Quotes & Sayings About Cancer Cells

The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive all these years clinging to the frail hope that these memories of mine were nothing but a dream or a delusion. I have struggled to convince myself that they never happened. But each time I tried to push them into the dark, they came back stronger and more vivid than ever. Like cancer cells, these memories have taken root in my mind and eaten into my flesh. — Haruki Murakami

Cancer cells have had so many other things go wrong with them, genetic, non-genetic changes, that those cells, one of the things they then get selected for is that they have lots of telomerase because now the telomeres in those cells get maintained. — Elizabeth Blackburn

He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body. He advocated abolishing crude technologies such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy and keeping gentler technologies such as solar power and small-scale hydroelectric power. He believed in the gradual de-urbanization of modern metropolises by distributing the population more evenly in self-sufficient small towns and villages. Relying on the gentler technologies, he would build a new agricultural society. — Liu Cixin

Cancer cells have a lot of other things that are really wrong with them, and we should never forget that these are cells that have become deaf to all the signals that the body sends out, such as you can multiply a certain amount, you can be in a certain place in the body, where to stay, where to move, and so on. — Elizabeth Blackburn

You've got to get away from the idea cancer is a disease to be cured. It's not a disease really. The cancer cell is your own body, your own cells, just misbehaving and going a bit wrong, and you don't have to cure cancer. You don't have to get rid of all those cells. Most people have cancer cells swirling around inside them all the time and mostly they don't do any harm, so what we want to do is prevent the cancer from gaining control. We just want to keep it in check for long enough that people die of something else. — Paul Davies

Every generation of cancer cells creates a small number of cells that is genetically different from its parents. When a chemotherapeutic drug or the immune system attacks cancer, mutant clones that can resist the attack grow out. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

One reason milk consumption may lead to cancer risk is insulin-like growth factor, IGF-1 (not to be confused with bovine growth hormone, rBGH). Milk contains IGF-1 for good reason: milk is designed for babies, and IGF-1 helps us grow. IGF-1 affects growth, as well as other functions, and is normally found in our blood. Higher levels of IGF-1, however, appear to stimulate cancer cells. — Alison Stewart

The moment you are born your death is foretold by your newly minted cells as your mother holds you up, then hands you to your father, who gently tickles the stomach where the cancer will one day form, studies the eyes where melanoma's dark signature is already written along the optic nerve, touches the back where the liver will one day house the cirrhosis, feels the bloodstream that will sweeten itself into diabetes, admires the shape of the head where the brain will fall to the ax-handle of stroke, or listens to your heart, which, exhausted by the fearful ways and humiliations and indecencies of life, will explode in your chest like a light going out in the world. — Pat Conroy

Cancer is not something confined to human beings. It's found in all multi cellular organisms where the adult cells proliferate, so it's widespread in the biosphere. It's a phenomenon that is deeply related to the history of life itself, so by studying cancer I think we can illuminate the history of life itself and vice versa. — Paul Davies

You don't want to inhibit cell division. You want to inhibit cell division in the cancer cells, and even that is not really where you want to do it. You actually want to destroy the cancer cells, which is a different matter altogether. Just stopping them isn't enough - you really want to kill them. — Tim Hunt

Nitric oxide production by immune cells is one of the key mechanisms that our bodies use to destroy diseased cells. Enhancement of these types of immune responses is seen consistently with many medicinal mushrooms that have been tested by cancer researchers. — Paul Stamets

Hate is like cancer, separate from the normal cells, devouring and not being nourished, annihilating itself along with everything it attacks. — Madeleine L'Engle

When are we going to say cancer is cured? I'm not sure when that will happen, if that will happen because cancer is a very slippery disease and it involves a vast number of cells in the body and those cells are continually mutating. — David Baltimore

Such a strange thing. What was terrible for a healthy fetus has been wonderful at defeating the cancer cells. — Geraldine Ferraro

Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. "Migratory cancer cells" are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion.
Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political.
It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!! — Wilhelm Reich

The (cancer) cells, technically speaking, are immortals. The woman from whose body they were once taken has been dead for thirty years — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Leukemia was a malignant proliferation of white cells in the blood. It was cancer in a molten, liquid form. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

We'll be able to have very intelligent, little robots with computers going inside our bloodstream, keeping us healthy from inside, destroying cancer at the level of one cell. — Ray Kurzweil

Cancer start when cell in the body being to grow out of control.Cells in nearly any part of the body can become cancer, and can spread to other areas of the body.So you have no need to worried about kidney cancer because we provide the best treatment of Kidney Cancer in Los Angeles. — Cancercenter

Cancer essentially lives in us and becomes activated at some point, and then cells begin to psychotically divide. Initially, the cancer cell looks like other cells and the body invites it in. — Eve Ensler

