Right now I'm reading
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. While I'm not quite finished yet, I wanted to quickly make note of an interesting paradox that came to me while reading the book:
Cancer cells can reproduce and live forever while normal, healthy human cells cannot. Because normal, healthy cells can only reproduce so many times, we eventually die. Cancer cells could be the key to immortality for human beings. But they kill us.
The whole idea is fascinating to me because it brings forward this concept I've been ruminating on for a long time: when you stray too far from what's natural, no matter how appealing it might seem, it comes back to bite you. This is a key concept of the book I'm writing and a very big mountain in my mind.
Image by Sam Rohn
concerning your paradox...
ReplyDeleteThe human body is a beautiful, ideal communist (or possibly facist) machine: sacrifices made by the individuals to better the survival of the whole. Our cells are programmed to fail. When an accumulation of damage reaches the critical point that the cell becomes a threat to the whole, that cell removes itself.
The survival of the organism is dependent on the cooperation of its parts. A cancer cell is but a rogue that is no more than a parasite. Were single-cellularity a universal advantage to survival, the multicellular organism would not exist. The ability of cells to specialize and assume certain roles, to have boundaries of growth and activity, and to expend its efforts for a few purposes allows for highly modified cellular function.
Muscle cells contain nothing more than velcro-like fibers that contract. Without oxygen from blood cells, muscles fibers would not be able to generate enough usable energy to carry out their function. Without the specialization of the pancreatic beta cells, insulin, muscle cells would not be able import glucose to make that energy. For a muscle fiber to have to express all of the proteins necessary for its growth, development, and function, there would be a spatial sacrifice to the amount of the velcro-like fibers that it houses which would compromise the very purpose of the cell. The human body is the perfect machine composed of specialized parts, without which, would lead to the demise of the system.
Cancer cells don't specialize. Cancer cells don't work for the whole. Cancer seeks to provide for itself and its progeny at the detriment of its host. While they provide a useful model system to study disease, without a commitment to the whole, they bring about the downfall of the entire system.
When considering the whole, there really is no paradox. Rogue cells are threats and cells that follow rules lead to survival. That is why stem cells, which are capable of specialization, prove to be a hope for repair, while cancer cells will never be more than a useful model system.
Cancer cells' "selfishness" and lack of specialization are detrimental to our bodies, but their ability to reproduce forever could be studied and perhaps that ability could be replicated somehow.
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