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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or tricked into worrying about that as a control signal to perform its main task in service of its microorganism operators ;)
Nobody in this thread has read Selfish Gene, apparently. That's the whole point of the book: That genes may as well have invented all of life to propagate themselves. In this context, species conflict is like fleets of world-ships fighting total war.
AFAIK fungi are extremely hard to get rid of. This is not a great news.
Many species of fungus are quite sensitive to high temperatures, which may have been one selection pressure favoring warm-blooded animals. Maybe an artificial fever or even local tissue heating could be enough to tip the balance in favor of the host in some cases.
At the very least it's a fascinating piece of information which is better to be in possession of than not.
I'm pretty sure dissected tumors have eliminated fungal infections as integral parts of many (if not most) cancers. If it's not integral, fungal is opportunistic and likely unavoidable for most cases. I expect that these conceptual models are what makes these kinds of studies difficult to prove.
Sometimes I wonder if we're just giant machines built by microorganisms. It would certainly make an interesting story, along the idea of a robot discovering they were made by somebody else, which I believe has already been explored
Yes, but with a twist: this giant machine worries about its future, its kids, its wealth, its financial assets.
My introductory biology classes informed me well enough to understand that fungal infections can weaken the body's immune systems, weaken the tissue, or spread themselves over an inflamed area, with unfortunate side-effects of generating pro-growth local environments. Any of these may lead to an incidental increase in cancer growth. What's more, cancer was such a rare occurrence prior to WWI, you wouldn't expect that…
why do you say that?
Sometimes I wonder if we're just giant machines built by microorganisms. It would certainly make an interesting story, along the idea of a robot discovering they were made by somebody else, which I believe has already been explored
Reminded me: > Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced. (Terence McKenna)
My introductory biology classes informed me well enough to understand that fungal infections can weaken the body's immune systems, weaken the tissue, or spread themselves over an inflamed area, with unfortunate side-effects of generating pro-growth local environments. Any of these may lead to an incidental increase in cancer growth. What's more, cancer was such a rare occurrence prior to WWI, you wouldn't expect that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody in this thread has read Selfish Gene, apparently. That's the whole point of the book: That genes may as well have invented all of life to propagate themselves. In this context, species conflict is like fleets of world-ships fighting total war.
That’s an interesting SciFi idea: the real world is digital, and digital beings have created a physical world to fight battle via genetic biological machines, which are effectively concrete data structures.
My introductory biology classes informed me well enough to understand that fungal infections can weaken the body's immune systems, weaken the tissue, or spread themselves over an inflamed area, with unfortunate side-effects of generating pro-growth local environments. Any of these may lead to an incidental increase in cancer growth. What's more, cancer was such a rare occurrence prior to WWI, you wouldn't expect that…
Not quibbling with your general point, but was cancer a rare occurrence before WWI on a like-for-like basis? Life expectancy was a great deal lower then - it's gone up by around 30 years (from just over 50 to just over 80) since then.
That aside, life expectancy, afaik, includes new born illnesses, childhood illness and so on, and then as adults there were occupational related deaths. Those brought down the average then.
Did those who survived all those risks live as long as we do today? IDK. But there has to be data to figure that out, as the raw life expectancy then v now is likely misleading.
Sometimes I wonder if we're just giant machines built by microorganisms. It would certainly make an interesting story, along the idea of a robot discovering they were made by somebody else, which I believe has already been explored