The study of how substances alter gene expression is part of the field of epigenetics. Some chemical exposures appear to turn on and turn off genes in ways that disregulate cell growth and predispose for cancer. From this perspective, our genes are less the command-and-control masters of our cells and more like the keys of piano, with the environment as the hands of the pianist. — Sandra Steingraber

Anti-corruption policies are like cancer curing treatments. They affect good cells, say good people, in the short run; but make the life of a nation flourish in the long term. — Vikrmn

They also knew that there was a string of DNA at the end of each chromosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they're almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer times our cells have left to divide before they die. By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa's immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta's chromosomes so they never grew old and never died. — Rebecca Skloot

Your body thinks radium is a great thing to pack into bone - where it kills some cells outright and scrambles the DNA of others, causing problems like cancer. — Sam Kean

Human nature means battling constantly between being completely self-absorbed and trying to be a communal creature. Nature makes you a communal creature. The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell. And mostly, we're not made up of cancer cells. — George Lucas

The bad news is that my thin melanoma has something called mitosis, which means the cancer cells are dividing and multiplying even as I write. My thin melanoma has already spread outside of the tumor and into the deep layers of skin. — Jane Green

Astonishingly, in spite of decades of research, there is no agreed theory of cancer, no explanation for why, inside almost all healthy cells, there lurks a highly efficient cancer subroutine that can be activated by a variety of agents - radiation, chemicals, inflammation and infection. — Paul Davies

It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I wish it was possible to smear cancer cells onto his arse. — Jenny Downham

In recent years, using tissue samples from themselves, their families, and their patients, scientists had grown cells of all kinds - prostate cancer, appendix, foreskin, even bits of human cornea - often with surprising ease. Researchers were using that growing library of cells to make historic discoveries: that cigarettes caused lung cancer; how X-rays and certain chemicals — Rebecca Skloot

Cell division allows us as organisms to grow, to adapt, to recover, to repair - to live. And distorted and unleashed, it allows cancer cells to grow, to flourish, to adapt, to recover, and to repair - to live at the cost of our living. Cancer cells grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves. — Anonymous

We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells. — Norman Mailer

This was my fourth summer with Luke, and every year I watched as all that good, healthy outdoor activity - running, surfing, golfing, kite boarding - multiplied the golden flecks on his nose like cancer cells. — Jessica Knoll

Bristol-Meyers Squibb has reported success with monatomic ruthenium to correct cancer cells. Same with platinum and iridium, according to Platinum Metals Review. These atoms actually make the DNA strand correct itself, rebuilding without drugs or radiation. Iridium has been shown to stimulate the pineal gland and appears to fire up 'junk DNA,' leading to the possibility of increased longevity and reopening aging pathways in the brain. — James Rollins

Cancer cells are fixed at an age where they are still too young to have learned the rules of the society in which they live. As with so many immature individuals of all living kinds, everything they do is excessive and uncoordinated with the needs or constraints of their neighbors ... they are reproductive but not productive. — Sherwin B. Nuland

I have witnessed people transform cancer cells into healthy cells simply by thinking about them. I have witnessed human minds affecting the physical world in myriad ways. And once you see that happen..once this becomes a part of your reality, then some of the miracles you read about become simply a matter of degree. — Dan Brown

Hate is a cancer that spreads one cell at a time. — Dave Pelzer

Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is thegrowth of madness denied. — Norman Mailer

What we do in the laboratory is we try to design drugs that will not just eradicate cancer cells but will eradicate their homes. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

My relative examined you, observed a few of your normal body cells, compared them with what it had learned from other humans most like you, and said that you had not only a cancer, but a talent for cancer. — Octavia E. Butler

Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The very effect of X-rays killing rapidly dividing cells - DNA damage - also created cancer-causing mutations in genes. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Curing cancer affects good cells in short run too but makes a life flourish in long term. Curing corruption affects good people in short run too but makes a nation flourish in long term. — Vikrmn

The universe is your attendant. It will bestow you with the silverest of its sunshine, coolest of moonlight and the most fragrant air. Each drop of water that goes into your thirsty body will turn into God's nectar that will nourish the cells of your body and make sure that you shine once again! — Sanchita Pandey

If you kill the Ravana in you, it's like killing the healthy cells along with cancer cells. Guru with Guitar. Happy Dussehra. — Vikrmn

Curing cancer affects good cells too in the short run but makes a life flourish in the long term. Curing corruption affects good people too in the short run but makes a nation flourish in the long term. — Vikrmn

Tobacco smoke contains chemicals that weaken the body's immune system, making it more susceptible to disease and handicapping its ability to destroy cancer cells. — Michael Greger

The late Alan Gregg pointed out that human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled ... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago ... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical ... reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem. — Marston Bates

