Got your attention? I'm sure Harmon can provide an appropriate image to illustrate the story.
Scientists discover world’s oldest cancer has survived – passing from host to host – for 11,000 years
The vast majority of cancers arise from one mutated cell and, if they spread throughout the body, die when the host itself is killed.
But there is a genital cancer in dogs which, with the ability to transfer from host to host through sexual activity, has been able to survive for more than 10,000 years.
It is one of only two such transmissible diseases found in the natural world, and experts at the University of Cambridge said studying it could provide humans with vital defence if other cancers took on the ability to spread between hosts.
The cancer, which causes grotesque genital tumours to dogs around the world, still contains the DNA of the original animal in which it appeared more than 10,000 years ago.
Professor Sir Mike Stratton, a senior author on the project and director at the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute, said: “The genome of the transmissible dog cancer will help us to understand the processes that allow cancers to become transmissible."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...s-9081189.html
So we can look forward to transmissible genital cancer once the scientists have this figured out.