The Tale of the Cancer Cells

The Tale of the Cancer Cells

Once upon a time there was a multi-organ cancer dwelling in a human body. The Cancer Cells (CCs) were alarmed about the deteriorating health of the person they were inhabiting, so they decided to call a global corporal summit to see what could be done to address the situation. All the different tumors were represented at the summit, and all the wisest of the wise CCs were there, too. The situation was getting critical: the human body was no longer producing enough sugar for all the CCs; global warming of the body, fever, was approaching worrisome limits; some vital organs were beginning to fail.

In the CC world, when one CC is born it has necessities that must be fulfilled: sustenance, security, and room to grow. Furthermore, there existed a system of rights and liberties that guaranteed access to new resources plus freedom of movement for CCs throughout the human they were inhabiting. The tumors also competed amongst themselves to be the biggest or strongest, and to acquire more of the decreasing resources of the person they inhabited, giving way to bitter disputes between them.

The CC SUMMIT was held in the colon tumor, the largest and most influential of the human body and where according to tradition the first CC appeared. From the very start of the summit there arose heated debates on what to do about the problem, with a wide variety of points of view.

The most religious CCs asserted that the human they inhabited was there for them, that their god had created this human body exclusively for their use and enjoyment, and to satisfy their needs; they should therefore follow the divine mandate to increase and multiply as it was written from the time the first CC appeared. Anything else would be blasphemy.

Everybody agreed that CCs were superior to all other cells in the human body. The fact that they had overthrown the immune system ratified the claim. Some tumors considered themselves superior to other tumors based on their size, color, or location. There were also supremacist movements within a single tumor where one group of CCs felt superior to the others. There were even some territories of a tumor that defended their independence based upon specific differences.

The newest and most expansive tumor CCs proclaimed that the human belonged just as much to them, that they also had the right to grow like other tumors. As it was in the beginning, so now they were living off the organ they had just conquered and claimed the same quality of life as the first tumors.

The schools for little CCs taught their pupils to be more competitive than other CCs and tumors. Everything was based on rankings, records, and hierarchies. The CCs that won got all the resources, while the losers could hardly survive and tried to migrate to other tumors.

Yet another group, the CC scientists, pointed out that the very nature of CCs from the beginning was always to dominate the human, adapt to his changes and multiply. And this would never change forever and ever, amen. It was written into the CC DNA that the strong dominate the weak and that only those that change will survive.

Next, the CC historians reminded the summit delegates that their ancestors had overthrown the human’s immune system and had been conquering the terrain organ by organ in extraordinary expeditions through the blood system with epic battles against white blood cells. All this so that today they could enjoy the entire multi-organ expanse.

The conservationist CCs warned about the need to leave a portion of each organ untouched and unconquered in order to observe both now and in future generations the marvels of the body they were inhabiting.

The organizational system for the most valuable resource, sugar, was called Sugarism. It was Sugarism that pushed them to conquer new organs and secure new supply at lower cost, thus continuing to grow their organizations. The CCs in charge of these systems made clear the necessity to improve efficiency and lower costs so that all CCs could have access to a dignified life, to their own piece of the flesh wherein to expand, each with enough food for their own families. For that reason, the mission should be to spread without delay to the few organs still unconquered, so as not to compromise the quality of life already attained. All this while still accumulating the sugar.

The Rights of CCs had been written down long ago and included the following articles:

  • Article 1. All CCs are created equal in dignity and rights, and since they are blessed with reason and conscience, all CCs ought to act fraternally with one another.
  • Article 2. All CCs have all rights and liberties, with no distinction whatsoever between types, color, size, host organ, religion, opinion, tumor origin or any other trait.
  • Article 3. All CCs have the right to life, liberty and security.

As the summit proceeded, some CCs called for sustainable tumor development, insofar as the human wasn’t being utilized efficiently, especially regarding squandered sugar supplies and CC wastes that were flooding the blood system at an alarming rate. Soon there wouldn’t be enough sugar to go around, while the CC population was due to double within a very short time. So they defined the concept of sustainability on behalf of the CCs in the tumors of the human body:

Sustainability consists in satisfying the needs of the current generation of CCs without sacrificing the capacity for future CC generations to satisfy their own needs, all while maintaining current rates of CC population growth.

All the declarations and principles established at the CC Summit could be summarized as follows:

  1. Continue to increase and multiply, obedient to your nature, your religion and your competition for power and resources, but do so in a sustainable way.
  2. Keep viewing the human you inhabit as your property with every right to unlimited exploitation, but in a more sustainable way.

The last day of the summit came, and one last meeting was held to make a final decision about what to do….

How do YOU think this tale will end?

  1. The Cancer Cells could not reach an agreement at the summit; they continued their internal struggles and their expansion until they finally killed off the both the human being and themselves.
  2. The human being fought back against all odds and held off the CC attacks, reactivating his immune system and decimating the CCs.
  3. The CCs realized how evil they were; they pushed the self-destruct button of the Apoptosis, died off and thus freed the human being from their existence.
  4. The CCs decided to stop increasing and multiplying; they changed their principles and made it their first step to maintain and promote the health of the human body they inhabited.
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