The Cancer Code: A New Paradigm for Understanding Cancer

Nephrologist Fung (The Diabetes Code) takes a sweeping look at theories of and treatments for cancer, concentrating on three historical paradigms for explaining the disease’s cause. The first paradigm was “unregulated growth of cells,” which, in Fung’s view, didn’t help explain how growth starts, and necessitated physically traumatic methods like chemo or surgery to treat already cancerous patients. The second, more recent paradigm, somatic mutation theory, holds “accumulated genetic mutations” responsible. As Fung explains, this led to the discovery of a “disorienting number of genetic mutations” associated with each type of cancer, and not to meaningful treatments. He holds out more hope for the third, newly developed paradigm: that under conditions of stress, genes that “enhance competition and survival” are activated within individual cells and thus trigger cancer, reflecting the evolutionary origins of all life as unicellular organisms. One day he believes that immunotherapy might be used to track down circulating cancer cells, but in the meantime, he recommends methods to manage risk that include changes to diet, intermittent fasting, and tightly regulating insulin production. While Fung certainly hasn’t closed the book on cancer’s causes or treatment, his explanations are accessible and his work as a whole is intriguingly provocative. (Nov.)