Peto’s Paradox

The second possible explanation is called a hypertumor. This hypertumor which may sound intimidating is just a tumor of a tumor(named after the hyperparasite (the parasite of a parasite)). Like mentioned in the introduction of cancer, normal cells are required to cooperate with other cells. The formation of cancer can be described as a breakdown in cooperation. The birth of a selfish cell that only cares about itself. The cancer now free from the system of apoptosis, now have a higher tendency to mutate, and eventually one of the cancer cells would mutate enough to think of itself as an individual, creating the cancer of a cancer. The limiting growth factor of these cancers is how much nutrients it’s getting. Cancer cells trick the body to redirect blood vessels to speed up its growth. But, since there are now 2 different cancer cells, they compete for this nutrient source. The new cancer would redirect the blood vessels from the original cancer to themselves which would starve the original cancer and kill them off. This process can repeat indefinitely as long as the host continues to live. For large animals, this tumor can be negligible in size. For example, a 10g tumor would take up a much significant portion of a rat’s body, than it would for a human and the same thing could be said for a whale, in which 10g for a whale would be comparable to nothing. It is possible that larger animals have a lot of these hypertumors, but they constitute such a small portion of their body mass that it hardly becomes a problem.