Astro Hacker News - The Contagious Taste of Cancer

lebuffon |next [-]

We have one solid example of cancer caused by members of the HPV family. The disease can be transmitted via body fluids and/or contact. So there's that.

My laymans take: Cancer is a disease of the DNA of a cell. Viruses survive by altering cellular DNA. It begs the question: How many other viruses cause cancer?

It also seems clear to me that the virus may not be the sole cause since not everybody gets cancer so it is a multi-variable problem.

Virus + X = cancer

This will be harder to nail down but with modern data tools we should be able to get there.

Makes me wonder: Is the cancer "industry" searching for causes or just after-the-fact treatment?

maxerickson |root |parent |next [-]

Makes me wonder: Is the cancer "industry" searching for causes or just after-the-fact treatment?

Why brag that you are uninformed?

Some of the more successful interventions for cancer are preventative (for example removing polyps during colonoscopies) and genetic counseling is common.

gww |root |parent |next |previous [-]

There are other examples of oncoviruses including: Epstein-Barr virus and Human herpes virus 8 (Kaposi's Sarcoma).

Makes me wonder: Is the cancer "industry" searching for causes or just after-the-fact treatment?

There are billions of dollars spent on this problem through huge DNA/RNA/Epigenomics/Chromatin Accessibility sequencing initiatives. There is also a huge amount of model system work such as mouse models.

lebuffon |root |parent [-]

That is super news. Thanks for this.

manmal |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Apparently, mitochondria and their (non-repairable) DNA play a big role as well.

idontknowmuch |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Viruses are just another "mutagen". No different from UV causing DNA damage in your skin cells, other than the mechanism in which it occurs. The cause for cancer is well-known and, in hindisght, obvious, which is mutation.

The challenge though is mutations can happen in a plethora of ways and their effect is highly dependent on which gene is mutated. There is also the tissue context, e.g. inflammation, spatial structure, etc., that can setup a background for increased mutation. That is why targeted therapies are often the most effective, because they target the general causative feature of a given tumour subtype, the problem is not every protein can be targeted now and each tumour, even within the same subtype has their own unique mutational profile due to the stochasticity of the way mutations occur over repeated rounds of cell division.

And back to viruses, yes they cause cancer because they can mutate DNA. But it's pretty clear, most of the viral "enriched" cancer types are generally in places where transmission is commonplace, e.g. reproductive organs or head/neck.

renewiltord |root |parent |previous [-]

Why stop there? Perhaps we must recurse our conspiracy theories one level more: what if the faction of the cancer industry that wants after the fact treatment is propagating theories like yours so that they can make the cancer industry seem like all frauds and stop research until proven otherwise. Then they’ll be able to sell their current methods even longer.

Hmm, a disturbing and dangerous thought. But what does that mean for my comment? Who is paying me? What do they want? Will the lizard men of Hippocrates command the subtle ghasts of Papilla to inflict deep and lasting injury to our very souls?

Troubling. We must investigate.

lebuffon |root |parent [-]

People who need to hit their revenue numbers make allocations decisions. That's not a conspiracy. It's what people have to do to keep their jobs in industry. And those decisions affect what gets the resources.

And yes I know that outcomes after detection have improved, but the HPV vaccine shows an alternative that to me deserves more resources.

I am simply frustrated by 60 years of research and lots of dead friends and family. If that's a crime get the tar and feathers while I strip down to my shorts.

airstrike |next |previous [-]

Holy nightmare fuel jumpscare. Why would someone do this but at the same time knowing humans of course someone would do this.

ngruhn |root |parent |next [-]

Newton poked a needle into his eye socket to study the resulting visual distortions. I'd rather lick the cancer juice.

golem14 |root |parent [-]

It was common until fairly recently that physicians would taste a patient’s urine to diagnose diabetes …

maxerickson |root |parent |next |previous [-]

In the case of transmissible diseases like smallpox, controlled exposure ends up being protective. It was widely practiced prior to development of modern vaccines.

Spooky23 |root |parent |previous [-]

People do crazy shit.

Consider yogurt. Some ancient person decided to sample curdled milk in the intestine of a dead sheep, and subsequently figured out how to replicate that experience.

delichon |next |previous [-]

Samuel Smith appears to have been infected by a fatal meme. I am obnoxiously in favor of free speech, but I can't deny ideas can kill in more ways than Chuck Norris.

mapontosevenths |root |parent [-]

It is also possible that he was bound for his deathbed regardless, and confused correlation and causation here. Perhaps his desire to taste other people's cancer was an early symptom of some mental decline that had already started?

Doctors of that era, especially those who weren't too keen on hygiene, probably did not have exceptionally great life-spans.

_qua |next |previous [-]

Some infections cause cancer-like growths or masses though they're not actually cancer. Though off the top of my head none that I would suspect would survive a trip through stomach acid.

M95D |root |parent [-]

You can get HPV directly from the mouth. It doesn't need to get to the stomach. It causes papillomas to appear, which can look like tumors.

Same for herpes virus. It causes ulcerations, but too common and small to be confused with cancer.

mberning |next |previous [-]

It doesn’t seem completely out of the question that he could have received a contagious cancer. There are examples in the animal world. I believe Tasmanian devils spread facial tumors through biting. And I have heard dogs have certain transmissible cancers as well.

mapontosevenths |root |parent |next [-]

It stands to reason in my decidedly non-expert opinion. Many cancer cells have "forgotten" how to differentiate properly. Why should such a cell care if it's in the proper host any more than it cares it's in the proper place within that host?

I am a bit surprised that his own immune cells wouldn't stop it, but if cancer were easy for the immune system to deal with nobody would die of it.

sokols |root |parent [-]

> but if cancer were easy for the immune system to deal with nobody would die of it.

This made me think, whether it would somehow make sense that cancer cells on another host would be detected by the immune system of that host. Theoretically, these immune cells have different “initialization parameters” so to say and maybe they could show affinity to the foreign cancer cells.

But then again I am not an expert and this is just a pure speculation.

golem14 |root |parent [-]

Healthy transplants from other organisms are also attacked…

pfdietz |root |parent |previous [-]

The dog cancer is not fatal though, I understand. The immune system does eventually fight it off.

Tasmanian devils apparently have little genetic diversity so they are more subject to this problem.

inglor_cz |previous [-]

Interestingly, there was a recent interest in a case of a surgeon who scratched himself when operating on a cancer patient, and developed cancer himself at the site of the scratch. The cancer was found to be identical to his patient's.

https://surgery.international/surgeon-diagnosed-with-patient...

The case is fairly old, from 1996. It re-surfaced recently.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199611143352004