Cancer cells come pre-programmed to execute a well-defined cascade of changes, seemingly designed to facilitate both their enhanced survival and their dissemination through the bloodstream. There is even an air of conspiracy in the way that tumours use chemical signals to create cancer-friendly niches in remote organs. — Paul Davies

The most dangerous cancer cells are actually the ones that are more like stem cells, which have this ability to produce themselves over and over again. More and more cancer biologists say stem-cell-like cells in cancers are the most dangerous. — Elizabeth Blackburn

Nelson-Rees had since been hired by the National Cancer Institute to help stop the contamination problem. He would become known as a vigilante who published "HeLa Hit Lists" in Science, listing any contaminated lines he found, along with the names of researchers who'd given him the cells. He didn't warn researchers when he found that their cells had been contaminated with HeLa; he just published their names, the equivalent of having a scarlet H pasted on your lab door. — Rebecca Skloot

The first observation of cancer cells in the smear of the uterine cervix gave me one of the greatest thrills I ever experienced during my scientific career. — Georgios Papanikolaou

If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it's an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that's true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. — Helen Caldicott

I believe that we are going to have a much deeper appreciation of what kinds of abnormalities in cancer cells and in the surrounding cells that feed and respond to cancers are vulnerabilities that will allow us to make better predictions of which kinds of drugs will work to treat these cancers. — Harold E. Varmus

The thymus produces three types of cells: B-cells, T-cells, and my favorite, NKs. NK stands for 'natural-killer,' also called macrophages. They will attack anything. They'll devour a virus, burst cancer cells, whatever it takes." McAlister said, "So if a healer in Tibet stumbled onto a combination of herbs that boosts the thymus' ability to produce NK cells, it could create a sort of super-immune system. — Hunt Kingsbury

As a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology put it: What we must first remember is that the immune system is designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid out own cells. With few exceptions, the immune system does not appear to recognize cancers within an individual as foreign, because they are actually part of the self. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis. — Patrick Soon-Shiong

It's been said that mistletoe extract enhances immune function, which increases the production of the immune cells. When administered as a form of therapy for cancer, the extracts are given by injection under the skin, into a vein or directly into a tumor. — Chris Kilham

I would imagine that fighting an unwelcome colonial occupation is like fighting a malignant cancer. Destroying the cancerous cells one by one becomes a necessity for one's very survival. Shooting down members of a colonial occupying force one by one is the exact equivalent of destroying those cancerous cells. And to some extent, one assumes, more satisfying to those trying to be rid of the cancer. — Dimitris Mita

Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal. — Rebecca Skloot

Cancer vaccines are in the future. And they could be very effective. Checkpoint blockade, which is acting your immune system to recognize those cancer cells and kill them is another very promising approach and there have been some checkpoint blockade drugs out in the market now that will release the brake on T lymphocytes, the T lymphocyte is your major killer of tumor cells. — Laurie Glimcher

The worst part is when cells feel so threatened by their chemically marinated surroundings, that they decide to mutate as a defensive mechanism, and start to reproduce without taking their immediate surroundings into account. This mutation is called cancer. — Gudjon Bergmann

The only things that are immortal in this world are government programs and cancer cells in petri dishes. — Jim Babka

I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know. — P. J. O'Rourke

Cancer is really a DNA disease ... We have these certain genes that prevent our cells from growing out of control at the expense of the body. And it's a pretty good, robust system. But if a couple of these genes fail, then that's when cancer starts, and cells start growing out of control. — Sam Kean

You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven't you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you've seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?" She made a tiny spitting sound. "You can always get some more people. they reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It's the axiomatic truth of our times. — Richard K. Morgan

Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons. — Peter Kreeft

My chief aim was to combat the view that there can be no true morality without supernatural sanctions. So I argued at length that the social, or altruistic, impulses are the real source of morality, and that an ethic based on these impulses has far more claim on our allegiance than an ethic based on obedience to the commands of a God who created tapeworms and cancer-cells. — Margaret E. Knight

The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: — Liu Cixin

Broccoli is incredible. It can prevent DNA damage and metastatic cancer spread; activate defences against pathogens and pollutants; help to prevent lymphoma; boost the enzymes that detox your liver; target breast cancer stem cells; and reduce the risk of prostate cancer progression. — Michael Greger

Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body's extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs.
Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases! — Patch Adams

"Christ" states that those who see themselves as "separate" and not "divine" hinder humanity's ability to spiritually evolve. Those who deny their own "divinity" are like "cancer cells" in the body of God. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

Fasting essentially slows (sometimes stops) rapidly dividing cells and triggers an 'energetic crisis' that makes cancer cells selectively vulnerable to chemo and radiation." There — Timothy Ferriss

