A big “defense” cancer has is that it *is* you. They are your cells, just growing in a way that screws things up for the whole body. It’s way easier to have an immune response for something that is not you. (This is why organ transplants are so hard, your immune system detects a foreign object and tries to destroy it.) So it’s pretty easy for your body to see a foreign cancer and destroy it, just because it’s foreign.
There are cases where a species has very little genetic diversity, and that can lead to contagious cancers. A famous example is the “tasmanian devil” with a specific contagious facial tumor.
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