Is Cancer A New Parasite Species?

According to a new scientific paper, cancer might actually be a newly evolved species of parasite based on the fact that the cells depend on their hosts for food, but otherwise act independently and to the detriment of their host.
Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues believe that carcinogenesis—the generation of cancer—is just another form of speciation, the evolution of new species.

“Cancer is comparable to a bacterial level of complexity, but still autonomous, that is, it doesn’t depend on other cells for survival; it doesn’t follow orders like other cells in the body, and it can grow where, when and how it likes,” said Duesberg in a UC Berkeley press release. “That’s what species are all about...Once a cell has crossed that barrier of autonomy, it’s a new species."

Researchers are hopeful that if this is true, the species might be defeated if we continue to force them to rapidly evolve through the use of increasingly powerful medicines. What do you think, is it a parasitic species or a disease?

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I have prostate cancer in me now. I guess it could be considered a separate species of parasite. Unlike the bacteria that I host, it does contain my DNA. Still it is an interesting idea.
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What if cancer evolved as a way to decrease the number of older, non-breeding, non-working members of the species? Other diseases which occur mainly in the elderly may serve the same function. Of course, I still want to be treated when I get sick!
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I have often talked with people about how I thought cancer might be some sort of intelligent alien parasite.
It has it's own protective instincts. If it's attacked (surgically, for example) how often do you find that it has suddenly shot off into other parts of the body when it wasn't there before? It has a survival instinct, IMO.
If it's small enough to have the entire thing removed then the success rate for humans is great. If it can be 'attacked' with, say, irradiation pellets or freezing the entire mass (if possible) then it doesn't seem to spread so rapidly (if at all).
I have no facts to hold up my theory. Just have seen too many people die very, very quickly if they have had cancer surgery. Where it was once contained in one area it's now gone off to other parts of the body.
Centuries ago people who had cancer lived for decades before they died if no one operated on them. Just sayin', that's all...
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What nonsense.

"is just another form of speciation"

Yeah, that's why we often see people walking along with a giraffe growing out of their liver - it's that whole other form of speciation.

Duesberg is a major flake (doesn't believe that AIDS is caused by HIV - also isn't a big fan of peer review), proving that even a PhD from Frankfurt and tenure at Berkeley doesn't gurantee results.
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@sandyra: Ooooh, interesting theory!

I'd been reading Cliff Pickover's "Surfing Through Hyperspace", and he was describing how, if a four-dimensional being poked it's "finger" into our world, it would appear as a shapeless, fleshy blob changing in size, similar to how if we poked a finger into Flatland, it would appear as a disc changing in diameter.
I kept thinking, "Hmmm, tumors are shapeless fleshy blobs that can change size rapidly..."
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"Centuries ago people who had cancer lived for decades before they died if no one operated on them."

And what grocery store tabloid did you read that from?
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@ whitcwa

Correct me if I'm wrong but evolution doesn't work that way. It's basically survival of the fittest. Every living organism is in perpetual competition with every other living organism. Random mutations create different variations, the variations that out-compete the competition survive.
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Or in other words: there is no purpose or goal behind it. It may look like there is, but there isn't. It may have the effect that you described, but that would just be a coincidental consequence.
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