The idea that the human species can be seen as—or is—a cancer on the planet Earth is a horrifying idea. Cancers don’t stop being cancers until the “host organism” is dead. It ceases to function. What is our “host organism?” The biosphere. We can’t kill it. But we can modify the biosphere to the point that we can’t survive, and neither can many other organisms.
It is a matter of perception, perhaps, whether the process of forming a scientific hypothesis is similar to the process in medicine of making a diagnosis (forming a hypothesis about the patient’s illness) and whether a metaphor or model has any role in the formation of a scientific hypothesis. Examples and discussions abound concerning the essential roles of models and metaphors in the formation of a scientific hypothesis.
The concept of cancer itself is metaphorical. Hippocrates and Galen, both Greek physicians, compared the tumors they saw to crabs—carcinos (κα´ρκι´νος) or carcinoma (καρκι´νωμα) in Greek. Celsus, a Roman physician and medical writer, translated this as “cancer,” and Galen called it oncos (swelling). Other physicians later used a location metaphor for the spread of cancer (“metasta- sis”) from meta—“change”—and stasis—“steady” or “placement.” The idea of “invasion” is known through history from armies that “invade”—leading to the application of this term to the metaphor of cancer. Rapid growth—and uncontrolled rapid growth—can be observed in malignant tumors.
We have therefore examples of embodied experience—crabs, rapid growth, changed locations, invading armies—applied to what physicians saw happening to their patients. The microscope allowed pathologists to see the invasion of malignant (Greek: κακοη´θης : “to be born bad; wicked; nasty; vile”; Latin “mal” = bad, “gn” root of “to be born”) cells into surrounding tissues. The original healthy cells are then replaced by malignant cells that have no form and do not look like the original cells—they are “de-differentiated” or “undifferentiated” as distinguished from the “differentiation” of cells and tissues formed in the process of embryogenesis (“from an embryo”) that have a specific and characteristic form. The “undifferentiated” cells are “anaplastic”—without form. The origins of the idea of cancer, carcinoma, and malignancy were metaphors applied to a disease process. The scientific and medical study of cancer is oncology.
But in this current discussion, the disease process—malignancy—has become an archetype, an intellectual framework for a process independent of scale—the organism or the Earth. Referring to the human species and its activities as a malignant process is an application of the archetype—or metaphor—of cancer to a global superorganic phenomenon of the human population, of which rapid, uncontrolled growth has been and remains a pathognomonic feature.
Pathologists grade cells and tissues by the degree of “de-differentiation.” The concept of malignancy as a dynamic process is different from the details of malignancy in organismic tissues. There are no precise parallels.
“The human species is like a cancer,” is a simile, not an analogy. In his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” biologist Paul Ehrlich referred to “...the cancer of population growth....” This comparison was also a simile.
The concept of cancer (of which there are at least 200 kinds) is, from a medical point of view, an idea about a set of dynamic relationships, an aggregate of signs and symptoms, or, in some respects, a syndrome (Greek: “running together”). For physicians, it is a particular model of pathology, such as metabolic disease, infectious disease, parasitic disease, nutritional deficiency, etc. When a physician makes a diagnosis of cancer (of whatever kind), or of any other disease process, it is essentially a hypothesis because every physician knows that one must remain skeptical of any diagnosis until the evidence is all in and the diagnosis is unequivocal.
One learns as a physician to append a list of “rule-outs” after the diagnosis, as in “rule out” acute appendicitis, ruptured ovarian cyst, cholecystitis, ruptured diverticula, or some other disease process that may have a similar presentation. One of the first things to do in making a correct diagnosis is to exclude other competing diagnoses by finding evidence against them (in this case, to “refute” an alternative hypothesis).
It is not unusual for physicians to learn that their initial diagnosis was wrong (!) and to adapt the new diagnosis to conform to the “clinical findings.” Translating this process of thinking and analysis to the concept of the human species as a planetary disease—cancer—the idea that the human species is a malignant “epiecopathologic” process—a cancer “upon the ecosystem”—is both a model in reference to the basic concept of malignancy and a hypothesis.
The idea that the human species is a malignant process on the planet is a refutable hypothesis because (a) we don’t know absolutely for sure that this is true, even though it appears to some of us to be true, and (b) it is clearly refutable because we, as individuals, at least, are capable of making decisions and changing what we are doing. We know how to do something different, and whole movements and organizations are devoted to doing something opposite to malignancy.