Probably all of us have random rogue cancer cells floating around in our bodies but by and large, in the majority of cases, our immune system circulates and acts as a surveillance mechanism and kills off those few tumor cells. — Laurie Glimcher

Sugar is so toxic and potentially deadly that scientists are now advising that there should be health warnings on products containing it. Sugar is highly addictive, it is an anti-nutrient, it disturbs blood sugar levels, it depresses immunity, it depletes magnesium, it creates disease-promoting acid conditions, it stresses the adrenal glands, it promotes candida, and it feeds cancer cells. It also raises levels of ghrelin, the 'hunger hormone', leading to over-eating and excess weight. — Sally Beare

Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I am not a scientist. I have never analyzed the far reaches of the solar system through the lens of a telescope nor scrutinized cancer cells under a microscope. — Gordon Gee

We know cancer is caused ultimately via a link between the environment and genes. There are genes inside cells that tell cells to grow and the same genes tell cells to stop growing. When you deregulate these genes, you unleash cancer. Now, what disrupts these genes? Mutations. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, then, is quite literally trying to emulate a regenerating organ - or perhaps, more disturbingly, the regenerating organism. Its quest for immortality mirrors our own quest, a quest buried in our embryos and in the renewal of our organs. Someday, if a cancer succeeds, it will produce a far more perfect being than its host - imbued with both immortality and the drive to proliferate. One might argue that the leukemia cells growing in my laboratory derived from the woman who died three decades earlier have already achieved this form of perfection. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Surgery for early stage non-small cell lung cancer is standard treatment and is likely curative. Yet, fewer blacks than whites undergo surgery for the disease, leading to a higher mortality rate among blacks with lung cancer, — Henry Ford

Hormonal changes permanently alter the breast's structure. And when a pregnancy is terminated through abortion, the process is interrupted, which leaves cells in a sate of transition. And they say cells in this state have a very high risk of becoming cancerous. So the woman's chances of developing breast cancer later in life my be greatly increased. — Francine Rivers

Everyone in the audience knew what that meant. On top of saying they'd possibly wasted more than a decade and millions of research dollars, Gartler was also suggesting that spontaneous transformation - one of the most celebrated prospects for finding a cure for cancer - might not exist. Normal cells didn't spontaneously become cancerous, he said; they were simply taken over by HeLa. — Rebecca Skloot

Wherever something is wrong, something is too big. If the stars in the sky or the atoms of uranium disintegrate in spontaneous explosion, it is not because their substance has lost its balance. It is because matter has attempted to expand beyond the impassable barriers set to every accumulation. Their mass has become too big. If the human body becomes diseased, it is, as in cancer, because a cell, or a group of cells, has begun to outgrow its allotted narrow limits. And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutzdity, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because huma beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units such as mobs, unions, cartels, or great powers. — Leopold Kohr

This act is as horrible as killing a cancer cell. It must be done for the sake of the future of the whole. So be it: be prepared for the selection process which is now beginning. We, the elders, have been patiently waiting until the very last moment before the quantum transformation, to take action to cut out this corrupted and corrupting element in the body of humanity. It is like watching a cancer grow; something must be done before the whole body is destroyed ... The destructive one fourth must be eliminated from the social body. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

When in organism there are cancer cells, they have to be removed, not helped because they're "so young" and "so creative". — Janusz Korwin-Mikke

Cannabinoids like cannabidiol (CBD) can prevent the cancer cells from spreading by switching off a gene called Id-1. Studies showed that the rapid increase in these cancer cells was decreased to a certain extent after treating with cannabidiol. — Thomas Longe

Leukemia is cancer of the white blood cells - cancer in one of its most explosive, violent incarnations. As one nurse on the wards often liked to remind her patients, with this disease even a paper cut is an emergency. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

A fundamental premise in cancer therapy is trying to identify how the metabolism of cancer cells differs from normal tissue. When differences are identified, it often paves the way for treatments that will disrupt the cancer's metabolism while sparing normal tissue. — David Perlmutter

Activating oxygen can produce compounds called radicals that put oxidative stress on cells. Such stress could ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases. — John Simon

This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement. — Harold Pinter

Why target two and a half million innocent newborns and children?" Barbara Loe Fisher asks of the hep B vaccine. The implication behind the word innocent is that only those who are not innocent need protection from disease. All of us who grew up during the AIDS epidemic were exposed to the idea that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality, promiscuity, and addiction. But if disease is a punishment for anything, it is only a punishment for being alive. When I was a child, I asked my father what causes cancer and he paused for a long moment before saying, "Life. Life causes cancer." I took this as an artful dodge until I read Siddhartha Mukherjee's history of cancer, in which he argues not only that life causes cancer but that cancer is us. "Down to their innate molecular core," Mukherjee writes, "cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves." And this, he notes, "is not a metaphor. — Eula Biss