I was recently referred to a health article that claims our bodies produce (and in a healthy person, destroy) 5,000 cancer cells per day.
Skeptical, I googled the phrase “cancer cells per day”, and got a whole bunch of alternative medicine sites that claim our bodies normally produce millions of cancer cells per day.
So what’s the straight dope? According to mainstream oncologists and/or the American Cancer Society, how many cancer cells per day does the average healthy adult human being produce?
I think there’s a nomenclature problem here. The way I understand it, normal cells can have their DNA damged in a number of ways, including sunlight, x-rays, etc. In a lot of cases the DNA retains enough information so that the cells can repair themselves. In other cases the cells cannot repair themselves and therefore die off.
In the last case, the cells pass along their damaged information to other cells. This would be cancer. Is this causing the conflated numbers?
This is highly oversimplified to the point of being incorrect. DNA can be damaged in all sorts of ways that doesn’t lead to cancer, although you are correct that changes in DNA seem to be required to change a normal cell to a cancerous one. The most recent figures I’ve heard are that 7-8 mutations seem to be the minimum.
However, I agree that definitions are going to be key here. What do they mean by a “cancerous” cell? Is it a cell that has picked up a mutation? Well then, 5000 is a huge underestimate. Is it a cell that actually produces a cancerous tumor? Then 5000 is a huge overestimate. They might be claiming this is the number that gain oncogenic potential but are destroyed by the immune system. I don’t know about that, and I think that if there are any data out there, they’d be fairly rough estimates.
This part. You’re saying that A is equal to B, when in fact, B is only a very small subset of A.
I would also change this:
to “In the vast majority of cases…”
And when damage persists, it’s generally not because information has been “lost”, just that the DNA repair mechanisms have failed to detect or correct the mistake in time.
Well, I’d say the whole thing is nitpicky. Especially when you start your rebuttal with “This is highly oversimplified to the point of being incorrect.”