Does practicing medicine require evolution to be true?

Putting aside ID for the moment, Ken Ham and AiG do not believe “evolution”, except possibly by redefining the concept near out of existence. “Genetic Entropy” is incompatible with the arms race model of infectious disease. An evolutionary understanding of antibiotic resistance is not “due to loss of information” and viral mutations are not “loss of function”. Pseudogenes with physiological impacts do imply common descent, and are not just coincidental at preferred sites of the genome. AiG denies that the underlying principles of genetics can be generalized to the tree of life. It is not necessary to qualify the applications of these principles to “microevolution”, because there is not a fundamental distinction in the processes at work.

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The “science” of cancer is a part of medical science and medical science is supposed to be evidence-based. Can you show the evidence?
Mutagens cause mutations but it is a long, long way to getting cancer.
“Cancers are able to evolve to avoid the body’s defenses” you have said. That is one hell of a lot of evolution even if it was in 50 years. But children, like 2 year olds can develop cancer. That would be spectacular evolution if it was real.
Short lived success for the cancer because the host dies! Well not always. There is such a thing as spontaneous remission of the cancer. What? Do they de-evolve? Seriously, how on earth can evolution create cancer? Show me the evidence, please.

Not so much.
 

Between one and 10 mutations are required for a healthy cell to turn cancerous.

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute developed a novel evolution-based method to assess how many of the thousands of mutations found in cancer cells are necessary to drive cancer development.

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There are a wide assortment of mutations that are associated with causing cancer; cancer mutation - Search Results - PubMed is a reasonable place to start looking if you want to see examples. Yes, cancer does tend to evolve quickly, but even so it is most common in older people. Childhood cancer typically results from either inherited mutations (as shown, for example, by the fact that childhood eye cancer commonly impacts both eyes but adult-onset eye cancer tends to affect just one) or from exposure to strong mutagens.

There are two different possible “evolution of cancer” senses to distinguish. We have the evolutionary course of a single cancer, and the question of why our cell regulation can fail in that way. The latter reflects the complex interdependence of our cells to our overall well-being and the evolution of mechanisms to regulate cell function, but I think your questions are focused on the evolution of a particular case of cancer.

“Success” for a cancer is for it to persist in the body, which is typically not successful for the organism with cancer (although some cancers may be so slowly progressing as to be quite unlikely to kill you before something else does). If there is spontaneous remission, then the cancer has failed to perpetuate itself - good for you, but bad for the cancer. Not that anyone is likely to feel sorry for it, but that, in evolutionary terms, it was not successful. Such remission does occur, though of course it would not be medically prudent to just sit around and hope for that. Because each individual cancer typically represents an independent set of mutations, the exact course of the case and the vulnerability to innate or medically-provided curing is quite variable.

In many cancers, the error-checking in DNA copying has been compromised. For organisms or cells that are doing fairly well, mutations are generally a bad thing (except in particular genes, such as the ones generating new antibodies). But if things are tough, then mutations away from the current abilities may be helpful. Your immune system has a variety of ways to identify and destroy cells that are messed up. For cancer to survive in the body, it has to dodge those defenses. A high rate of mutation means that many of the resulting cells will be dysfunctional and not survive, but also a higher chance of hitting on something new that works. The basic problem for your body from cancer, though, is the multiplying of the cells. For that to happen, the normal controls on cell division must be messed up - a key type of mutation for cancer to happen. Once a cell has gone bad and is multiplying more than it should, additional mutations may help or hinder its chances of surviving in the body. In a way, it’s not all that different from bacterial or viral infections - the pathogen is successful if it evolves ways to avoid the body’s defenses; the body is successful if it finds defenses that block the pathogen.

Spontaneous remission is unlikely to be evolutionary backtracking. It is more likely that your immune system successfully evolved a counterstrategy that correctly identified the cancer as a problem and successfully targeted the cancer. Without detailed genetic profiling of both the cancer and your immune system, it’s hard to be more definite, again given the individual natures of both.

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Radiation is known to cause cancer; Hiroshima, Nagasaki; radiation from excess CT scans, especially when a large number of cells are dividing and vulnerable, as in the young. This is via mutation. Radon, chronic inflammation from smoking; all sort of things can cause mutation. I think you would enjoy that study. Thanks.

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The usual way - a new observation arises that contradicts the initial explanation, or that cannot be explained by the initial explanation … then you realize that your initial “understanding” was actually a misunderstanding.

Then stop putting forward stem cells as a theory.

Every single experiment done on mutations has demonstrated that they are random.

