Evolutionary double

According to an anonymous surgeon from the end of the 19th century, cancer is "the king of all fears".

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Despite the development of medicine, new forms of treatment and announcements of even more effective medical procedures, cancer is still a terrifying diagnosis. Successful medical treatment of cancer depends on understanding the nature of this disease. Therefore, in addition to data obtained from research in the natural sciences, it has been shown that a philosophical approach is needed, perhaps even necessary. Task cancer philosophies is to investigate the methodological consistency of scientific models that explain its functioning, to examine the value of scientific explanations, insights and conclusions about this disease, that is, to offer a complete picture, a coherent theoretical basis for further research. One comprehensive representation of carcinogenesis is based on the hypothesis that the mechanisms of the appearance and development of malignant tumors can be explained with the help of the theory of evolution. The evolutionist approach to understanding the functioning of living organisms has long been dominant in scientific circles. Many hypotheses based on the theory of evolution, however, are burdened by terminological ambiguities, metaphysical meanings of concepts, methodological errors and inconsistent merging of different fields of scientific research. Philosophy, to that extent, offers a kind of solution, or at least the opening of a perspective that allows deliberation what the natural sciences have come to.

HOW TO UNDERSTAND NATURAL SELECTION?

Book by Eva Kammerer Fierce rival, starts from the assumption that the theory of evolution is also useful in designing a cancer treatment strategy, because it provides the theoretical basis for understanding the nature of cancer. The theory of evolution, however, since Darwin's time, contains certain ambiguities and inaccuracies that make it difficult to apply it to specific areas of research. Therefore, in the first part of the book, Kammerer explains not only the basics of Darwin's theory and its later additions, but also the immanent problems that accompany it. According to Darwin, the change of living species is the result of differential survival of individuals in local populations. In the simplest terms, individuals that are more adaptable will have a significantly greater chance to survive and leave offspring, and natural selection, in a sufficiently long time interval, will lead to the creation of new subspecies or species. However, survival is not the result of natural selection alone. It has a role in survival drift (drift), an evolutionary process that is based on chance. In certain situations, confluence of circumstances, and not permanent conditions that prevail in the natural environment, decisively influence the survival of individuals, that is, their adaptability is not a guarantee of evolutionary success. One of the important questions that can be asked about the theory of evolution is whether natural selection and chance can be understood as causes evolutionary changes. This problem is further complicated by the difference between replicator i interactor, which Eva Kammerer sees as the difference between genotype (genetic structure) and phenotype (set of characteristics of an organism). Replicators are genes that produce copies of themselves and are passed on to subsequent generations through inheritance. However, genes are not directly exposed to changes in the living environment, but interactors, organisms that inhabit an environment. Natural selection, therefore, depends not only on genetic mutations, but also on changes in the environment. And that means that the survival of an organism possible when the mentioned factors find themselves in an unconditional relationship with each other, that is, when "the dice are stacked".

CANCER AS EVOLUTION IN SMALL SIZE

According to the theory of clonal selection, to which Kammerer pays particular attention, cells are characterized by mutations, deviations from the previous "normal" state. Each such cell is then cloned into a new one and thus a group of mutated cells is formed. Some of them will prove more successful than others. Clonal selection can therefore be viewed as evolutionary selection, as evolution in miniature. Adaptability, as a crucially important factor for survival, also applies when it comes to cancer cells. A tumor arises from an initially normal cell that has mutated, and then the degree of mutation increases. In this, cancer differs from healthy cells, whose adaptability implies a moderate degree of mutations, because otherwise normal cells would become unstable due to excessive changes. It is here that a phenomenon yet to be understood is observed: thanks to excessive mutations, cancer becomes even more adaptable and resistant to natural or medically engineered enemies. Clonal selection favors those cancer cells that are adapted to the external environment, to the actions of the body's defense system or to drugs that destroy some cancer cells. Therefore, it can be said that cancer cells mutate faster than healthy cells because they are exposed to a stronger attack. A cancerous cell leaves the existing frequency of mutations of normal cells, i in water own rhythm of change.

