their flu shot ever there we go
how about who forgets to wash their
hands after they use the restroom
major Wyatt put your hand down that’s
that’s gross okay so you you you you
definitely you sir that’s disgusting and
thank you for coming to my TED talk
entitled what contagious cancer thinks
about or tells us about what we know and
first and foremost I’d like to thank
that Emma Hannah who’s heard the speech
so many times that she can probably give
it better than I can and also my parents
who from swim team to soccer tryouts
taught me that probably the most
fulfilling things in life are the ones
that scare you just a little bit and so
diving back in cancer spreads through a
process known as metastasis which is
Latin for beyond stillness and through
this process breast cancer cells for
example could break off be transported
throughout the body and deposited in a
new location where they would continue
to grow these cells are still breast
cancer cells only now they’re
metastasized breast cancer cells and
through this theory it is not illogical
that the next host or organism that
these cells invade does not necessarily
have to be in the same body and so
cancer first documented nearly 3,000
years ago by the historian herodotus as
he sought to explain the mysterious lump
in his queen at haces breast has always
been thought to be non transmissible but
what if cancer
instead of being a disease that dies
with its host and is therefore
evolutionarily constrained from being
the most dangerous disease in history
what if you could catch cancer from
someone else this idea is already
apparent in the animal kingdom most
notably with Tasmanian devils these
devils can be afflicted with Tasmanian
devil facial tumour disease or DFTD in
which facial tumors like the ones you
see here can be spread from devil the
devil via biting mating and feeding and
tragically this disease has become so
severe that the Australian Government
has placed the devil’s on the endangered
species list for eight years and they
now face extinction and most important
to our core concept today is that
researchers concluded that every single
DFTD tumour is genetically identical
which means that every single tumour is
the same tumour which all started on a
single Tasmanian Devil about fifty years
ago and have since spread to many more
and interestingly scientists found a
second form of contagious cancer with
symptoms almost identical to this one
about two years ago so these devils have
developed two forms of contagious cancer
within really the last 30 to 50 years
which really prompts a question exactly
how uncommon is this disease now sheep
can also be infected with a disease
known as yaagh see Ekta which is
Afrikaans for running sickness and since
the scientific community isn’t literate
in Afrikaans most scientists have
simplified it to ovine pulmonary edema
carcinoma which isn’t simple whatsoever
so we’ll call it opa and sheep with opa
produce a tumor filled lung fluid like
the one you see on the left which is
frequently discharged from the mouth and
if unaffected sheep come in contact with
this discharge they then develop the
same exact type of lung tumor and oddly
Dolly the sheep on the right the first
mammal ever to be cloned contracted opa
and was subs
we euthanized and there are also various
other animals that have no that are
known to be susceptible to contagious
cancer to include these clams but as you
can see clams are pretty boring whether
they have cancer or not
so we don’t really need to talk about
them and so researchers have also been
able to manipulate metastasis and the
most important work in this field was
conducted by dr. Peyton ruse who
injected a contagious sarcoma and the
Plymouth Rock hens and what he did was
he extracted fluid from sarcomas already
growing and hence filtered the fluid
through ultra fine sieve with holes so
small that not even individual cancer
cells could fit through and then
injected the remaining material into
unaffected hens which then developed the
same exact type of cancer even though
they hadn’t been exposed to any
particular cancer cells and he won the
Nobel Prize in 1966 for what he called
the roost sarcoma virus and also
researchers were able to transfer a
contagious sarcoma between Syrian
hamsters through only spontaneous
physical and social contact and even
observed one tumor lived for 11 years
and passed between two hundred and
eighty-eight hamsters and there have
also been various human case studies
which augment these findings and all of
this data all this research pulled
together sparked the cancer virus theory
the cancer virus program grew into a new
500 million dollar budget
Life magazine proclaimed that cancer may
be infectious contagious cancer now has
over ten point six million hits on
Google and two months ago the New York
Times proclaimed that contagious human
cancer is in the realm of medical
possibility so cancer must be a
constantly evolving disease one that is
fine-tuned Darwin’s theory of evolution
over thousands and thousands of years
and by viewing cancer is this ultimate
product of Darwinian selection proposes
that even if some cancer
are not by nature contagious now they
could eventually evolve to become so in
order to be more effective in the future
so cancer with its crab-like hold on the
bodies and minds of America is probably
the most daunting disease of the 21st
century and its ability to baffle
researchers has made it almost
impossible to find a cure but perhaps
the most concerning facet of the entire
theory of contagious cancer is the
potential implications that it brings
about how can we spend over 100 billion
dollars a year on research how can we
have access to almost 3000 years of data
and how can this disease be the most
frightening diagnosis for a family to
receive and yet a fundamental concept
can you catch it from someone else
eludes us what if everything we know
about a disease that killed over 500,000
Americans last year has changed how then
are we ever able to state definitively
that we know anything at all to what
extent can we prove something given that
seldom few subjects have as much time
and resources devoted to them as cancer
clearly manpower money time and effort
do not always bring about knowledge so
it has become apparent that a broader
reality is the new norm cancer evolves
and in order to understand this
evolution our knowledge too must evolve
knowledge is often revealed to and more
often concealed from us by nature and
time and we are left to discover life at
their discretion the earth isn’t flat
for example everyone knows that leeches
can’t suck sickness out of your body the
universe doesn’t revolve around the
earth
literally no one thinks that the body is
composed of solely phlegm and bile so
clearly it has not only contagious
cancers that can be spread between
organisms but contagious ideas as well
and while we frequently think that we
control the future that we possess the
knowledge necessary to guarantee health
and understand the world life often
reveals to us that nothing is as it
seems
knowledge is very often much less finite
than we would hope and the quote the New
York Times from February 2016 Nature is
infinite in its surprises so cover your
mouth when you cough because you really
don’t want to catch cancer [Applause]