Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
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
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?
This article isn't science. It's a bullshit excuse for wealthy folks to feel genetically superior. In the meantime we can show scientifically that poor communities get the short end of the stick when it comes to the environment they live in. We pollute the shit out of parts of this country and that's why people get cancer at an alarming rate. You buy cheap toys for children laden with toxic chemicals and that causes cancer. Don't even get me started about the shit in water. The fire retardants on whatever you are sitting on causes cancer. Cancer isn't a depopulation mechanism.
I believe cancer is a result of humans drastically increasing the amount of entropy in our environment and that entropy finding its way into our bodies.
What a miraculous poisonous world we have made for ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
You and GP are both wrong. Cancer cells don't try to kill the host. What's happening is that they're doing what cells normally do -- dividing -- but the problem is they divide too quickly and aren't as functional as normal cells. This inadvertantly kills you because whatever organ they're attached to loses its function and even fails.
Take for example, if your heart has a big lump in a major chamber; it's going to have a hard time doing its job.
Every living multicellular organism on this planet gets cancer, including plants. It's never fatal for plants though, because cancer can't metastasize without blood, and they don't have any major organs that can fail.
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".
After watching my mother die from untreated cancer, I can assure you that you will have no quality of life by refusing treatment.
I believe cancer is a result of humans drastically increasing the amount of entropy in our environment and that entropy finding its way into our bodies.
This statement contains the most convoluted misunderstanding of the laws of thermodynamics that I have ever seen.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
If most cancers happen past reproductive age, why is there any need to "prevent" the spread of genes that won't be spread anyhow? And most forms of cancer are due to random mutations in individual cells, which won't change the genes in sperm/eggs. The few cancers that are due to genetic susceptibility (such as some forms of breast cancer) still get passed on anyhow. The hypothesis is so easily refuted that it isn't even funny.
What GP post says should be obvious. We get cancer specifically because there is no evolutionary pressure after reproduction for us to not get it.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
People die of cancers far more often these days because we already eliminated all the other ways to die. Now, we live longer and don't die at 45 from cholera, so we have to die SOMEhow.
Repeat ten times and rinse! While I would add dementia, and probably some diseases we haven't found out about yet to the increasingly short list, the claim holds basically true. As we have largely eliminated other causes of death, something has to kill us.
I enjoy confusing people when I explain how decreasing the odds of dying from one disease, merely increases the odds of dying from most everything else.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I agree mostly, but calling America (the US?) one of the cleanest countries in the world is kinda misleading. It might be correct relatively, but on an absolute scale, we all drown in dirt.
And some of that dirt is probably very important for our immune system. Altogether too many people have become germophobes, and the results are not encouraging. Probably half of my son's hockey team was on inhalers when he was in high school. Weird food allergies have cropped up.
Our pediatrician was big on the idea that the immune system doesn't just happen, but needs to be helped along. When my son was around 4 years old, we started bringing him around our horse. He'd get these red blotches on himself. We took him to the pediatrician and he said let him be around the horse in increasing amounts of time, and not to be concerned unless he had issues breathing. We did just that, and within a week, no more blotches.
Not unlike noticing that peanut allergies hardly exist in the middle east, where peanuts and milk are often children's first solid food. As opposed to here where we were trying to eliminate peanuts from the earth. http://komonews.com/archive/st... .
Which doesn't work.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Problem with that is that there is evidence that the opposite effect actually happens: cancer incidence could be reduced significantly by restricting caloric intake. This conclusion comes from the Okinawa centenarian study which is looking at the unusually healthy and long living population of Okinawa.
I'm not even American, and I know enough that unless you vote in one of the few swing States, you should vote 3rd party, if only as a protest, compared to not voting or throwing your vote away on the loser.
Politicians do notice 3rd party votes and take their issues into consideration and if nothing else you can say that 60% of American voted against Trump/Clinton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism