A fresh View of Cancer - Cancer is not a genetic disease<-title>
A fresh look at cancer
The fallacy of the genetic explanation of cancer
Abstract
Biological theory rests on one unproved assumption:
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.
Change this assumption and the biological dogma falls apart.
According to my hypothesis, during cancer progression the organism actively manipulates genes.
I am spellbound by two great minds, Albert Szent-Györgyi and Georges Canguilhem.
Albert Szent-Györgyi 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.
Gerorges Canguillem wrote [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.
What is then the normal which cancer proclaims and magnifies? And what ought to be re-shuffled?
Despite the wealth of information about cancer, our interpretation of the cancer phenomenon rests upon one assumption 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.
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 polyp-cancer sequence. Yet any association between phenomenon A and B has four interpretations:
1. A causes B
2. B causes A
3. A third unrelated phenomenon causes both.
4. The observed association occurred by chance.
What may then be the “not easily visible normal” that is magnified in cancer?
There exist in the body some yet unknown processes that directly modify the genome and mutate it, 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 cancer is driven by viruses, and the organism mutates the genome in order to deal with the invader [3]. We ought to distinguish between two kind of genetic mutations: Induced by a virus, and by the organism.
It is striking that cancer proclaims also an epistemological message: The entire biological theory rests upon one unproved assumption: The deaf and isolated gene. Now delve into a Gedanken experiment and rescue the gene from its isolation. Gone is genetic pre-determinism, and reductionist medicine. Farewell to neo-darwinism and its new synthesis. What a relief!
References
[1] A. Szent-Györgyi http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/WG/Views/Exhibit/narrative/national.html
[2] G. Canguilhem The Normal and the Pathological Zone Books N.Y 1991
[3] G. Zajicek Pernicious Cachexia: A different view of cancer