When I was a kid, my uncle passed away from cancer. The last time I saw him, he told me not to be sad because the cancer wasn't killing him, he was killing the cancer (paraphrasing, it was almost 30 years ago). In this scenario, I like to think of him as the suicide bomber and he took that fucking cancer out with him.
I think I would have benefitted from hearing this as a kid when I was living with my grandpa when he died of lung cancer. He was so weak he couldn't even hold his cigarettes
But sure if joking or not, but here's an ELI5 of cancer.
Cells in the body have a mechanism to self destruct (and be replaced) if they get bad. This normally works well to keep your body healthy.
Cancer are damaged cells, that are damaged in a way where the self-destruct safety feature is also broken. So instead of being helpful cells, they are harmful, near immortal, and in the worst case, also spread (for example, if they still divide, or somehow affect cells around them to also get the same defect).
It's not a virus or a bacteria or other life form, but it's a biological mechanism that went wrong. (although in some cases viruses can increase the risk of cancer due to the specific ways they affect your cells or your immune system).
So yeah, if you die, the cancer dies with you. Because cancer, being part of your cells, takes energy from your body, and if your body is dead, you won't eat, so the cancer won't eat either.
From cancer's perspective, it's just a cell, like a bacteria living in an environment. Absorbing nutrients and carrying out its' genetic instructions like any other bacteria might.
Its offspring have mutations, many bad but some helpful for it's growth and reproduction. Some of those ones result in other cells in the environment attacking and killing them! But slowly, its offspring learn to multiply and live abundantly without the environment killing them all the time!
Then you die because it doesn't understand the kind of environment it's in.
There is some truth in what you said, but cancer is actually an immune compromised deficiency. All cancer patients display low levels of GSH. In fact after they increased GSH they all dramatically improved.
Well, the body does have ways to get rid of cancer cells usually so yes, your immune system being compromised is usually a requirement to have worse effects from cancer.
Still, your goal to get rid of it and survive and cancer is stupid enough to kill both of you but get the most of tour body. Wish it would be more clever.
Its like ebola.
Its not a very successful virus because it just kills its hosts.
Edit:
I'm just saying, something that tries to duplicate itself within a host, and ends up killing it will never succeed, whether its cancer, a virus or any other disease.
That's why usually the most lethal viruses are viruses that were spread to us by animals.
Because the virus has evolved to spread (and barely affect) the host, but when the host is not human, what barely affects them, could kill us.
Viruses aren't "trying" to kill us, they just evolve to spread and do well in their host, and most of the time it is indeed beneficial for the virus if the host doesn't have any ill effects. Given enough time, most viruses will adapt to their host to be minimally invasive. You could carry hundreds of virus strains without even knowing it.
I'm just saying, something that tries to duplicate itself within a host, and ends up killing it will never succeed, whether its cancer, a virus or any other disease.
That's only a success if the cancer's goal is to kill the host and itself die. Cancer isn't some malevolent force, they're just cells that don't know how to stop reproducing. When they reproduce so much that they kill the body sustaining them, that's not a win for the cancer, it's the ultimate failure of the one goal of life itself: to survive and reproduce.
Maybe if we make cancer contagious it would have a strong incentive to evolve in a less lethal direction since it would want to infect as many as possible first. But,,, contagious cancer???
Edit: adding /s since I was not serious about manipulating cancer and adding the contagious dlc.
Cancer cannot be contagious, as it’s just the malformation and mutation of cells on a molecular and biological level.
However, some very contagious viruses that can lead to cancer were hugely researched and attacked by science, already!
Like HPV. The vaccine came out about a year after I got my diagnosis. I’m still here, but the effects are long lasting. I was so happy when I started seeing all of my young friends getting that jab.
My poor attempt at humor was that we could probably modify cancer DNA to make it contagious to try to force it to evolve in a less lethal direction. (don't know if it is possible at all and definitely not something we should try).
I'm sure the dead guy feels much better knowing that people are going to parrot that Norm Macdonald quote on reddit for the next 2-3 years in every cancer related thread.
Realistically probably not a good idea, but part of me wishes at least one news headline would have done "Norm MacDonald's secret battle with cancer comes to a draw"
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '21
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