Twelve
Righting a Wrong
Turn
Good and evil often sprout from the same tree, in the body as in Eden.
Nothing illustrates this paradox better than cancer. Today, because of
breakthroughs in genetics, thousands of scientists are searching for on-
cogenes, bits of DNA that are presumed to pull the trigger that fires the
malignant bullet. It has been known for a long time, of course, that
cancer isn't inherited through egg and sperm the way hemophilia is.
However, many have postulated that the immediate cause of cancer may
be genetic changes in somatic cells. Normally suppressed genes held in
an unnoticed corner of our genetic bookshelves since long ago in our
evolution might be dusted off only when other bodily conditions are
"just wrong." While the premise of this idea is apparently true, biolo-
gists have recently concluded that the difference between a normal gene
producing a normal protein and one that could theoretically cause cancer
is a single "typographical error" in a whole chapter of amino acid se-
quences. Such mistakes happen so often that we would all be riddled
with cancer from infancy if that were all it took to start the disease.
Something else must go awry before a few misspellings can turn the
whole library into gibberish.
Three basic criteria by which a doctor diagnoses cancer must serve as
the starting point in solving the mystery of its cause. First of all, the
disease always always arises not from an alien germ but from a formerly normal
cell of the host's body, and the cancer cells are more primitive than their
healthy precursors. Moreover, this atavism reflects the seriousness of the