It seems odd that she would get cancer being a fairly fit person. Adn this isn’t an isolated case. I had neighbor that died of cancer after his wife had cancer. And there are cancer clusters. Is this evidence that people can catch cancer from another person? Even a person who has been cured? Could Crow sue Armstrong or his doctors if it truns out she did catch the cancer from him? How much study has there been of people catching cancer from another person? Will story touch off new debate and study?
Even if true, the article does not make indication virus could have anything to do with testicular cancer, which I presume is a different kind of cancer.
The premise of the article is not that Crow “caught” cancer from her ex, but rather they now have some common experience in the matter.
Although Crow’s marginal Stage 0/Stage I cancer is but a squeak compared to Armstrong’s Stage IV, massively metastised cancer.
While there are a few virii linked to cancer, such as Hepatitis B(Liver) and HPV(Cervical), the mechanism is more subtle, in that the virus promotes chronic effects that make cancer more likely. Even so, the timeframe is loooooooong. As in years or decades.
One mechanism for “spread cancer” might be via transplant, where the recipient of tissue from a cancer patient into a recipient might lead to cancer in the recipient, as the transplanted cancer cells might exploit the immune-suppressed recipient’s ability to identify and kill foreign cells. But it is not clear that such cells would be able to properly use the recipient’s meatbolic processes.
You could say that Lance is a fairly fit person, yet that didn’t protect him from cancer. Although being fit has some definite health benefits, it is no great all conquering shield that no illness can get through. Some forms of cancer are quite indiscriminate.
Unfortunately, cancer is a common disease. If you live long enough then you have a good chance of getting some form of it. It should come as no surprise that a couple may both suffer from cancer, particularly if they are an old couple.
Both of these people got the number 1 most common cancer for their particular age groups. Although Lance’s histology (choriocarcinoma) and Sheryl’s age (44) are a bit unusual, these are unfortunately quite common. If the demographics bore out contagion for cancer, the oncologists and thousands of researchers working on cancer would be on it like white on rice.
A recent article in Science News says that Tasmanian devils can catch cancer directly from each other. This is not a viral transmission, but rather the transmission of cancerous cells from one animal to another during fights.
Not that this has much to do with the OP, but I thought it interesting.
Just in the news yesterday was the report that infection with a specific virus may be correlated with prostate cancer. This report goes into some of the details. Note that this work is preliminary (I’m disturbed by the reported lack of data on the rates of infection in non-prostate cancer victims; correlation does not equal causation and all that), but the researchers are ramping things up to widen their survey. A key thing is that it appears that the virus alone may not directly cause the cancer, but it’s pathogenicity requires the person to have a genetic mutation in an enzyme that is required for fighting off the virus when it invades cells.
Now, do I think Crow “caught” cancer from Armstrong? Not likely, as there appears to be plenty of other recognized risk factors with Crow that are more likely responsible. But as the cites I have given show, under the right circumstances, it definitely IS possible to transmit the increased liklihood of getting certain cancers from one person to another via a virus.