No, it doesn’t. All it requires is changes in the expression of already existing genes without any need for mutation.

Not all mutations in oncogenes result in cancer. It’s not that hard to figure out. And yes, mutations are random.

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That would be the scientific method.

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This is not evidence. They base themselves on assumptions of evolutionary theory and then try to explain the observations.
Here. Dr. John Dick M.D. discovered the cancer stem cell more than 20 years ago, in the early to mid 1990s. Here you can listen to his podcast.
Dr. John Dick on his famous discovery of cancer stem cells, and the puzzle of research (uhn.ca)

Although cancer is part of medical practice, it isn’t the object of this thread.

With all due respects Randy, I would say that radiation is supposed to cause cancer but no mechanism has ever been shown. And furthermore the evidence points in another direction. Did the bombs dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki really cause cancer in the young women 20 or 30 years later? If we look at the statistics we find that the rate of breast cancer in the USA between 1840s to 1983-4 breast cancer incidence increased 30% Cancer incidence and mortality trends among whites in the United States, 1947-84 - PubMed (nih.gov)

If you look at the world map here: Global rise in breast cancer due to ‘Western lifestyles’ | The Independent | The Independent with breast cancer incidence you will find that USA Europe and Australia have three times as much breast cancer as Japan and they were not the ones that suffered the atom bombs.

They are saying “ The rise of the cancer in Europe and America – cases have jumped 80 per cent in the UK since the 1970s

And here: 039_044.pdf (med.or.jp)

A comparison of breast cancer occurring in American and Japanese women reveals that both the incidence and mortality rates are markedly higher in the US. However, both the age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates have been increasing in Japan. On the other hand, in the US, where the age-adjusted incidence rate tended to increase before the 1990s ,”

And their explanation doesn’t consider radiation.

Risk factors for breast cancer include early menarche, late menopause, and late first delivery. The higher frequencies of these risk factors in American women than in Japanese women may explain the higher incidence and mortality rates of breast cancer in the US

This doctor claims that treatment resistant cancer stem cells are created by the radiation therapy. This is effectively saying treat cancer with a carcinogen and you get about 50% success rate, but oh well the rest get worse and fall over.

Radiation causes cancer - YouTube

If we look at some of the research we find that they are not conclusive.

Ablation of Breast Cancer Stem Cells with Radiation (nih.gov)

The overall conclusion at the end is that “ breast CSCs are not universally radiation resistant but can respond uniquely to therapy, and this should be a consideration in future work”.

There is no way that one woman’s breast cancer cells are going to be affected by the radiation as to become treatment resistant ( not only radiation resistant but chemo resistant as well) while another woman’s breast cancer cells are wiped out.

I doubt very much that ionizing radiation causes cancer. Radiation, smoking and lots of other mutagens may cause a tumor but that would be transformed cells, not cancer cells.

You are confusing the data. Breast cancer is not one of the cancers felt to be increased in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You are correct in stating that lots of other factors are at play there, including detection of cancers by mammogram that would have otherwise gone undiagnosed. However, cancer overall was increased, especially liver cancer, in survivors of the atomic bomb.

More remarkable was the increase in acute leukemia in the early years following the bomb. Apparently, the rapidly dividing cells in the bone marrow were more sensitive to the effect of radiation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3875218/

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In the second paper you linked it says:
It has been suspected that leukemia may be induced by specific translocations caused by radiation. However, spontaneous translocations specific to ALL are much more frequent than AML cases bearing the translocations. Also, radiation-induced DNA damage is essentially random in the genome.”
There are two problems as I see it.
One is that the work of Dr. John Dick M.D., who discovered the first cancer stem cell (for leukemia), is not being recognized. When asked scientists talk of random mutations. But they have no mechanism devised as to how random mutations can give rise to cancer. The cancer clonal evolutionary theory is only a hypothesis. It can be tested but I’ll bet no one has tested it as they know the result would be failure. They have CRISPR. Genetically modify a cell culture or in vivo in rats. Why not use it to make the genetic modification that they are saying are the driver mutations and see what happens. No cancer will arise. What pharmaceutical company would fund such research? NONE.It would be an easy project for a master’s degree student, but there’s no funding.

You will find that the rates of leukemia and liver cancer etc., in some countries are higher than in Japan after the bomb.

I did a graph for the incidence rate and how it has increased since 1900s.


