When somebody dies of cancer, what exactly is the actual reason the body stops working?
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There are a couple of reasons, but the primary reason is normally that an organ system fails to function properly (so organ failure) due to a proliferation of cancer cells. You generally need the organs you have, so if you get lung cancer you die because your lungs aren’t exchanging blood gasses properly.
Imagine you have a car and in order to keep this car running you regularly need to change most of its parts out. A ship of Theseus this imaginary car is. This works great, eventually the factory sends you parts that aren’t quite to spec. They still kind of work, or if they are total failures the other working parts can keep the car running. Two things can happen, the cancer can *spread*, I start getting parts for other components that are malformed. Or, the parts for some vital function start coming to me so badly malformed that they don’t work at all. Or, some unholy combination of both. What is the exact reason for the car to stop working in these conditions? Take your pick. Sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it isn’t.
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