Contagious Cancer

Scifi

Scifi

Super Member
Its usually assumed that cancer is essentially non-contagious and you don't have to worry about catching cancer from anyone. On the other hand, there are a number of contagious cancers that have been found in animals, such as the facial cancer of Tasmanian Devils, Canine Transimissible Venereal Tumor (CTVT) in dogs, and the lab created contagious cancer of Syrian Hamsters. It might be possible that there are contagious human cancers that aren't recognized as contagious. The Harpers Magazine article discusses some cases of human to human transfer of cancers, such as during experiments or when surgeons or lab workers accidentally cut themselves when doing surgery or handling cancer cells.


Study Finds That a Type of Cancer in Dogs Is Contagious Network News
By Rick Weiss
Friday, August 11, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001535.html

Contagious Cancer
The evolution of a killer
By David Quammen
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/contagious-cancer/
Click "Download PDF" to get the pdf file

Devil facial tumour disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease

:puke2:
 
Nope, nope, nope!

I'm not clicking any of these links.

Today the biggest problem I am willing to tackle is "What time do I put the brisket in the oven so it will be ready for dinner tomorrow?"
 
Thinking about cancer can cause cancer ... pass it on ...
 
I recently read an account by a woman who had taken care of her aunt, who had lung cancer and was coughing. In due time, she had lung cancer and was coughing. Other cancers, the internal kind, are probably not contagious - only if cancerous cells make the jump to a new host.
 
botrytis said:
There are cancers that can be caused by viruses - like HPV, etc. not surprising....
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Quite a few of them, in fact -- that's how the retroviruses were discovered... well, not quite, but retroviral cancers have been recognized (although of course the causal agent couldn't have been known) since the early Twentieth Century.

http://www.retrovirology.com/content/3/1/67

Good ol' retroviruses -- the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology clearly stated: biological information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins... 'til they figured out there were RNA (retro)viruses and an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. :p
 
Splatter Pak said:
I recently read an account by a woman who had taken care of her aunt, who had lung cancer and was coughing. In due time, she had lung cancer and was coughing. Other cancers, the internal kind, are probably not contagious - only if cancerous cells make the jump to a new host.
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My father had lung cancer. He coughed all the time before being diagnosed with cancer and also afterward. He smoked for years and I rarely saw him without a cigarette or pipe in his hand until he got lung cancer. Apparently, no one got lung cancer from him.
 
One strange thing I've noticed is that a lot of people tend to be more terrified of tuberculous than they are of tobacco even though far more people die from tobacco than TB in the US of A. I see a lot of tobacco smokers smoking outside, since they can't smoke inside. Most of them put on the usual act where they act like they enjoy smoking so much and they usually look straight at me when they put on this act. I told a number of them that my father died from lung cancer and he would tend to put on the same act until he got cancer. Another strange thing I found was when I was looking through my father's paper work years after he died, I found the results of a CAT scan he had in 1998. One line said "left hilar granulomas indicates prior exposure to granulomatous disease, such as tuberculosis". I found this years after he died and at the time I figured that if no one got TB from him he didn't have TB. After reading about TB, I found out that most people with latent TB never develop the disease, so for years I wondered if I had latent TB, but never got tested. When I told smokers or anyone else about this they would typically look shocked and try to get away from me. I asked a few of them why people tend to be terrified of TB, but not of tobacco. One of them threw away his cigarette and ran back into the tobacco store. Over time I think I figured out the hilar granulomatous disease problem. Latent TB often causes granulomas in the hilum (root of the lung). If there's no apical involvement (each lung has an apex at the top of the lung) then he most likely didn't have active TB. Latent TB isn't contagious, but active TB is. It seems that the terror associated with TB is because its contagious and its believed that lung cancer isn't. I remember seeing something about the Tasmanian Devil facial cancer on TV and wondered if any more contagious cancers were found, so I did a search and found those links I listed before.
 
Eh ... people tend to be more terrified of everything nowadays. We owe it all to medical science ... and aggressive advertising.

Same grandparents didn't blink an eye when the neighbors invited their kids over for a chicken pox party ...

