Can I get cancer if I inject cancer cells into a healthy body?

What are the similarities between cancer cells and viruses?

First, they both have no so-called lifespan and can increase in value indefinitely.

Secondly, they both use other cells in the body as raw materials to synthesize what they need.

Finally, they are both destroyed by the human immune system.

So, can you "catch" cancer by injecting a virus into your body?

This experiment was conceived by scientists in the 1950s, and eventually, a scientist named Chester Southam experimented.

Chester Southam was a virologist and cancer cell researcher, and in his day, scientists believed that cancer was caused by viruses because some of the properties of viruses and cancer cells were so similar.

To test this idea, he experimented on mice several times, injecting cancer cells like a virus and observing what happened to the mice.

It turned out that the mice that were injected with cancer cells developed cancer.

This led Southam to conclude that cancer cells might be inextricably linked to a virus that could "infect" humans with cancer.

To obtain further human data, Southam secretly injected Hela cells, then a medical secret, into patients while treating patients.

The first one he used for his experiments was a leukemia patient. The site of Southam's injection was the arm, whereupon a tumor grew on this patient's arm.

Similar situations were seen in other patients, but Southam could not be sure if it was his own injected cancer cells that were working or if the experimenter's cancer cells were interfering with the experiment.

So he made an even bolder decision to inject cancer cells into healthy people, and his chosen subjects turned out to be prison inmates.

It seemed to Utham that these prisoners, because of their guilt, and thus wanting to redeem themselves, were often agreeable to such medical experiments.

As it happened, Utham recruited volunteers for a prison in the United States, and as a result, 150 people came alive to sign up.

Upham was given a large number of live experimental samples, so he injected cancer cells into the prisoners in batches, and the results were not what he expected.

At first, after being injected with cancer cells, the inmates involved in the experiment would indeed have early symptoms of cancer in their bodies, such as tumors.

However, after some time, these tumors would disappear automatically. After that, he injected cancer cells into these prisoners again and found that the tumors existed for a shorter period, and the time became shorter as more injections were given.

After doing more experiments like this, Utham also became freer and freer of worries, and he prepared prisoners with different physical qualities to verify whether the human immune system played a role.

He found that the weaker the prisoner's body, the longer the tumor existed after he was injected with cancer cells.

Through this series of experiments, Utham believed that cancer was not contagious and that injecting cancer cells into a normal person would cause him to show cancer symptoms for a short time, but he would soon recover under his immunity.

For people with very weak autoimmunity, injecting cancer cells will cause cancer. Thus Utham discovered a key research point, that is, cancer and immunity.

Just when he wanted to continue the experiment, an earthquake broke out in the medical community. It turned out that Utham's experiments with human beings were revealed, which sparked a discussion about human experimentation.

For a while, the storm of medical ethics overshadowed what Utham had discovered about the research.

The results of Utham's crazy experiments show that cancer is not a virus; it is caused by normal cells in the body that have undergone mutations, and that viruses are only one cause of the induced mutations, which are also known as carcinomas.

Cancer cells and normal cells are structurally the same, with a nucleus, cytoplasm, and cell membrane. The difference between them is that cancer cells have mutations in their genes that cause telomerase, which was no longer secreted, to reappear, thus allowing cancer cells to appear immortalized.

Normal somatic cells have a segment at each end of the chromosome called a telomere, which is made up of special base pairs designed to prevent chromosomes from sticking together during the process of replication.

Telomeres are divided in half and assigned to new chromosomes when they divide, so you can tell how many times a cell has divided based on the length of the telomeres.

In general, somatic cells have a set of programs inside their DNA that control normal apoptosis to make room for newborn cells.

However, the cancerous cell has a mutation in this set of genes, and it will no longer undergo apoptosis, using nutrients from normal cells in the body to provide itself with energy.

The mutated genes also cause the telomeres of the cancer cells to not shorten as they divide, and at this time the cancer cells do not look like viruses, but rather like embryonic cells at the beginning of life.

It turns out that when life is still an embryo, telomerase is synthesized on its own to ensure that the structure at the end of the chromosome does not shorten and to serve as a repair.

When the individual has matured and separated from the mother, the synthesis of telomerase in the somatic cells stops, and from that moment on, life has a life span.

The birth of a cancer cell is a "reincarnation" of the cell after a mutation, returning to the embryonic period and entering the point of infinite division.

The key difference between cancer cells and embryos is that cancer cells cannot differentiate, whereas embryonic cells do.

Humanity's research on cancer cells could not have been possible without the contribution of one woman, Henrietta Lacks, who is famous in medical history.

Although she died tragically of cervical cancer at the age of 30, the cancer cells she left behind were cultured by scientists to replicate 50 million tons to provide samples for various cancer research, which are Hela cells.

However, Hela cells were extracted behind Ms. Lax's back, unknown to her loved ones and descendants.

This incident also became a scandal in medical history and directly contributed to the establishment of the common rules of the International Medical Association.

It can be said that Ms. Lax's contribution was so great that various monuments have been erected in her honor.

It is worth mentioning that Ms. Lax's cancer was caused by the HPV virus, and scientists successfully used Hela cells to develop the HPV vaccine, which has helped hundreds of millions of women to stay away from cervical cancer.

Based on Utham's experiments, it can be concluded that the best way to remove the cancer is to rely on the body's immunity and that after immunization, the body produces antibodies against specific cancer cells.

The human immune system has three processes, the first of which is the skin and mucous membranes, which are specialized for foreign germs and do not play a role in the removal of cancer cells.

The second barrier, phagocytosis, can swallow up cancer cells when the body is healthy, but because cancer cells are derived from normal cells in the body, it is confusing to phagocytosis, resulting in missing cancer cells.

Therefore, the burden of removing cancer cells is all on the last hurdle, which is the various immune cells.

They are much more capable of recognizing and accurately finding cancer cells and keeping them in mind, and even producing the appropriate antibodies so that the next time such cancer cells appear, then the immune system will strike directly and quickly with precision.

For example, the HPV vaccine for women is designed to wake up the immune system to achieve the effect of being able to quickly identify the relevant cancer cells in the future.

However, the reality is that people who suffer from cancer have certain problems with their immunity and therefore need medical technology to assist in removing the cancer cells, which is chemotherapy.

It uses radiation to kill the cancer cells, while at the same time killing a large portion of the normal cells.

Therefore, after chemotherapy, it is often a lose-lose situation and the body is greatly affected, which is why chemotherapy can cause hair loss.

But the good thing is that stem cells exist and can differentiate the cells needed in the subsequent recovery process.

Unfortunately, many people's cancers are already advanced when they are discovered, which means that the cancer cells have spread and taken over the body, and trying to kill them all with chemotherapy is likely to kill them altogether.

Cancer cells contain the immortality that human beings have always hoped for. If human beings can eye clearly in the future which genetic mutation makes cancer cells immortal, then it may not be a dream for human beings to achieve immortality.