HOW EVOLUTION HELPS US UNDERSTAND AND TREAT CANCER

 

ATHENA AKTIPIS

"The Cheating Cell is a fascinating book on a subject that’s gaining the prominence it deserves: cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon. Athena Aktipis works in the heart of this field and she deftly illuminates the subject for both scientists and general readers. The implications—for cancer treatment and for the understanding of our existence as multicellular creatures—are huge.”

—David Quammen, author of The Tangled Tree

"The Cheating Cell is an instant classic—a book that will transform how physicians and their patients understand cancer, how investigators develop therapies, and how we as a society can work together to reduce the global burden of this disease. Masterful, powerful, and absolutely essential reading for anyone who truly wants to understand the nature of cancer, The Cheating Cell is a tour de force."

—Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, MD, coauthor of Zoobiquity

"This wise, erudite, and engaging book will change how we think about cancer and life itself. Brilliantly illuminating how cancer is a form of evolution gone awry within our bodies, Athena Aktipis shows that we need an evolutionary approach to not only fight the disease but also live with it."

—Daniel E. Lieberman, author of The Story of the Human Body

"This insightful and long-overdue book views cancer as a disease that results from the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of all multicellular organisms, from birth to death. Athena Aktipis does a masterful job of capturing the many threads of evolution and evolutionary theory that promise to enable a fundamental understanding of cancer and portend a new era of innovative prevention and treatment strategies."

—Anna D. Barker, Arizona State University and former deputy director of the National Cancer Institute

"Cancer is more than a source of dread and tragedy—it is entwined with the nature of life and the forces that shaped it. Athena Aktipis has thought deeply about evolution and cancer, and provides an engaging and insightful explanation of why we are cursed with this malady."

—Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now

"Trying to keep cheating cells at bay is a problem that connects humans, elephants, Tasmanian devils, and cacti alike. In The Cheating Cell, Athena Aktipis uses clear explanations and riveting examples to show how viewing cancer through an ecological and evolutionary lens allows us to better understand the disease, and can lead to more effective ways of lengthening lifespans in our ongoing battle with this most ancient of foes."

—Kelly Weinersmith, coauthor of Soonish

"Aktipis takes an evolutionary approach to cancer, tracing the ways cells ‘cheat’ natural selection and showing how the human body evolved to outsmart many of those threats. She invites readers to put themselves in the role of a cancer cell and learn about the ways in which the disease and the history of human existence are intertangled."

—Erin Blakemore, Washington Post

"The one book to read for a true understanding of cancer and its control."

—David Sloan Wilson, author of This View of Life

"The Cheating Cell makes for fascinating reading and forces a radical reconsideration of what cancer is and how we should deal with it."

—Leon Vlieger, The Inquisitive Biologist

"The Cheating Cell turned my understanding of cancer on its head and you should read it."

—Hank Green, author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

I wanted to write a book about cancer that was more than just an academic summary of cancer; I wanted to show how cancer is fundamentally tied into who we are as multicellular life forms, and to explain how our ability to treat cancer effectively is based on our understanding of the evolutionary and ecological dynamics underlying it. Really, I wanted to write an epic story about what cancer is, how it emerged during the origins of multicellular life, and how we can use evolutionary and ecological approaches to better prevent and treat cancer. It was also very important to me to write a book that would be accessible to a broad audience without sacrificing scientific rigor.

The Cheating Cell is a book about a new way of looking at cancer. It is about the fundamental evolutionary and ecological underpinnings of the disease. And it is also a book about the ways that cancer is entwined with our very existence as multicellular organisms. We are essentially made of cellular cooperation. Each of us is a cooperative cellular society of about 30 trillion cells descended from the fertilized cell that gave rise to us. In a healthy body, these cells cooperate to make us function effectively as multicellular organisms. But sometimes this cellular cooperation can break down, and when it does, cancer can arise. In The Cheating Cell I explain the many ways that cellular cheating can arise and how this cellular cheating can evolve in the ecosystem of the body. I also take a look at how our bodies have evolved (because of selection among organisms for better cancer suppression system) to deal with the threat of cellular cheating. I end the book by showing how new evolutionarily-informed approaches to cancer hold the promise for changing how we treat cancer and helping us to live longer and more fulfilling lives even with a diagnosis of the disease.

The fact is, cancer is here to stay, it will always be a part of life on earth, and our best bet is to accept that it is a part of our evolutionary legacy. As we move forward, we can develop treatments and preventative measures that acknowledge cancer’s evolutionary nature and the many important ways cancer has shaped life on this planet. I think that in the future we will all think about what a cure means differently; that the idea of ‘cure via control’ will come to be the norm, rather than ‘cure via eradication’ which is the current way that people typically think about it. All of us, cancer patients or not, harbor cells with cancer mutations, but most of us are able to keep those mutated cells under control with our toolbox of cancer suppression systems. So cancer control is the normal state for multicellular life forms - ourselves included. By switching our attention from eradicating cancer to simply keeping it under control, we can change the way we think about a cure for cancer, and in the process make finding a cure much more likely.