As you can see the rates have sky-rocketed after mobile phones and the internet with social media. And it is understandable why people are thinking that rhe radiation from a mobile phone might be a cause, since this would be consistent with the idea of random mutations and environmental hazards causing cancer. It is understandable why people are afraid of 5G. But the reality is that none of this can cause cancer.

What is the connection between mobile phones and social media? Both communicate information. And both can make underhanded foul game play a piece of cake.
Cancer is a nocebo effect. And the supporting evidence is the very fact that without a cancer stem cell, there is no cancer. Dr. Max Wicha M.D. and his PhD student/ graduate Dr. Micheal Clarke PhD, showed conclusive evidence when they took ordinary cancer cells and grafted them into nude mice. They got about 1 in 200 occurrences of cancer. When they took a breast cancer stem cell and grafted it they got 100% result. They realized that in the earlier grafts, the few that gave a cancer, they must had had a cancer stem cells in the cells taken.

There is no cancer stem cell created out of random mutations or environmental hazards or smoking etc., Cancer stem cells are similar to the induced pluripotent stem cells that Yamanaka created in the lab. 75% of their surface markers are the same as stem cells, they have some markers of embryonic stem cells and the rest are the same as on normal cells. So why are we even calling them cancer stem cells?

Cancer is the “fly in your face evidence” for creationism. ( note: I don’t mean “your” as in you personally.) The body creates a new novel organ. Some researchers are calling it an abnormal organ, while others call it a rogue organ, but nonetheless it has the characteristics of an organ. It has a basement membrane, a microenvironment of supportive stromal cells, a blood, lymphatic and in many cases even a nerve supply. And it has stem cells that give rise to the so-called cancer clones. Furthermore we may find that in some cases only as little as 15 to 20 percent of the cells in the tumor organ are cancer cells. And this can range upto 80%. It doesn’t have the marks of “abnormal cells dividing out of control”, like not at all.

The mechanism you are looking for is the loss of function in genes that have mutations. Genes that are responsible for preventing a cell from dividing uncontrollably no longer do their job.

Also, mutations happen in stem cells. Stating that stem cells can become cancerous in no way refutes the conclusion that mutations cause cancers.

It’s a well supported conclusion:

Added in edit:

Oh really??

They did the experiment. They mutated p53 and cancer appeared. They re-expressed functional p53 after the tumors appeared and the tumors stopped growing and most started shrinking.

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The thread asks Does practicing medicine require evolution to be true?
In the case of cancer the biomedical scientists and doctors are prescribing treatments on the basis of evolution is true. However the cancer clones don’t arise out of random mutations and selective advantages over other cells around them. They arise as the daughter cells of stem cells, i.e., nothing to do with evolution. I think the discussion is on topic, if I may say so.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive. Mutations happen in stem cells.

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I need more time to investigate the mouse models because I am not convinced from these papers that they have generated cancer. They may get a tumor but I don’t think it is cancer.

With the Li–Fraumeni Syndrome there is still 10 to 20 % of them who have the inherited mutant genes but don’t get cancer. So the question is are the rest getting cancer because of the genes or are the genes not part of the story.

I know several families where one can say cancer runs in the family, but I have also seen that there are inhumane members, either born within the family or have married into the family. And there are cases too where the inhumane people have made themselves friends of the family and thus influential. It seems logical to go to genetics when some disease is seen to run in the family but I think it is a long way from the truth from what I have seen.

For cancer to survive in the body, it has to change to evade the body’s defenses. If it spreads, it must also deal with the different parts of the body that it is in. To change its abilities, the cancer cell has few options besides changes in the DNA. In other words, the cancer does evolve, and mutations that help cancer cells to survive in the body are likely to be common in cancers (probably in many cases tracing back to an original stem cell of the cancer). Of course, the fact that cancer evolves is no proof of the extent of biological evolution, but it is a similar process in its pattern.

You can lead a horse to water . . .

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Does the cancer have to evade the body’s defenses? They see that cancer cells are aided by the immune system cells. Without the immune system cells there really is no metastasis. To explain this they go to “the cancer cells evolve to hi-jack the immune system cells and get them to do their bidding”. This would be incredible amount of evolution even if the person was Adam in the Bible and lived to 900 years. And we see cancer in toddlers and even infants.
Far from it I would suggest that the immune system must be somehow involved right from the start. It may well be that the immune system cells are instrumental in cancer creation.
I will post a video in the next post to @T_aquaticus

(Profile - T_aquaticus - The BioLogos Forum) and you will see that there is a huge amount of complexity that is involved in genetics. Why is this not being considered? Why keep a hold of the simplistic view that may have seemed appropriate decades ago?