Nothing fascinates me more than cancer, both as a ruthless killer and philosophical gold mine. Cancer, mutated cells which replicate far faster than our nature intends, strangles veins, organs, and tissue until its host dies. What’s so interesting though, is that this cause of death is, for all of us, the very cause of life.

Metabolism is the essence of life, the minute chemical reactions in cells which are the source of reproduction, growth, and the creation of all the other compounds needed to sustain life. In human beings, the young have faster metabolisms which cause them to grow more quickly and sustain an active lifestyle. The more exercise you get, for example, the higher your metabolism; you will consume more food to fuel your body. While the direct result of a higher metabolism, growth, benefits individual organisms, they cannot continue rapid growth indefinitely.

A common question among humans is why we get older, and the answer seems to be that our species has evolved to protect us from cancer. As we age, our metabolism slows down, which in turn slows down our lifestyle. Cuts heal more slowly, our minds process information more slowly, and our behavior errs towards cautious deliberation over aggressive action. Why this happens depends directly upon the process of replicating cells.

Each time we create a new cell, the original copies its DNA, but the process isn’t 100% perfect. At times, mutations occur and while some are harmless, mutations which cause unmitigated reproduction and growth are what make up cancer. The higher our metabolism, or the more quickly our cells regenerate and reproduce, the higher the chance that something goes wrong and spoils the whole party.

So we have evolved to age in order to prevent this. Slow things down and eek out a couple more years to increase the odds of survival. Were we to live ‘forever’ with the metabolism of our youth, then we may in fact die far sooner since the probability of a cell mutation increases by orders of magnitude

So think about cancer as what it is. Literally the process that allows us to live is the same process that ultimately kills us. What logically follows, is that destroying cancer requires something that kills us as well since the cells we want to destroy are our own. And the paradox continues. We use radiation to destroy cancerous cells, because radiation at high enough doses tears apart both malignant and benign cells. It also, however, causes mutations in the cells it affects below the lethal threshold. Those mutations could very well end up becoming cancer themselves. While we fight the death which stems from life, we create new death in its place.