Cancer, Evolution, Creation and Genetic Entropy
Cancer is survival of the fittest
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tzu
Nature dictates that in any environment, survival is awarded to those best suited to it. The physical and mental capabilities of any species are determined largely by their DNA. Cancer can also be thought of as abiding by this principle of “survival of the fittest,” a phrase coined based on the work of Charles Darwin.
A cancer survives only by generating cells that are fit enough to grow in the face of the body’s restrictions and the arsenal of cancer-fighting therapies to which we subject it. Another word for a cancer cell is clone. When new cancer cells or clones are generated inside a tumor, some will be hearty enough to survive and others will not be.
The heartiest ones will expand in number until they encounter something that limits their growth, such as a cancer-fighting drug. If some cells survive the treatment, then it is mainly because their DNA contains the necessary alterations that help them resist the drug; this population of cells will then expand, and the composition of the cancer will again change.
Thus, the makeup of a cancer is dynamic, punctuated by periods of growth and periods of dormancy, responsive both to random changes to its DNA and to the changing nature of its environment. This propensity of cancer cells to adapt, just like living species in nature, has been termed “clonal evolution.” Clonal evolution enhances a cancer’s range of abilities and explains a great deal about its behavior.
For example, when a cancer returns after being declared in complete remission, it is because a few cells were different enough to stay alive after a treatment killed nearly all the other cells; this difference could have been present from the start of treatment or it could have developed as a response to it. Whichever occurred, it is cancer’s ability to diversify and adapt its DNA that enables it to survive. We can now answer the essential questions posed above: it is by virtue of cancer’s propensity to change-changing DNA, leading to cells with new abilities-that a polyp goes through its cancer sequence and that any cancer first develops and then behaves the way it does in the body.
