Cancer : the evolutionary legacy

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Bibliographic Information

Cancer : the evolutionary legacy

Mel Greaves

Oxford University Press, c2001

  • pbk

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Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In this lucid and entertaining book, Mel Greaves argues that evolutionary biology offers a new perspective that can help us unravel the riddle of cancer. Why, for example, have women always had such a raw deal in the cancer stakes? And why are some cancers, such as prostate cancer, increasing in incidence? Greaves argues that Darwinian selection millions of years ago has endowed our genes and cells with inherently cancerous credentials, and this is exacerbated by our rapid social evolution and exotic behavioural traits that outpace genetic adaptation. The book is full of novel insights, the latest scientific discoveries, and wonderful historical anecdotes. It provides a unique portrait of cancer, past, present, and future.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • PART I: CANCER - ANCIENT LEGACIES AND MODERN MYTHS
  • 1. Perplexed? You should be
  • 2. The King of Naples and other silent witnesses
  • 3. Questions and answers
  • PART II: EVOLVING CANCER
  • 4. Clones, clones, clones
  • 5. The way we are: risk and restraints
  • 6. How cancer cells play the winning game
  • 7. Green-eyed mutations?
  • 8. Blind chance - and ultimate extinction?
  • PART III: PARADOXES OF PROGRESS: INDECENT EXPOSURES
  • 9. Is cancer an evolutionary inevitability?
  • 10. And then you set fire to it?
  • 11. Women's troubles
  • 12. Men's troubles
  • 13. Cancer a deux
  • 14. Other ways of getting bugged
  • 15. Travelling light
  • 16. Dying for a living
  • 17. Collateral damage
  • 18. Finale: compounding risk with bad luck
  • PART IV: FINESSING THE CLONE
  • 19. Treatment: the blind marksman
  • 20. Epilogue: cancer in the 21st century
  • Index

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