A new look at the causes of cancer?
In this month’s Scientific American, Peter Duesberg talks about a new theory of cancer genesis. He speculates that changes in chomonsones cause cells to go malignant, not mutations of genes.
Duesberg has a reputation as an outsider in scientific circles because of his maverick theory about the cause of AIDS, but he established his credentials by being one of the first scientists to discover the role in mutations of key genes involved in cell function regulation. His new theory could get around some of the problems with the dominant gene theory of cancer, including the fact that asbestos does not cause genetic mutations, but it does cause cancer.
