<story><title>How cancer was created by evolution</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160601-is-cancer-inevitable</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>narrator</author><text>These two paragraphs don&amp;#x27;t follow:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Figures like this show that cancer is not only extremely pervasive, but also becoming more and more common. But why will so many people develop the disease at some point in their lives?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The fact that tumours are constantly changing their genetic makeup is one of the reasons why cancers are so hard to &amp;quot;kill&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The article&amp;#x27;s faulty reasoning seems to imply that cancer is more and more common because of evolution.  The scientist&amp;#x27;s work is examining the evolution of a cancer&amp;#x27;s cells since its initial genesis in the patient.  Unless cancer is transmissible between individuals, there is no on-going evolution in cancer that is making it more efficient across the pathology of multiple patients.  Thus, this doesn&amp;#x27;t add much to our knowledge of why cancer is more and more common.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thinkloop</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Figures like this show that cancer is not only extremely pervasive, but also becoming more and more common. But why will so many people develop the disease at some point in their lives?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re right, the article did a bit of trickery here conflating general human evolution, with the main point of the article about cancer&amp;#x27;s isolated evolution within the host. The line that attempts to support this follows:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Large and complicated animals like humans [aka lots of &amp;#x27;evolution&amp;#x27;] are vulnerable to cancer precisely because they are large and complicated&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This claim is not supported by the article, and not the main point - but it&amp;#x27;s also just part of the intro and doesn&amp;#x27;t take away much either, chalk it up to journalistic creativity.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;The fact that tumours are constantly changing their genetic makeup is one of the reasons why cancers are so hard to &amp;quot;kill&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what tfa is all about. In summary:&lt;p&gt;- cancers reproduce&amp;#x2F;evolve within a host optimizing against the body&amp;#x27;s defenses as well as the treatments we provide&lt;p&gt;- our treatments are effective at first, but since the cancer keeps evolving, they are all eventually rendered useless&lt;p&gt;- if the evolution is the problem, what if we try stopping that?&lt;p&gt;And that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;re studying:&lt;p&gt;- find the specific meds that stop a particular cancer by giving them to the patient and seeing if it kills it&lt;p&gt;- as soon as u find them, stop giving them, so that the cancer doesn&amp;#x27;t go into hyper evolution against them&lt;p&gt;- let the cancer grow fat and lazy suffocating itself with a high-proportion of easily killable cells&lt;p&gt;- re-apply the medicine in full force to kill the whole thing</text></comment>
<story><title>How cancer was created by evolution</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160601-is-cancer-inevitable</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>narrator</author><text>These two paragraphs don&amp;#x27;t follow:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Figures like this show that cancer is not only extremely pervasive, but also becoming more and more common. But why will so many people develop the disease at some point in their lives?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The fact that tumours are constantly changing their genetic makeup is one of the reasons why cancers are so hard to &amp;quot;kill&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The article&amp;#x27;s faulty reasoning seems to imply that cancer is more and more common because of evolution.  The scientist&amp;#x27;s work is examining the evolution of a cancer&amp;#x27;s cells since its initial genesis in the patient.  Unless cancer is transmissible between individuals, there is no on-going evolution in cancer that is making it more efficient across the pathology of multiple patients.  Thus, this doesn&amp;#x27;t add much to our knowledge of why cancer is more and more common.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ddebernardy</author><text>The article addresses why it&amp;#x27;s more and more common. Specifically, it suggests our cells haven&amp;#x27;t evolved to live that long, so if you&amp;#x27;re older than 40, then at some point or another your cells will mutate - which may or may not get the attention of your immune system.</text></comment>