YOU WANT DATA? OKAY,I'll GIVE YOU DATA!

                                                        

One of the first people I contacted about my-then poorly thought-out idea that cancer had played a significant role in the evolu­tion of complex animals was a former colleague of mine. Don (as I=ll call him) and I had both been executives at a major multina­tional corporation. My responsibilities were in the headquarters financial department and Don, who had a doctorate in pharmacol­ogy, was in charge of several pharmaceutical laboratories. The first thing Don said after he had read my brief draft was AYou don=t have any data.@

If he asked me that question today I would respond, ADon, I shaved my data=s face this morning@.

My idea, from the beginning, was intended to correct a woefully inadequate theory of evolution, one that failed in its off-proclaimed and always implied purpose: to explain the existence of humans and other complex animals.

A revealing exchange of emails

A couple of years ago I came across a comment made on line by an American university professor who teaches evolutionary biology that suggested he might be receptive to my idea linking cancer with the evolution of complex animals.

As has been my practice in recent years, I sent Professor X a complimentary copy of Cancer Selection. I don’t usually attempt further contact with recipients of my gift books, but in this case I did send him an email, a few months after I had sent him the book.

In response to something Professor X had posted on line I reminded Professor X that I had sent him a book and tried to elicit a positive response by including in the body of my email the argument I make in Chapter Five but using a slightly different approach. It is identical to the approach I later used in my 2011 talk to researchers at UCSF.

Here’s the argument I made in the email to Professor X: I claimed that there are certain “mega facts” regarding the history of Bilaterians, facts that all evolutionist would consider indisputable, facts that demand a mechanistic explanation, one not offered by accepted theory.

Fact 1. No Bilaterian animal that bred died as a juvenile. This is a tautological certainty: juveniles, by definition, cannot engage in the reproductive act, therefore all animals that engaged in reproduction lived long enough to reach adulthood.

Google Scholar counts my citations

According to Google Scholar's new feature the combined total of citations of my book and my two JTB Letters is now twenty-two.

Sleep: Post-Publication Confirmations?

As I explained in my UCSF talk (see my December 2 posting for access) my original guess that animal sleep was (among other things) an anti-cancer adaptation seemed to be confirmed by an earlier experiment with mice who, apparently, are programmed to undertake routine mitosis during sunlight hours, when those (nocturnal) animals are most likely sleeping in their burrows.

In Cancer Selection after explaining (on page 103) why I was convinced that sleep plays an important anti-cancer role I wrote -- in 1991-- on page 143: "Future discoveries of increased immune activity ... during sleep would support my theory."

A search today at Google Scholar (which did not exist until 2004) for "sleep + 'immune system'" yields a number of  papers linking the two.

It is possible, of course, that the concurrence of sleep, routine mitosis and immune activity all happening during hours when exposure to natural UV radiation is at a diurnal low point is unrelated to cancer.

L'esprit de l'avion

Near the end of my talk at UCSF (see my December 1st posting) one of the researchers introduced the matter of the proximate cause of death. He seemed to reject my (very conventional) view that cancer cells caused death by interfering with the function of vital organs, e.g., the liver. Another participant said many cancer patients die as a result of a cytokine storm or sepsis.

What I should have said was that as an evolutionary theorist I had no interest in how cancer victims died, merely that juveniles with cancer died -- of any proximate cause -- while still juveniles. For example, if a young African gazelle, physically impaired by leukemia, is killed by a predator, then its death has the same impact on the composition of its gene pool as it would if the leukemia had directly caused its death.

There are no certified pathologists performing gatekeeper duties for gene pools. The genes of animals with genetic defects leading to juvenile cancer are eliminated as long as the animal dies -- from any cause -- before it reaches the reproductive age.

(The French expression "L'esprit de l'escalier" usually translated as "staircase wit" refers to a person's thinking of a witty response to a dinner table conversation only as he departs the host's flat. Because I only thought of this response while flying home to the East Coast I've altered the French for my title.)