Veni_Vidi_Legi
Veni_Vidi_Legi t1_iw53zdi wrote
Reply to comment by ObscureCulturalMeme in How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1
There are transmissible cancers too, like with dogs and Tazmanian devils.
Veni_Vidi_Legi t1_iw5qbzo wrote
Reply to comment by AkioDAccolade in How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1
> Isn't it possible that most cancers are transmissible given the right scenario?
Such a cancer would have to be able to survive exposure during the transmission process while also being in the right place and condition to transfer to a susceptible host site.
Once there, the immune system would almost certainly kill the more foreign looking cancer, as it almost always does for the more similar looking native cancers that arise in the host. But if it can evade the immune system, or if the immune system were missing, then it would have to find a suitable site and then maybe it can take hold.
So there would be a lot stacked against most cancers.