Life Within Life

A Cancer Sutra

by

F.G. Pluthero, Phd.

Cancer.

The sight of that word is enough to stir a shiver, especially among people living in modern nations where cancers have become so common that the demand for diagnosis and treatment has overwhelmed health systems. In addition to being terrifying and difficult to detect and treat, cancers are mysterious because unlike infections, parasites and injuries they come from within our own bodies. Most cells become useful components of tissues and physiological systems, but cancerous cells follow developmental paths that lead to abnormality, uselessness and malignancy - a word derived from "badly born" that captures the essence of a cancer as something that starts out bad and has a natural tendency to get worse.

This concept has been applied to other things besides cellular cancers. Indeed the range is so wide - including everything from ideas and individuals to religious sects and political parties - that we seem to live in a world riddled by cancers, or perhaps even in a world that is a cancer, given that a sizeable portion of modern humankind has come to behave as a malignancy bent upon plundering, poisoning, paving over and plowing under the living Earth itself. But beyond the poetry is there anything useful about these metaphorical conceptions of cancer and malignancy? Are there genuine - or at least informative - parallels between the relationships of our cells with our bodies and our relationships with each other and our natural surroundings? If we study cells can we learn something about ourselves, or vice versa? These are the questions that are explored in this book.

Of course before we can approach such questions we need to know what we are talking about. Most of us have heard of cancers, many of us have experienced them and almost everyone has encountered the basic concepts of cancer and malignancy, but is has been my experience as a citizen, cancer researcher, and friend and family member to sufferers that many people are unclear about what cancers really are. This is not anyone's fault, because as the researchers who have been delving into its mysteries for decades have discovered, cancers can be as difficult to comprehend as they are to confront. There are few biological phenomena that touch upon such a wide range of mysteries within the living world, from DNA to embryonic development to solar radiation, and few diseases involve so many aspects of human existence, from the genes we inherit to the foods we eat, the jobs we do and the habits we acquire.

Thus in order to explore and understand cancer, we must explore and understand our cells, our bodies, the living world and the world we have made for ourselves. Fortunately there is already a lot of information available to help us, so much in fact that if you started reading full-time you could not hope to keep up with a small fraction of what is reported each day, let alone dip into what has already been learned. If, however, we stick to the basics and avoid getting bogged down in details, distracted by the latest news or discouraged by things that are often terrifying, baffling, unclear or unknown, there is a lot we can learn from exploring cancer as a disease and as an aspect of the way things are for living things in a living world. That exploration is the essence of this book.

It is an ambitious endeavour to say the least. The exploration of cancer extends from the microcosm of biomolecules, cells, tissues and organs to the macrocosm the living Earth and crosses the intellectual frontiers of disciplines such as molecular biology, physiology, ecology, psychology, sociology, history and philosophy. With so much ground to cover the standard scholarly way of doing things - which involves constructing arguments and supporting them with detailed references, tables, graphs and so on - would require a book of backbreaking size and mind-numbing complexity. So instead what I decided to tell a story, which as it was being written down took on the form of those ancient narratives known as sutras.

The obvious place to start such a narrative would be with cancers themselves, but since we cannot understand them until we appreciate where they come from the story actually begins with the living world, and indeed with the most basic aspects of that world. This may seem to be carrying the notion of first principles a bit far, but the advantage of starting with the very basics is that there is no reason for anyone with a modicum of curiosity, perseverance and intellectual flexibility to be left behind. The journey is not easy by any stretch of the imagination and I fully expect readers to be alternately fascinated, frustrated, challenged, irritated, badgered and baffled, but they should also be rewarded for their efforts with new insights into all sorts of things, and perhaps even a new outlook on the world around them. That is the intention of this book.

Beyond these basics there is not much more that I can say except that the manuscript is around 215,000 words long, has five chapters and no figures, footnotes or references. Its target audience is anyone who is willing to slog through it, and it is as close to the truth as I know or can express it. I have never written anything like it, nor do I know of anyone else who has - but then I've been rather busy for the past few years.