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From trouble with the waterworks to deadly cancer, the prostate seems to attract trouble for men. Yet diagnosing problems in this small gland – let alone treating them – is no straightforward matter. Why?
In the 1970s, soft-shell clams started mysteriously dying off in Maine and the Chesapeake Bay. Years later, scientists identified the culprit: a bizarre form of cancer that spread like an epidemic. When people get cancer, it typically arises when some of their own cells gain mutations and multiply out of control. But the clams were being invaded by free-floating cells that came from other clams. The alien cancer cell multiplied inside its new victim, and then some of its descendant cells escaped
In the 1970s, soft-shell clams started mysteriously dying off in Maine and the Chesapeake Bay. Years later, scientists identified the culprit: a bizarre form of cancer that spread like an epidemic. When people get cancer, it typically arises when some of their own cells gain mutations and multiply out of control. But the clams were being invaded by free-floating cells that came from other clams. The alien cancer cell multiplied inside its new victim, and then some of its descendant cells escaped
There was a puzzling decline in the population of soft-shell clams in Maine and the Chesapeake Bay beginning in the 1970s. Scientists didn't know what had happened for years, but eventually they narrowed it down to a strange cancer that had spread like wildfire.Cancer develops when a person's own cells acquire mutations and proliferate uncontrollably. However, the clams were being colonised by cells that had broken loose from their hosts. Within its new host, the alien cancer cell proliferated, and eventually some of its offspring spread to other clams.
The cancer likely started off as an immune cell that mutated, multiplied and adapted to survive in the water.