A fresh View of Cancer - Cancer is not a genetic disease<-title> <META NAME="TITLE" CONTENT="Wisdom of the Body and Resistance to Cancer"> <META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT=" A new way to treat cancer based on a new theory and philosophy of medicine. Introducing a practical way to resist cancer. The body has a wisdom, or Wisdom of the Body, which controls cancer."> <META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT=" Cancer, tumor, neoplasm, wisdom of the body, WOB, cancer treatment failure, cancer treatment, resistance to cancer, cancer yogi, life with cancer, health, disease, normal and pathological, pernicious cachexia, metabolic deficiency, new theory of medicine, new philosophy of medicine, process philosophy, cancer and metaphysics, thought style, thought collective, alternative medicine, holistic medicine, streaming organism, cell kinetics, stem cell, cell turnover, histology, histo-pathology, streaming proteins, non linear system, chaos in medicine, open system, process, metabolic channel, interacting processes, complex organism, massively parallel non-linear biological computer."> </HEAD> <Body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <h2>A fresh look at cancer<br> The fallacy of the genetic explanation of cancer</h2> <p><strong><br> </strong><strong>Abstract<br> </strong><br> Biological theory rests on one<strong> unproved assumption</strong>: <br> Processes in our body continually interact  except with the<strong> genome, which is deaf to our body signals</strong>. It maintains an invariant structure which resists  intervention by any of the myriad interacting processes.  Any change of the genome, or mutation,  is random and unpredictable.<br> <strong>Change this assumption and the biological dogma falls apart</strong>.<br> According to my hypothesis, during cancer progression<strong> the organism actively  manipulates genes</strong>.</p> <strong><br> </strong>I am spellbound by two great minds,  Albert Szent-Györgyi and Georges Canguilhem.<br> <strong>Albert Szent-Györgyi</strong> sought to understand not why cancer cells grow, but what stops normal cells from proliferating except when it is required [1]. He believed that we have all the necessary  information to understand  cancer. However our interpretation is wrong. Reshuffle the known and the answer will pop up.<br> <br> <strong>Gerorges Canguillem wrote </strong>[2]: It is the value of all morbid states that they show us under a magnifying glass certain states that are normal- but not easily visible when normal.  <br> <br> <strong>What is then the normal which cancer proclaims and magnifies? And what ought to be re-shuffled?</strong><br> <br> Despite the wealth of information about cancer,  our interpretation of the cancer phenomenon rests upon <strong>one assumption</strong> which has never been proved.   Processes in our body continually interact  except with the genome, which is deaf to our body signals. It maintains an invariant structure which resists  intervention by any of the myriad interacting processes.  Any change of the genome, or mutation,  is random and unpredictable.<br> <br> Neoplastic progression is accompanied by genetic changes which are supposed to  cause cancer and drive it. Indeed  there exists  an association between a state in a neoplastic progression and the observed  genetic changes. Like in the<strong> polyp-cancer sequenc</strong>e.    Yet any association between phenomenon A and B has<strong> four interpretations</strong>:<br> 1. A causes B<br> 2. B causes A<br> 3. A third unrelated  phenomenon  causes both.<br> 4. The observed association occurred by chance.<br> <br> What may then be the “not easily visible normal” that is magnified in cancer?<br> There exist in the body some yet  unknown  processes that<strong> directly modify the genome and mutate it</strong>, and these are magnified in cancer.  Currently it is postulated that processes in the body may modify only gene products, and not the genome itself. I believe that <strong>cancer is driven by viruses, and the organism mutates the genome in order to deal with the invader </strong>[3]. We ought to distinguish between two kind  of genetic mutations:  Induced   by a virus,   and by the organism.<br> <br> It is striking that cancer proclaims also an <strong>epistemological message</strong>:  The entire  biological theory rests upon one unproved assumption: The deaf and isolated gene. Now delve into a Gedanken experiment and <strong>rescue the gene from its isolation</strong>. Gone is genetic pre-determinism,  and  reductionist medicine. Farewell to  neo-darwinism  and its new synthesis. What a relief!<br> <br> <strong>References</strong><br> <br> [1] A.  Szent-Györgyi    <a href="http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/WG/Views/Exhibit/narrative/national.html">http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/WG/Views/Exhibit/narrative/national.html</a><br> [2]<a href="NormalPathological.html"> G. Canguilhem  The Normal and the Pathological Zone Books N.Y 1991</a><br> [3]<a href="perniciouscachexia.html"> G. Zajicek  Pernicious Cachexia: A different view of cancer </a> <h4><br> <a href="index.html">Back to index</a>  </h4> </Body></HTML>