Human societies, at the community and national levels, are capable of making political decisions. These decisions about public policy may affect this process in ways that refute the hypothesis and therefore change the diagnosis. We can think, and we can decide not to be a cancer. Those are the only two ways that we (the human species) are different from a cancer. But they give us the possibility of changing the diagnosis. Here are some examples:
We can decide to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and destroy that ecosystem, or we can require more efficient gas mileage for automobiles and thereby reduce the need for oil so we don’t have to drill there. We can determine that chlorofluorocarbons are destroying the thin layer of ozone in the stratosphere that protects us from harmful UV light, and we can decide to stop making them.
We can give women birth control to prevent unplanned pregnancies, or we can shoot or imprison the doctors who do the abortions for women who have unplanned pregnancies because they don’t have birth control, and we can put women in prison for having abortions. That is a policy choice before the American public right now, and it is the current policy in Oklahoma and in El Salvador. A lot of people lean in favor of shooting the doctors. I know, because I have been one of the potential targets for 50 years. Five of my medical colleagues have been assassinated for helping women control their fertility including one of my best friends. This is not an imaginary possibility. It is a serious policy choice for people who are Christians and claim to be “pro-life,” which, for some, means killing doctors who perform abortions. Their policy, clearly stated on innumerable occasions and carried out with great effectiveness, is to kill doctors who help women control their fertility. This is a matter of public record. This is a policy choice and strategy for those who hold this view. That this view is in conflict with the basic foundations of Western civilization is not a problem for those who hold it.
If we decide we need more people and need as many more people as possible, we can give people tax breaks and other incentives for having babies, and we can prevent women from having access to fertility control methods such as contraception and abortion. We can stop doctors and nurses from helping women control their own fertility or kill doctors and nurses if they don’t follow instructions.
If we decide there are enough human beings on the planet already, aside from other personal medical issues, we can pay for family planning programs to help people prevent pregnancies so they don’t have children they don’t want or can’t care for and which the society cannot or will not support. We can help women end pregnancies that are afflicted by serious medical complications. Or not; we can let them die. That is the policy in Ireland and in Poland. That’s a specific policy choice that is a matter of public controversy. It’s a choice that decides presidential and other elections in the United States. It is not a reasonable choice, but it illustrates the difficulty of achieving voluntary fertility control in human society by reasonable means.
In the first half of 2021, there were 549 bills introduced by Republican legislators in 47 American states to restrict access to abortion services. This includes a state law signed by the Republican Governor of Texas in May 2021 that makes abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most women know they’re pregnant. These bills and laws help Republicans get elected to powerful positions in the American government. That’s the purpose of these bills and laws.
More recently, as the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the United States was overturned, states controlled by Republican leaders are beginning to make performing or having an abortion a criminal homicide punishable by prison sentences. These laws are politically popular. These are specific examples of some policy choices regarding the control of human fertility, and ultimately, of the component of the malignant process that is the rapid growth of the human population. The fact that some of these policy choices may have profound and possibly catastrophic or fatal consequences for the lives of individual women is considered irrelevant by those opposed to abortion.
In fact, aside from the broad public health and individual health benefits of access to safe abortion services for women, we know that access to safe abortion services is critical to the overall limitation of fertility that is essential to restraining or stopping population growth. Concerted and even violent opposition to these services is one of the specific, obvious obstacles to changing the diagnosis that we face.
A problem with these various alternatives is that human societies and their governments have shown themselves to be almost completely incapable in recent experience of making rational choices and arresting the processes that we can identify as malignant: rapid, uncontrolled growth, invasion, and destruction of adjacent (or any other) ecosystems, metastasis, and de-differentiation.
As a species, we are indifferent to this process and paralyzed when faced with choices. With human fertility, the default public policy position is to encourage it as much as possible. In the area of fossil fuels, the official policies are to subsidize and encourage the use of fossil fuels in large quantities. The official policy of the government of Brazil is to destroy the Amazon rainforest as quickly and as efficiently as possible. These policies enhance the diagnosis of malignancy.
With exceedingly rare exceptions, cancers continue to be malignant until the host organism dies. One of the major challenges of modern medicine is to find effective treatments much less cures for any kind of cancer. Many remain impervious to medical treatment. It is not in the nature of cancer to stop being cancer. Does this characteristic apply to us? So it appears.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR & CONTRIBUTOR
Warren M. Hern is a practicing physician in Boulder, Colorado, where he is also on the faculty of anthropology at the University of Colorado. His clinical and epidemiologic research has been published widely in scientific and medical journals, including BioScience and Population Studies. His public advocacy of reproductive rights has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS’ 60 Minutes, and other venues. He has conducted decades of research in fertility and population trends based in the Peruvian Amazon.
Reynard Loki is Editor, Chief Correspondent, and Writing Fellow for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food, and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Asia Times, Pressenza, and EcoWatch, among others.
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