Talk Name: Elizabeth Murchison: Fighting a contagious cancer
My remarks:
We never thought of cancer as contagious disease!
There is a new Contagious cancer which is very fast killing all the Tasmanian devils (small dog like creatures living on Tasmania island in the south of Australia)
This cancer spread through the course of 5..10 years throughout the whole tasmania island, starting from north/east part.
In the beggining all the scientist thought that this cancer was spread by a virus! they were sure of it...
and now they KNOW - that it was NOT spread by a virus!
They now know that it's all together a more sinister, something they never thought of before!
Facts about cancer!
> 1 in 3 ppl develop cancer in some stage of their lives
> Cancer occurs when a single cell in my body develop through set of random mutations a certain gene that cause that cell to produce more and more and more copies of itself !
> paradoxically - once established - natural sellection actualy favors growth of cancerous cells! natural selection chooses cells which can acquire nutrients fastest, multiply fastest, etc.. That's why cancer is such a difficult dissease to treat
> Cancerous (C) cells evolves - another reason why it's so difficult to treat! Throw a drug at it and resistent cells will grow back!
> Amazing fact: given the right environment and nutrients - cancer cells has the potential to go on growing forever!
> C: is constrained at living inside of our bodies!
> C'ers continued growth is spreading trough our bodies and eating up our tissues, leads to the death of a cancer Host - The body, and also to the Cancer itself!
> C: is a strange short lived life-form! an Evoluitionary dead-end!
What she did next:
she examined C infected animal healthy Genes to their cancerous cells Genes!
What she found: > Genes of an animal and Genes of Cancer were COMPLETELY different! -> The animal and his tumor are as different as different are different animals
This told them - that Tumor didnot arise from within their body! -> they found that actually these genes came from another individual!
Then they did a study of different cancerous cells, and found out that all of them came from the same individual - same DNA!
And they found out that it spreads, through physical contact! When Tasmanian devils meet - they bite each other, implanting cancerous cells into another body, so the cancer now is not constrained within one body, yet it freely travels throughout the whole community of them. And is threatening the whole species!
Does the same kind of cancer have an ability to spread in a different kind of animals, or perhaps humans! Answer is YES!
> There is a dog cancer which spreads through sexual interaction, and is already spread throughout the whole world!
There was a research done - if humans are able to develop cancer in the same way- if cancerous cells were injected into them!
- and yes they did... Most of the ppl didnot develop cancer, but some (whose immune systems were weak allready) did develop cancer this way!
My conclusions:
This got me thinking - we still don't know - WHAT CAUSES CANCER! this only explains the means of it spreading, yet does not say anything of the original cause of it! Hope one day we will learn of these reasons!
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