Cancer Resembles Life 1 Billion Years Ago 223
An anonymous reader writes "What is cancer? It's not an invader; it's spawned from our own bodies. And it bears striking resemblance to early multicellular life from 1 billion years ago. This has led astrobiologists and cosmologists Paul Davies and Charlie Lineweaver to suggest that cancer is driven by primitive genes that govern cellular cooperation (abstract), and which kick in when our more recently evolved genes that keep them in check break down. So, far from being rogue cells that mutate out of control, cancers are actually cells that revert to a more ancient level of programming, like booting in Safe Mode. The good news is this means cancers have only finite variation. Once we figure out the ancient genes, we'll know how it works. It's unlikely to evolve any new defense mechanisms, meaning curing cancer might be not quite as mammoth a task as commonly thought."
For the love of god, give it a rest (Score:2, Funny)
booting in Safe Mode.
Is it possible for you people to wipe your butts without using some half-assed, fallacious computer analogy? Is this all the bazaar has done for you?
safe mode? (Score:5, Funny)
given that this article postulates that cancer cells have apparently been the default mode of cellular division for perhaps billions of years, and personal computers have only been around for 30 years, it would be more appropriate to say you sometimes need to boot your computer into cancer mode. that's a more appropriate analogy
Definition of Life and Cancer (Score:5, Funny)
Cancer: When some of the 4 billion cells decide to form a 'tea party'.