[zkirill]

This is my understanding as well and my favorite protein, p53 [1], is responsible for hunting down cancerous cells. From what I remember reading in Robins Basic Pathology, it takes many steps for a cell to evolve into cancer and our body has ways to reduce the probability at each step. The most fascinating topic to me is how someone's lifestyle and environment affect their body's natural cancer defence mechanisms. We can do many things to stack the odds in our favour, but sometimes the odds are still not in our favour. Should we strive to minimize the chance by adjusting our lifestyle and changing the environment, or strive for some kind of balance?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53

[pfdietz]

Elephants have 100x as many cells as a human does, live about as long, but have about 1/2 the chance of dying of cancer. Why? A big part is that each elephant cell has ~40 copies of the p53 gene.

[hawk_]

Before anyone thinks of increasing p53 in human bodies to prevent cancer keep in mind that it can cause premature aging.

[pfdietz]

I'm sure elephants have all sorts of compensatory mutations so they can live with so many copies of the gene.

[Dalewyn]

>Should we strive to minimize the chance by adjusting our lifestyle and changing the environment, or strive for some kind of balance?

That is as much a philosophical question as it is biological, and one where the answer will vary by who is asked.

Personally, I will say this: If you're miserable while endeavouring to prevent cancer (or any other disease), that's putting the cart before the horse. The goal is, presumably after all, to live happily.