well, you can always draw a straight line between two points, but we've got carl zimmer on cancer in whales (or lack of) and the prevalence of a transmissible form of face cancer in tasmanian devils - surely the only case outside dogs, and possibly Henrietta Lacks.*
speaking of which, i might as well throw adam curtis' documentary about HeLa cells because it's brilliant, real *must watch* stuff.
I just think it's fascinating that we've got those two extremes out there at the moment - whales with their inexplicably low rate of cancer, and devils with a form of cancer so virulent that it's threatening their whole species. the killer quote: "Tasmanian devils are so genetically similar to one another that their immune systems don’t recognize infectious cancer cells from another individual as foreign"
i suppose it humbles me, how much we have yet to learn.
anyway, here's cancer: the musical, because mansun say it better than i ever could.
*edit: apparently, syrian hamsters too. surprised that the wikipedia article hasn't picked up on hela cells - while they were not transmissible to other humans, they seemed awfully virulent.
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