Is there a purpose to a cancer cell?
In: Biology
Cancer cells don’t have a ‘purpose’ in the same sense that viruses do. Technically, a virus isn’t ‘meant’ or ‘want’ to do anything–but viruses are more successful the more contagious they are. A virus that isn’t very contagious and kills people very quickly won’t spread as much and won’t be as common. Where as a virus that is contagious and doesn’t kill the host, or infects them for a long period of time, will have more opportunities to spread and persist in the environment. Viruses that aren’t very contagious or viruses that kill people quickly don’t have as many opportunities to spread and are not as common though epidemics do sometimes occur.
Cancer cells don’t experience these same kinds of selection factors. A cancer cell is one that has accumulated a series of mutations that lets it grow uncontrolled. Normally, your cells are very tightly regulated. However, if you live long enough they will accumulate enough genetic damage from carcinogens (cigarette smoke, radiation, etc) or from errors during cell replication. Eventually, these errors will allow cells will acquire the ability to grow out of control and also evade your body’s defenses which prevent that from happening. Since cancers A) are based on a series of chance events and B) often occur in older age (i.e. after you’ve produced children), evolution and natural selection often fail to weed people out with tendency towards cancer.
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