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Rafe.Furst
Rafe.Furst
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Rafe.Furst Popular Writing 2 May 28 2008, 10:03 PM EDT by cmaley
Thread started: Apr 6 2008, 2:09 PM EDT  Watch
Harper's Magazine just ran a piece which as far as I know is the biggest layman/mainstream exposition of the notion that cancer is an evolutionary process. See the "Contagious Cancer" link on the new page called Popular Writing. It references the Nature review article written by several of the members of this group and details how they came together to write it.

I think this is a very positive development. Although we would like to think that science relies on the empirical and on logical argument, it would be naive to think that popular opinion doesn't have a large influence on which scientists' voices are heard, who gets funding, and ultimately who ends up getting the respect of their peers. Before Taleb wrote Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan he was tilting at windmills trying to get academics and finance gurus to see the truth. Now, he's invited to speak around the world and is taken very seriously.
While it's a crap shoot create a bestseller, the more popular we can make the memes that exist in this forum and around your research labs, the more likely funding and attention will confer to your work.

I encourage you all to write popular pieces, speak to popular press, and even go for that NYT bestseller. It is time and energy well spent.
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Rafe.Furst Evolving towards contagion 0 Apr 6 2008, 2:31 PM EDT by Rafe.Furst
Thread started: Apr 6 2008, 2:31 PM EDT  Watch
The Contagious Cancer article touches on a nagging worry I have regarding the treatment of cancer and the ultimate goal of cure. That is, by providing selective pressure in treatment, don't we increase the likelihood of creating contagious strains of human tumor? If it can happen in Tasmanian devils, and given the existence proofs of human transmission discussed in the article, is it that far of a stretch?

The more treatment of cancerous activity around the world, and the more aggressive/effective that treatment (without completely eradicating the underlying genetic/genomic instability within the patient), the more likely that forms will evolve that can be transmitted more easily. There of course would exist the same compensatory dynamic between transmission rate and lethality that exists in viral and bacterial contagion. However, any amount of unintended or casual transmission of cancer between humans would not be good on many different levels.

Thoughts?
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