Cancer vs. Programed Cell Death

It seems that we (all living organisms) live in a very precarious equilibrium between our cells dying in a preprogrammed way (exception when our cells die for other reasons, like disease or accidents) or the same cells going nuts and start reproducing in an uncontrolled manner (thus developing cancer).

This is one of the key takeaways from the chapter #10 of Life Ascending (Death: We die because our cells are preprogrammed to do so.

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Ascending-Great-Inventions-Evolution/dp/0393065960


If we tweak the knobs of the preprogrammed cell death, we could generate some problems with rebel cells starting to develop cancer (remember Blade Runner?, when borgs could break free from the preprogrammed death, they started creating problems)

Food for thought. In the mean time, another article to take note of is found in edge.org, and it points that cancer is not a noun but an action. When we have cancer we are really cancering.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hillis_master10/hillis_master10_index.html