I Think this proves my theory that Death is Natures way of ensuring the survival of a species, and cancer is one of the main tools Death uses to achieve this outcome. How else can you explain how many ways the cancer cell can adapt and survive. Unlike a symbiotic relationship cancer kills the host even when it means killing itself. Cancer has even beaten death and is immortal because it can produce telomeres and is not subject to the Hayflick Limit.
Gus
Excellent article. Thanks for posting it.!!!
Thanks Gus...some promising agents but not a cure... good reading... appreciate your posts....Happy holidays...
I read a paper in the journal Geology about a decade ago that suggested that cells that forget to die are simply reverting to Precambrian behaviour, when all cells reproduced asexually and thus, if unchecked, would grow exponentially in number. Back before the Cambrian revolution -- or possibly the latest Precambrian (Ediacaran) -- there were no predators that we know of, so checks on the exponential growth would have been primarily abiotic (being limited to the photic zone; salinity; temperature). Our bodies do not have such abiotic controls, being governed by hemeostasis.
I am not sure that I agree with this suggestion, as the cyanobacteria responsible for Precambrian deposits were prokaryotes, not eukaryotes like us.
But we should be thankful for the Precambrian beasties. They produced oxygen as a by-product of their metabolism. Each one gave off only a minute fart of the stuff, but gradually that built up to the point where bigger, oxygen-using organisms were possible (including us). What a shame that our cancerous cells do not eruct a byproduct that is useful for us -- even better, a byproduct that we can use to fight the buggers themselves.
Cancer cells are hardly immortal. They die when they have managed to kill the host, just as the healthy cells do. It's an irrational disease, being non-infectious, it has no way of escaping the dying host to find another.
I found the article quite interesting since it describes my case. I was taken off enzalutamide after only a few months since it wasn't being effective. I would have been taken off anyway since it was starting to give me seizures (a very rare side effect, but you wouldn't expect that I'd just get the common ones, now would you?) and now I'm just on lupron. I have been approved for the TRITON III study since I have the ATM mutation. I've also been approved for the VISION study (amazing - I felt that with my luck I wouldn't be eligible for either), so now I have a very welcome problem of which to choose. I was interested to see the TRITON III study listed on that chart of things that are being looked at for enzalutamide and castrate resistant patients. This will factor into my decision. I'll need to discuss this further with my oncologist.
Great link. Spent a long time reading and then bookmarked it. Yeah Death ensures the survival of the species. Earth would be a little cramped with 13 trillion of us. But Sex also ensures the survival of the species. So glass half full, or glass half empty. Except for us, we don't have a glass anymore. Life expectancy in US in 1900 for males was 46 years old. Google it. I've already had 22 years of borrowed time. Let's just see how good my credit really is.
Screw this... I'm gonna have a double scoop of chocolate chip ice cream. It's almost Christmas and I can't wait to open my present. The one with my new blow up doll. Merry Christmas (saving my breath).
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Sunday 12/23/2018 7:32 PM EST
Looking at cancer as a research might, it i a very complex disease that acts almost like a virus but within each host independently. As far as the Darwinian "thinning of the herd" concept, I think that this is true in that somehow a switch (as my daughter refers to it....she's a doctor) is turned on. It's trigger can be related to age and the immune system, environmental causes, genetic mutations prior to the disease or some combination of these.
In any case the illogical part is that even though it may "cull" me from the herd, I already have two grown daughters, so this has not impacted the gene pool, except for any future offspring I might have had, but I am too old for entertaining that notion!
Having grown up in NYC, I can liked cancer cells to roaches. You are constantly exterminating them and more always are there to replace them. Sorry about the imagery.
CRPC - causes and prevention of 
Starting xgeva next month
WHY IS XGEVA SO EXPENSIVE?
