If cancer can spread so easily throughout your body, why can’t it spread from person to person? Aka why isn’t it contagious?
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Several great responses. I’ll put it in another way.
Cancer is unregulated cell growth that our bodies don’t recognize as being unregulated. “Unregulated” means cell division and growth that isn’t consistent with our bodies’ tissues that are *supposed* to be there based on the various physiologies throughout our bodies (skin cells, pancreatic cells, liver cells, etc.).
On an ongoing basis, we have lots of unregulated cell growth that pops up, and our immune systems recognize them as foreign cells, and it destroys those cells. Every day. But with cancer, our immune systems don’t recognize the unregulated cells, because they are impostors of our own cells, because they’re similar enough to our own genetic makeup.
So when one person’s cancer cells end up in another person, that person’s body kills them because they’re genetically different enough that the new body knows they’re foreign.
There are exceptions, but that’s generally how it works.
This is why cancer is essentially an immunological condition. It’s more nuanced than that, but it’s a helpful way to think about it.
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