Jeru M Manuel, Ph.D.
The word ‘cancer’ is widespread across the globe and definitely rings an alarm in almost every individual. It is an unfortunate problem which no one ever thinks of encountering in a lifespan. So only a collective few do take the pain to understand the disease as a process, how does it occur or why is it uncontrollable. Using the limits of my imagination I attempt to present this deadly condition with an analogy of a probing menace of our times, a signature prevalent in both developing and the developed modern cities.
Let us consider the human body/ any living organism which is made of units called cells, to be like a population which is made up different people. The population keeps multiplying in a cyclic manner in line with natural laws of life and death, with a proportion of individuals reproducing and another proportion of them dying all the time. Among the currently prevailing society, mixing of cultures/ migration has led to diversification and community formation. This is an ongoing process ever since human kind started migrating out of our ancestral continent of Africa. Any living organism, I am considering the human body in this article just for the ease of it, is homologous to the societal populations. It is composed of millions of cells, diversified and evolved into specific functional tissues.
For the progress of life and growth to occur, cells have to be continuously functioning in their roles and undergoing the process of division and elimination. As we relate it to population, we understand growth occurs likewise, where every individual form the tapestry, each one works in their respective roles with utmost coordination. The decisions of smoothly running the whole body/ unit are taken care of by the central coding unit in a cell known as DNA. On the other hand, population is operated by the government under a set of codes called the constitution.
In a realistic scenario growth has to be balanced, in the sense it cannot go on un-checked as every individual has a limit to utilizing non-renewable resources. Population growth has to be regulated by organizations to ensure optimum usage and or efficient/smooth functioning. Similarly, there are regulations which occur at the cellular level too. The key control for regulation within a cell lies in a set of around 300 genes known as DNA repair genes. This mechanism contributes to tackling the errors that occur naturally and it functions to protect the cell and control their growth. But, we are well aware of the fact that in the practical world most often things cannot be controlled all the time. Some of our governing authorities go on to commit errors, or are pushed into such a situation due to a larger forceful exterior influence. Similar failure in the regulatory mechanisms leading to accumulation of such errors within a cell are termed as mutations in scientific terms.
Well, the situation in cellular environment is not that worse, up to a certain level, mutations are taken care of by the cells. When this crosses a point of threshold, the cells go out of limit in replicating. In simple terms, some regulators take a back seat and remain relaxed due to external pressures for a very long time, leading to irregularities in the cascade of reactions. During the process of troubleshooting the other group of regulators would need to be activated to control the situation, but the initial miscreants tend to outnumber, dominate and take control of the situation. Therefore, dysregulation becomes the norm and the body starts accepting extra cell growth as natural. Similar things happen in a population too, people get used to troubles in the surrounding and start accepting that as natural.
As a personal melancholy, I relate this to the currently prevailing situation in the city I was born in, it has had its share of growth but down the line a regulator failed in its function leading to a population explosion! Only time will tell, whether a therapy both at the macro level of a city and the micro surrounding of cell would be beneficial. This kind of troubled biological state within certain cells and tissues in our body which primarily occur as an adaptation to the inner and outer environment is termed as Cancer!
