Cancer is scary and worrying enough. A contagious one just might be too much. Scientists however claimed that the prospect of contagious cancer is not that implausible.
According to NY Times, various papers suggesting the eventual emergence of contagious human cancer now exist. Instead of being set off by the spread of viruses, cancer cells might travel from one host to another. Instead of the cancer cells dying with their host, these cells might thrive in the new bodies.
So far, this is known to have happened only under the most rare circumstances. A laboratory worker developed a tumor in her hand after she accidentally pricked herself with a syringe of colon cancer. A surgeon developed cancer when he also accidentally cut himself as he operates on a cancer patient. Some organ transplants also caused malignant cells to be transferred from one to another. However, the malignancy went no further than to these unfortunate individuals.
However, if animals will be the basis, a contagious cancer will not be farfetched. Some laboratory experiments showed cancer cells being transferred by mosquitoes from one hamster to another. Wild dogs, Tasmanian devils, and soft shell clams also experienced contagious cancers.
Majority of current experts would dismiss the idea of transmissible cancer and say the few examples are only aberrations. "They're flukes of nature," explained by Elizabeth Murchison from the University of Cambridge. "Our whole paradigm about transmissible cancers is that they're extraordinarily rare."
Still, some scientists have come forward to say that the possibility is there. "The possibility," they wrote, "warrants further investigation of the risk that such diseases could arise in humans."