germ lines.
Amazing that an intelligent construct exists at such a level. Yet in order for us to evolve, an intelligence must exist to successfully choose the right genetic mutations to push man to his next state. With such safeguards in place it's looking like less and less by chance...
I am so tired of these "scientists" speaking about evolution like it's some sort of intelligent being. No evolution is not planning on fixing our genetics with cancer. Evolution doesn't give two shits what happens to us. Why else do you think so many species have gone extinct? Is it because evolution just didn't care enough? Evolution just doesn't work that way and any so called "scientists" that try to you otherwise don't have a clear understanding of the evolutionary process.
That's not how it worked. When the bird stopped singing, or made any signs of distress was when it was time to leave, taking the living bird with you. The bird was your work party's way of determining that you need to go along this way instead of that cross-way to work your way around where ever the source of the asphyxiating gas is. The threats for which you used a canary were "coal damp" (carbon dioxide, which would suffocate the canary before it suffocated the miners) and "fire damp" (mostly methane), which is a mild anaesthetic at levels below those that it would propagate flame from the miner's candles for lighting. Particularly in the latter case, you needed to watch the LIVE canary very carefully to avoid going from a 2% methane atmosphere (flame does not propagate) to a 4.5% methane atmosphere - which is almost at the lower explosive limit of methane in air, and you're on the verge of triggering a fire damp explosion and dieing.
When Davy invented the "miner's safety lamp" in 1815, it would address the fire damp (CH4) issue, but would give no warning against the coal damp (CO2) issue, so the canary was still needed.
Sorry - spent too many years of my life dealing with industrial hazards of working in flammable or explosive atmospheres. Canaries in coal mines are more complex than most people think, rather like the hundreds of diseases lumped together as "cancer".
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Except that the experiment has been done. Several hundred million years before humans evolved, but that's no reason to not use the information available.
It is fairly well known that the non-fish gnathostome vertebrates (elasmobranchs, a.k.a. sharks and rays ; humans, birds and frogs are al indistinguishable from the rest of the fish at this level of classification) do not suffer from cancer. Which tells us one of two things - either our knowledge of the biology of elasmobranchs is seriously lacking (quite plausible, with an obvious path for further research), or the differences between the elasmobranch immune and/ or developmental control system and the corresponding systems of fishes (including humans) are ripe targets for understanding hw things go wrong in human tumours.
I'm taking it that the several hundred diseases lumped as "cancer" are in large part failures of the control systems inherent in differentiation, growth and control of tissues - including their death.
Personally, I suspect that the (several hundred) "cure(s) for cancer" will be found some time after we have fusion power on an industrial scale.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Apropos when used in context for society's 'cancers' - like those politicians we love to hate so much!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The problem with this theory is that most cancer cases happen after reproductive age. They may have some negative effect on the survival of offspring by denying them the support of parents and grandparents, but the offspring have already been born. It would explain leukemia (which is not uncommon in childhood), but does less to explain breast cancer (which mostly strikes at age 40 and above, past the prime reproductive years) or prostate cancer (mostly an old age disease).
This paper assumes that there is a benefit to the species in eliminating individuals with damaged DNA before they pass it on. The thing is, there is *absolutely no effect* to future generations unless the DNA damage happens in the germline cells (egg or sperm). If my brain or muscle cell becomes faulty, I cannot pass that on. It is only egg or sperm cells that pass on DNA, both of which have powerful error-checking mechanisms in place anyway.
Their hypothesis assumes that it is advantageous for a species to kill off otherwise healthy members who would produce healthy offspring, because one of their cells is broken. That makes no sense whatsoever, it would be like an immune system that killed you if you got a cold. This is the worst biology paper I have read since that one that somehow got a reference to a Creator past the reviewers. It's no surprise that they published it in a journal ranked 157/162 in its class.
Yours grouchily,
An Under-caffeinated Bioinformatician