Comment by hinkley

A cancer is necessarily a line of cells that survived despite the mechanisms that should prevent it from surviving. It's evolution in a way - genotype a sequence of random mutations and environmental factors away from the original that allows the cell line to sidestep the immune system. Coincidentally the immune system based off of the same original genotype. The ones that don't survive are not causing cancer.

We already culture and DNA test cancers. Sometimes we can point at a secondary tumor and say "it came from this primary tumor". And we already know viral and bacterial infections can increase the likelihood of people getting malignant tumorws.

Most scientists wouldn't call the hallmarks of cancer "evolution". I think instead most would say that cancer is an almost certainly unavoidable outcome of the complexity of eukaryotic organism's control of cellular replication.

There's a series of papers organized around the "Hallmarks of Cancer" which help explain why nearly all tumors show the same properties- and how they are effectively due to dysregulation of evolutionary checkpoints and signalling. generally, an organism with a malignant tumor is less likely to reproduce. However, it's really far more complex than that ,

You're right, DNA damage is just one of the types of genetic variation in cancer. There are many other structural variations that act like remixes.

"Maybe we need to start culturing and DNA testing cancers." I assure you this is being done at a massive scale.

Due to cellular stress, cancer cells disobey multi-cellular governance. They behave more like independent organisms fighting for survival, reverting to primal programming.

To provide more color on cancers caused by viruses, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 9.9% of all cancers are attributable to viruses [1].

Cancers with established viral etiology or strong association with viruses include:

- Cervical cancer - Burkitt lymphoma - Hodgkin lymphoma - Gastric carcinoma - Kaposi’s sarcoma - Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) - NK/T-cell lymphomas - Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) - Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8831861

>Tumors excreting chemicals to prevent destruction doesn’t sound like DNA damage, that sounds like evolution.

One cell's DNA damage is another cell's evolution.

> ulcers are bacter

To be clear, some peptic ulcers are caused by H. pylori, but not all ulcers.

They do genetically sequence cancers today, at least looking for specific markers.

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