Hang on to your hats folks ... a lot of parents are hot to trot about not exposing the next generation to the horrors of vaccination. I imagine a lot of so called "historical" diseases will be making a comeback.
 
sKiZo said:
Same grandparents didn't blink an eye when the neighbors invited their kids over for a chicken pox party ...

I imagine a lot of so called "historical" diseases will be making a comeback.
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Well Chicken Pox is one thing, Polio is a whole different thing.
 
Not to forget, chicken pox mutates into shingles. I can tell you from experience, that can be NASTY! And anyone who's had the pox is at risk!

Polio is making a comeback as well. Significant increases reported in 10 countries, and it's getting outside their borders. We're vaccinated ... mostly.

My mother had that when she was a kid ... it scarred her for life. Word of caution to those who think it's nothing to worry about ... it's never dead, it's just contained ...

Kind of off topic though ... I now return control of your television monitor ...
 
botrytis said:
doesn't mutate - sorry. It affects nerve cells. it is similar getting chicken pox as a child and getting them as an adult - in adults it can cause sterility. Just different affects due to age.
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Maybe "mutate" is the wrong terminology ... "evolve" might be more appropriate. Semantics aside, Chicken pox IS the delivery vehicle ... if you've had it, you ARE at risk for shingles.

Research begun in the 1950s has shown that when we recover from childhood chickenpox infections, the virus that causes the infection, varicella zoster virus, remains latent in nerve cells.

What causes reactivation of the virus is unclear, but as we age, experts believe the immune responses that keep varicella zoster virus dormant in the nerves weaken with age. One in three people will get shingles during their lifetime, and at least half of all people 85 and older have had the ailment.

When you get a shingles rash, it typically involves a particular “dermatome,” that is, the skin area supplied by the involved nerve usually on one side of the body or face. However, in some cases the shingles rash can be widespread. Before the rash appears, people may have nerve symptoms of pain, itching, burning, or tingling. The rash has blisters that scab over in about a week. Although shingles isn’t contagious, the virus can spread to others and can cause chickenpox.

http://www.webmd.com/vaccines/features/shingles-chickenpox

Fun fact: Shingles onset is usually attributed to "skin trauma". Come to find out, a severe sunburn can be a trigger. That's what they figure got me.

Another fun fact, long as we're on the subject. The new vaccine has a good track record, even preventing recurrence if you've already had the virus go active. Only caveat is it needs to be benign for six months after an episode before you get the shot. I can guarantee you, shingles is NOT something you want ...
 
How about those mad scientists doing the dirty to the Syrian hamsters?

What I fear is some nerd with a handy dandy Junior Geneticist Recombinant DNA Lab (as seen on TV!) mixing up a batch of this and that, creating some new super bug that all the old bugs aspire to be ...

Behold ... the face of our doom ...

parents-mag-scientist-birthday-party-e1384081339911.jpg
 
Splatter Pak said:
I recently read an account by a woman who had taken care of her aunt, who had lung cancer and was coughing. In due time, she had lung cancer and was coughing. Other cancers, the internal kind, are probably not contagious - only if cancerous cells make the jump to a new host.
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.....is there any way lung cancer could be airborne transmitted?....surely not.....
 
mulester7 said:
.....is there any way lung cancer could be airborne transmitted?....surely not.....
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Don't know, but scary to think about. The transfer of one viable cancerous cell from one host to another could do it. My ex-wife has Barrett's Esophagus, in which she threw up so many times that stomach cells have colonized her esophagus, a pre-cancerous condition. Is person to person possible? Maybe...
 
botrytis said:
People are moving around (who were not vaccinated and are carriers) and many children (in our country) now are not getting vaccinated for polio because it was eradicated in this country. This is the problem with people NOT getting vaccines.
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I don't know, maybe this is the problem with people moving around.:scratch2:
 
Splatter Pak said:
Don't know, but scary to think about. The transfer of one viable cancerous cell from one host to another could do it. My ex-wife has Barrett's Esophagus, in which she threw up so many times that stomach cells have colonized her esophagus, a pre-cancerous condition. Is person to person possible? Maybe...
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Cancer patients can't donate organs, probably because inserting cancer
cells directly into healthy a body would be very bad, regular person to person contact on the other hand probably isn't enough.
 
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