The question arises, are genetic mutations the cause of cancer, or do they just coincide with tumor formation? The model of clonal adaptability, Eva Kammerer shows, assumes that cancer cells establish not only the level of mutations necessary for the survival of a sufficient number of cancer cells, but also that cancer in some way builds an interaction with the microenvironment in which it develops. Mutations are greater if the body's immune response is more significant, because in that case a greater number of mutations means a statistically greater chance of survival of cancer cells. Conversely, in the face of a weak immune response, the number of cancerous mutations decreases, because too many changes would make the cancerous structure itself unstable (reducing natural selection). Cancer seems to behave according to this model strategic, that is, to adapt its actions to the environment in order to be reproductively successful. If cancer cells are not endowed with reason, how can they have a strategy of survival? Overcoming this problem requires a return to Darwinism naturalization of teleology. In other words, as Eva Kammerer puts it, the "purpose", that is, the function of a feature is in fact effect, the fact that certain cancer cells that differ from others in some capacity have survived the body's immune response.

Understanding cancer as evolution in a small way also points to the question of whether carcinogenesis involves the accumulation of traits that have proven to be more evolutionary successful. If the answer were affirmative, it means that not only the negative system applies to cancer, according to which selection is a sieve that lets certain traits pass, but also the positive mechanism by which selection ultimately leads to a new quality, that is, for the organism, more deadly cancer cells.

CANCER AS AN EVOLUTIONARY RIVAL

In the final chapter of the book, Eva Kamerer looks at contemporary cancer theories through the prism of knowledge about evolution. Scientific models imply the so-called "Galilean idealization", neglecting less important factors and focusing on what is most significant (as Galileo neglected the resistance of the environment while building his theory). Also, it is characteristic of scientific models to prove their applicability in comparison with competing theories, and bringing rival models into a relationship is set as one of the philosophical tasks. In the case of cancer research, this means mediating between different scientific approaches. For example, when it comes to the question whether the ability to adapt an individual cell or a group of cells is decisive for the occurrence of cancer. The answer to the mentioned question can be reductionist ("responsible" is the smallest unit) or holistically (the adaptive capacity of the cell society is key). The complexity of cancer, however, requires abandoning the strict limitations of the mentioned models. An example of that is Atavistic model of cancer, which Eva Kamerer talks about in the final part of her book. Evolution shows that natural selection has favored cooperation among the units that make up the whole. The competitiveness of the cells had to be suppressed in favor of cooperation. In all multicellular organisms, obedience to the whole is at work, that is, biological hierarchy. Cancer, however, appears to be a pathological change in this hierarchy, because cancer cells behave autonomously in relation to the hierarchically higher biological whole. Carcinogenesis, in this sense, as Eva Kammerer says, social dysfunction in the company of cells that make up a healthy organism. The absence of biological hierarchy, however, Kammerer reminds us, is characteristic of single-celled organisms, suggesting that cancer is actually a return to lower evolutionary forms. Cancer is, therefore, an evolutionary double. The genes responsible for the occurrence of both primary tumors and metastases are already present in our genome. This latent state is activated under the influence of certain factors and leads to illness.

The view that cancer is the reactivation of the genes of our distant ancestors is a challenge for further philosophical research. Likewise, the mentioned model refers to treatment strategies. Types of immunotherapy, stimulation of our body's defense cells to recognize cancer, influence on the mutation rate of cancerous cells, are the result not only of scientific research but also of philosophical analysis of the methodology and meaning of scientific theories.

Written in a beautiful and clean style, Eva Kammerer's book does not require prior knowledge of the scientific theories it analyzes, because the most important lines of research are meticulously explained. Citing a multitude of sources, the author subtly builds her thesis, at the same time criticizing the exclusivity or inconsistencies of certain scientific models for explaining carcinogenesis. An Incentive for Cancer Researchers, Book Fierce rival it is not exhausted in the domain of the philosophy of science, but also refers to former metaphysical questions that can now be seen in a new form.