{"id":81186,"date":"2022-11-03T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=81186"},"modified":"2022-11-10T17:09:05","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T21:09:05","slug":"atavistic-theory-of-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/atavistic-theory-of-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Atavistic Theory of Cancer: A Turning Point?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is the Atavistic Theory of cancer? How does the Atavistic Theory <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/cancer-explained\/\">explain cancer<\/a> prevalence? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the Atavistic Theory, cancer results from the re-emergence of traits from the earliest single-celled organisms, caused by evolutionary pressure from carcinogens. Atavism explains why cancer can be found in nearly every animal species on Earth: It\u2019s because the traits of cancer come from our oldest common ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep reading to learn about the Atavistic Theory of cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-cancer-as-atavism\"><strong>Cancer as Atavism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In his book <em>The Cancer Code<\/em>, Jason Fung presents a newer hypothesis about cancer. This model was not proposed by a biologist, but by physicist Paul Davies, whom the National Cancer Institute reached out to in 2009 in the hope that an outsider\u2019s viewpoint could provide some new insights about cancer.\u00a0Specifically, Davies proposed that cancer is an atavism: an evolutionary throwback in which ancestral traits re-emerge in modern organisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To support this idea of cancer-as-atavism, Fung points out that cancer cells act like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/simple-organisms\/\">simple organisms<\/a>: They grow, feed, reproduce, and evolve. Therefore, rather than the concept of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-is-random-mutation\/\">random mutations<\/a> causing cells to run wild, this hypothesis says that <strong>cancer\u2019s behavior is actually extremely logical and focused on survival; not the survival of the host, but of the cancerous \u201corganism.\u201d<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: At the beginning of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/the-selfish-gene\"><em>The Selfish Gene<\/em><\/a>, Dawkins gives a biologist\u2019s answer to the age-old question of why life exists: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/the-selfish-gene\/chapters-1-2#why-does-life-exist\">to survive and reproduce<\/a>. Model 3 is suggesting that\u2019s exactly what cancerous cells are doing\u2014surviving and reproducing by any means necessary. That\u2019s why Fung says they behave like organisms.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Furthermore, genetic evidence for this theory in addition to the behavioral evidence\u2014mutations in cancerous cells are most likely to affect those genes that evolved shortly after the first multicellular organisms emerged, <strong>effectively reverting them to the genes of single-celled organisms.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: The human genome contains an incredible amount of what, until recently, scientists called \u201cjunk DNA\u201d\u2014genetic material that doesn\u2019t seem to serve any purpose. While we\u2019ve recently discovered that some of this DNA does serve a purpose within the body, that \u201cjunk\u201d also includes <em>pseudogenes<\/em>, which scientists believe are essentially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/the-complex-truth-about-junk-dna-20210901\/#comments:~:text=One%20category%20of%20noncoding%20DNA%20that%20intrigues%20many%20scientists%20these%20days%20is%20the%20pseudogenes%2C\">evolutionary leftovers<\/a>. In other words, pseudogenes are broken or suppressed copies of genes that our ancestors carried. Model 3, cancer-as-atavism, could mean that some of those suppressed genes are reactivating.)&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, malignant cells didn\u2019t need to evolve cancerous traits from scratch, because the genes for the traits were already in their DNA.<strong> <\/strong>The cells just needed to evolve (or devolve) in such a way that those genes reactivated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fung says that the model of cancer as an evolving species solves the two major shortcomings of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/somatic-mutation-theory-of-cancer\/\">somatic mutation theory<\/a>.<strong> <\/strong>First, cancer does <em>not <\/em>spring up at random\u2014the elements of cancer are already present in our DNA, so all the cell needs to become malignant is for those genes to reactivate. This provides a much more satisfactory answer to cancer\u2019s prevalence than random chance could.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Second, the atavistic model reveals that genetically-targeted treatments are mostly ineffective because of cancer\u2019s genetic variation. <\/strong>After turning cancerous, cells continue to divide and mutate extremely quickly, meaning that even cancerous cells within a single patient can have countless different genetic traits. So, while a targeted treatment will kill many of the malignant cells, it\u2019s very likely that some will be resistant to it. <strong>Even worse, those surviving cells will continue to reproduce, meaning that cancer can evolve to resist any given treatment.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore, to cure a patient and avoid relapse, doctors must either find and target the root mutation\u2014the original genetic change that all the cancer cells share\u2014or use a battery of different treatments to ensure that every malignant cell is destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Counterpoint: The Atavistic Theory of Cancer Isn\u2019t Totally New<\/strong><br><br>To pose a partial counterpoint to Fung, doctors have known for decades that not all cancer cells respond to treatment the same way and that multiple treatment methods are much more effective than any single targeted treatment.&nbsp;<br><br>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/the-emperor-of-all-maladies\"><em>The Emperor of All Maladies<\/em><\/a>, Mukherjee describes a number of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/the-emperor-of-all-maladies\/1-page-summary#1950-2010\">advancements in treatment<\/a> that took place in the 1950s and early 1960s. Doctors found that using cocktails of multiple chemotherapy drugs worked significantly better than any single drug and that using radiation therapy in conjunction with chemotherapy further increased the treatment\u2019s effectiveness. They also found that, for a patient to be truly cured without relapsing, every trace of cancer had to be wiped from that patient\u2019s body.&nbsp;<br><br>So while doctors might not have been thinking of cancer as its own species, they certainly knew that it had genetic variation, as well as the ability to reproduce and adapt, and they treated the disease accordingly.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the Atavistic Theory of cancer? How does the Atavistic Theory explain cancer prevalence? According to the Atavistic Theory, cancer results from the re-emergence of traits from the earliest single-celled organisms, caused by evolutionary pressure from carcinogens. Atavism explains why cancer can be found in nearly every animal species on Earth: It\u2019s because the traits of cancer come from our oldest common ancestors. Keep reading to learn about the Atavistic Theory of cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":65835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,160],"tags":[769],"class_list":["post-81186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-science","tag-the-cancer-code","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Atavistic Theory of Cancer: A Turning Point? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"According to the Atavistic Theory, cancer is an evolutionary throwback in which ancestral traits re-emerge in modern organisms. Learn more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/atavistic-theory-of-cancer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Atavistic Theory of Cancer: A Turning Point?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to the Atavistic Theory, cancer is an evolutionary throwback in which ancestral traits re-emerge in modern organisms. 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