[pavas]

> I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field.

I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have dedicated their lives to it?

[bglazer]

I work in this field. It’s more or less correct but kind of lacking in detail. Cancer is a property of all multicellular life. I think it’s best understood as the behavior of a dynamical system that loses the feedback control that keeps cell growth under control.

Check out this paper from the Lander lab: https://elifesciences.org/articles/61026

It’s a bit jargon heavy but it’s a nice case study in how tumor growth is controlled through all the same mechanisms that normal tissue growth uses. Even cells with an outright cancerous gene mutation are basically still just doing normal growth and development.

[inglor_cz]

" Cancer is a property of all multicellular life."

In practice, though, some species are way less prone to cancer than others. Orders of magnitude of a difference, even in mammals. Bats, notoriously. Or naked mole rats. On the other hand, mice get cancer fairly reliably.

Which means that there are biologically realistic way how to keep the danger at bay, and they seem to involve the immune system.

[bashkiddie]

I am guessing: There is an evolutionary "shadow". Genes for getting old and healthy are not selected for, because you get old after having children. Evolution optimizes for the survival of your children.

Might be that cancer hits after creating offspring.

[Nursie]

In a social species such as ours, with such a prolonged childhood, having healthy parents and grandparents is likely to affect the survival of children so there will be some selection pressure on a long life there.