According to a new scientific paper, cancer might actually be a newly evolved species of parasite based on the fact that the cells depend on their hosts for food, but otherwise act independently and to the detriment of their host.
Researchers are hopeful that if this is true, the species might be defeated if we continue to force them to rapidly evolve through the use of increasingly powerful medicines. What do you think, is it a parasitic species or a disease?
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Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues believe that carcinogenesis—the generation of cancer—is just another form of speciation, the evolution of new species.
“Cancer is comparable to a bacterial level of complexity, but still autonomous, that is, it doesn’t depend on other cells for survival; it doesn’t follow orders like other cells in the body, and it can grow where, when and how it likes,” said Duesberg in a UC Berkeley press release. “That’s what species are all about...Once a cell has crossed that barrier of autonomy, it’s a new species."
Researchers are hopeful that if this is true, the species might be defeated if we continue to force them to rapidly evolve through the use of increasingly powerful medicines. What do you think, is it a parasitic species or a disease?
Link
Correct me if I'm wrong but evolution doesn't work that way. It's basically survival of the fittest. Every living organism is in perpetual competition with every other living organism. Random mutations create different variations, the variations that out-compete the competition survive.
And what grocery store tabloid did you read that from?
I'd been reading Cliff Pickover's "Surfing Through Hyperspace", and he was describing how, if a four-dimensional being poked it's "finger" into our world, it would appear as a shapeless, fleshy blob changing in size, similar to how if we poked a finger into Flatland, it would appear as a disc changing in diameter.
I kept thinking, "Hmmm, tumors are shapeless fleshy blobs that can change size rapidly..."
"is just another form of speciation"
Yeah, that's why we often see people walking along with a giraffe growing out of their liver - it's that whole other form of speciation.
Duesberg is a major flake (doesn't believe that AIDS is caused by HIV - also isn't a big fan of peer review), proving that even a PhD from Frankfurt and tenure at Berkeley doesn't gurantee results.