This is only sort of true, skeptical. The most direct cause of cancer is DNA damage. This damage is occurring on a daily basis. Viruses and environmental exposure are the causes of such damage. Normally, one of three things happens to a cell with DNA damage. Either (1) the DNA damage is automatically repaired by the cell before it is warped further, or (2) that cell is destroyed by your immune system because it is recognized as a mutant or foreign, or (3) the cell undergoes apoptosis: programmed cell death. That is what normally happens. But sometimes, when too much DNA damage occurs and the cell mutates in a way that makes it reproduce rapidly, cancer takes place. Your immune system can fight a tumor for years. The abnormal cells are destroyed in the bloodstream and it can remain rather localized. We call it cancerous when the damaged cells "evolve" to a point where they stop producing the antigen that allows their body to recognize it as abnormal. Then the cell proliferates uncontrollably. The reason older people have cancer more is that cumatively, more irreversible DNA damage has occurred in their cells over time. However, age itself does not cause the DNA damage that results in cancer. Age is just a risk factor for cancer, not the etiology.
See the section of your post that i bolded. The body has ways of fighting it but theres only so much that can be done in that way and really if you know the body has a method to fight it on its own then you should know that its part of the changes that take place inside the human body itself. We ahve made great strides in heart medications and dealing with problems relating to the heart but one or the other will do you in and normally most people die from heart failure before the other. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/05/science/la-sci-cancer-20100505
What are you saying? Can you restate that a little more clearly? Is what you are saying because the body has a method of fighting something, then the something is caused by the body itself? That doesn't make sense, john. Your body can fight a viral infection too, but your body is not infecting itself.
Actually what i am saying is that since your body has means to fight cancer due it manufacturing agents that fight it then it would be logical to conclude that cancer is just part of life and its the part that kills you. Just like a virus and bacteria have been around forever.
Okay, so to put it another way, you have nothing to say in regard to what causes cancer because you think it's as normal a part of life as gray hair. Is that how you feel about HIV too? Can you remind everybody why you are still on this forum, when you have nothing scientific to contribute, ever?
Dont misunderstand me because i am environmentally conscious person and desire to keep nature as pristine as possible. In relation to the link i posted: Chemicals are actually natural and not comprised of foreign substances. Everyhting relating to chemicals occurs naturally right here on Earth. Its funny because life is actually remarkably resilient or some would say pervasive or tenacious.
Actually, most chemicals are foreign to the human body. Our cells do not manufacture diamond, even though we have a lot of carbon in us. In the meantime, we know that inhaled tobacco smoke is a huge environmental risk factor for a lot of diseases. Our bodies are not naturally adapted to its intake, or why would it contribute to development of lung and throat cancer or COPD the way it does? Time to get your mind out of the toilet, john. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Its all relative to what you can understand. This discussion came up here before and the mod of the science section (Hercules Rockefeller) agrees with what i said here but if he shows up you can ask him because that is from what i remember and i have a good memory.
That person is not the moderator of this sub-forum and if he believes in what you are saying, then he is wrong. In pathophysiology, age is considered a risk factor for cancer, not an etiology.
Because will, at what point does a substance become toxic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication Also the human body is most susceptible to catastrophic failure. I think the link above bears this out.
Eithe define "completely foreign" or let's put it to the test. Where is there any diamond in your body? In what way is that chemical not foreign? Why do we exhibit an immune response at all? Why is that if we tried to transplant a cow stomach into you, your body would attack it? Could it be because it is foreign?
Completely foreign, in this sense, is something not expected to ever come into contact with a human. The only things that we can say this is true for would be something not from this earth and even then we dont know for sure. Because there is a good chance that is not the case too.
But you said "everything relating to chemicals occurs naturally right here on Earth." There are elements that do not occur in nature at all.
Like what? A cake is comprised of ingredients, if you look at a finished cake it does not look like a pile of sugar BUT that pile of sugar went into making the cake. Understand that?
Elements 95 through 118 do not occur on Earth naturally, john. They are derived synthetically. That is 24 known elements that have not occurred outside of a laboratory or if they did, they occurred somewhere else in the universe.
They aren't from google. They are from my chemistry book from way back in college. Try opening one up some time. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You can find their names in an online periodic table, if you want.
Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Berkelium, Californium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Mendelevium, Nobelium, Lawrencium, Rutherfordium, Dubnium, Seaborgium, Bohrium, Hassium, Meitnerium, Darmstadtium, Roentgenium, Copernicium, Ununtrium, Ununquadium, Ununpentium, Ununhexium, Ununseptium and Ununoctium. Apparently they either got tired of being creative, or ran out of names of famous scientists. No Feynmanium or Hawkingium. Somewhere where the conditions that we had to create in a laboratory occur in nature. That would be one scary place.
