AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
The basic thesis is that cancer is an evolutionary process and should be understood as one, or as part of the more general process of evolution. Cells mutate, cause changes in their behavior that affect survival and reproduction. Those are the ingredients needed for natural selection to operate.
Of course cells reproduce much faster and in greater parallelism than individual large organisms.
While this seems obviously true once pointed out, it has some non-obvious consequences. Eg, it means cancer can never be cured, because it is an integral part of the processes of life.
Notes & Quotes
Cancer is the literal embodiment of evolution (p11)
competition between cells within the body (Wilhelm Roux (late 1800)), other good refs (p14)
multicellurality playbook, heuristics followed by "good" cells, eg don't divide out of control, share resources...(p35) wonder if the mechanisms/protocols of these have been studied.
Ah here's one, TP53 cancer suppressor gene (p41) it functions as an information integrator, making it complex, vulnerable. (p49 )
All forms of multicellular life can get cancer, incl plants (p92)
CTVT dog virus – weird (p106) "the only known unicellular species of dog"