Mysterious Paradox of How Whales Avoid Cancer Has a New Solution : ScienceAlert

Giant whales have little cancer relative to their body size. It’s a biological mismatch known as Peto’s paradox, which describes how large, long-lived animals, despite having trillions more cells than humans or tiny critters, don’t develop more cancers.

Cancer is a disease of runaway cell division, where genetic mutations drive cells to divide and divide, forming masses called tumors. So you would think that the larger an animal is, the more cells it has, and the greater chance those cells have to accumulate genetic errors that lead to cancer, especially over a long lifetime.

But renowned…

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News Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-paradox-of-how-whales-avoid-cancer-has-a-new-solution


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