Comment by ulbu
21 hours ago
evolution is a wrong concept to approach it. cancer is not a separate life form, but a bug in the regeneration system of a complicated life form. it doesn’t exist outside of it, it cannot propagate.
21 hours ago
evolution is a wrong concept to approach it. cancer is not a separate life form, but a bug in the regeneration system of a complicated life form. it doesn’t exist outside of it, it cannot propagate.
Cancer researchers generally refer to it as evolution, and I've never heard any complaints from the population geneticists or evo-devo folks about it, so I don't think it's a tremendously controversial way to talk about it. See for example
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1907-7
You might want to read this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
the single celled dog might beg to differ.
sometimes a cancer can then survive on its own back as a single celled organism
I've heard that some cancers spread by viruses. Viruses do evolve. No idea if that says anything about cancer evolving.