MAIN IDEA:

This book represents a very interesting approach to understanding the development processes of an organism during its existence as a system of semi-independent entities – cells that undergo a high-speed evolutionary selection process. From this approach comes a new understanding of cancer as the break in cooperation between cells when some cells start unstoppable resource acquisition at the expense of other cells:” cellular cheating.”. Here is the graphic representation:

MY TAKE ON IT:

To me, the evolutionary approach to cancer development seems potentially very productive for both understanding the nature of cancer and finding ways to avoid it and/or treat it. I would even expand and generalize these ideas to just about everything, from the development of technology to the functioning of human society. As long as key factors such as inheritance, variation, and selection are present, the process works similarly everywhere. When there is a necessity for group participation as a condition of survival, the multilevel selection inevitably kicks in. Correspondingly, it creates tension between individual and group selection within each individual that had to be resolved via cooperation in such a way that assures the survival of the group. Generally speaking, such cooperation could not possibly continue forever because any system would have some idiosyncrasies that violate the parameters of stability, leading to the system’s self-destruction. This book nicely describes how this process occurs in the human body when some of its cells become exceedingly selfish and, therefore, cancerous and kill the body. Similar processes occur at the level of human societies with similar results. We seem to be in the middle of this process, and it will be interesting to see how it works out.