At a dinner party this evening overheard someone talking with a man who researches ways to cure cancer. The cancer researcher was asked what causes cancer. He explained that the very same wild capacity for growth that enables children and embryos to grow by leaps and bounds can also end up going wrong. Random mutations sometimes trigger cells to act as though they are in a growth spurt, but in inappropriate ways that veer wildly out of control. The result is unpredictable and often fatal run-away tissue growth.
He went on to explain that this is largely a disease that strikes older people, because there is little genetic selection in our species for preventing such mistakes in people who are beyond child-bearing age. Mostly, our DNA just selects for individuals to survive long enough to propagate. After that — in evolutionary terms — you are living on borrowed time.
Deciding to crash the conversation, I suggested that maybe the long-term solution to solving cancer lies in a different direction. Rather than focusing only on curing cancer in individuals, I proposed that research also be done to extend the age at which we can make babies. That way whatever happens to older people will go into the gene pool. The tendency toward cancers in such older people will gradually be weeded out.
He agreed that in principle this should work. Of course we also realized that this won’t be of any use to anyone alive today, or even anyone alive in a hundred years. But over time, it will do the job.
Maybe, in some far off distant future, our descendants will thank us.