Life Breaks Free
"If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously." -Dr. Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park
That's the quote that came to mind when I read the story about infectious cancer in Tasmanian devils from The New York Times. It's about a cell that became "malignant" and then set out on its own to be parasitic on others of the species. So far, only one similar case has been found - that of canine transmissible venereal tumor in dogs. But then, how long have researchers been looking for cells that left the multicellular super organism of which they were once a part to set up shop and find a new way of growing and propagating?
The dogmatic view that chronic diseases like cancer must be due to chemicals or behavior is now yielding to an older view that many of our woes are instead due to a nature red in tooth and claw.
