smoking
Cancer Cause or Cancer Contributor?
What causes cancer, and what contributes to cancer formation? These are two different concepts that overlap and influence each other.
A cause of cancer is a carcinogen. A contributor to cancer formation can be mutagenic but is context-driven by the strength and duration of exposure, genetic predisposition to cancer, and the collective burden of other environmental triggers.
Accumulating Cancer: Little Compromises and Big Implications
What if cancer, like so many chronic diseases, is an accumulation of little compromises?
Sometimes cancer has a big, blatant cause—like radiation exposure. Other times the cause is unclear and its inception insidious. Without an obvious etiology, conventional oncology tends to default to badly behaving genes as the cause of malignancy.