Origin and cure of cancer

Cancer cells are different from normal human cells. The somatic mutation theory(SMT)interpreted the differences as the consequence of gene-mutations. The theory further adopted a basic tenet of Darwinism and postulated that cancer cells grow because they are the "fittest" that survive in natural selection. We emphasize instead the Margulisian theory of evolution to interpret the origin of cancer, and considered the differences inherited: The cancer cells have cancer genomes that had their origin from that of a parasitic bacterium in a prokaryote host. The genomes of the two were fused by symbiogenesis at the time of the "oxygen revolution" some two billions years ago. The host evolved into the protists, fungi, plants, and animals, and each eukaryote species with its distinctive genome. During the same time-interval, the original parasitic bacterial genome has evolved into the cancer genomes of the cancerous stem cells in eukaryotes. The current somatic mutation theory (SMT) assumes that mutations of the human genome have caused cancer, but SMT cannot identify the genomic sequences in the human genome that encode the tumor growth. It cannot explain why the alleged mutations should have caused the cancerous cells to multiply out of control. SMT also cannot explain why cancer is a metabolic disease. The theory cannot explain why the cancer mortality-rate should be correlated to nitrite pollution. The theory can also not explain why the substitutions of nitrite-free waters as the source of public water-supply in China should have rescued the life of many terminal cancer patients. The theory has not adequately many of questions of the "mysterious" of cancer. On the contrary, our biologic evolution theory could have an answer of all relevant facts, including those that the SMT cannot adequate explanations. Our theory has been formulated after The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA) scientists have found that the cancer genomes have genomic sequences that are not found in the normal human genome, mutated or not mutated. The cancer genomes encode a different mode of metabolism and the growth and replication of tumor cell. Our theory postulates that cancer has its origin when a "hibernating" cancerous genome in cancerous stem-cells is activated by nitrite. A genomic sequence encoding anaerobic and/or hypoxic metabolisms gives cancer cells energy and biomass for their growth and replication. Other genomic sequences encode their uncontrolled growth and replication, and other hallmarks of cancer. The presence of nitrite in ppb concentrations hinders the normal bodily functions of metabolism and of replication. This fact makes nitrite, by definition, a poison. The difficulty of recognizing chronic poisoning by trace constituents in public water supply is exemplified by the epidemic of arseniasis of Bangladesh. The postulate that cancer should be treated as a toxicological disease of nitrite-poisoning is a working hypothesis that provides an explanation why cancer-morality rate is reduced by half in areas in those parts of China where the normal public water-supply is substituted by standardized deep ground water(SDWW). The hypothesis needs another postulate to explain nitrite-poisoning does not affect all who drink the tap water of public water supply, but only some persons each year. We have to assume that the new cases of cancer have resulted when the stem cells that have been called upon to repair cell-damages include one that is cancerous. The accumulation of unconventional postulates has led experts to dismiss the biologic evolutionary theory as a fairy tale from the Arabian Nights. In fact, the working hypothesis has been verified by a Chinese program to substitute nitrite-free standardized deep water as the source of public water supply at places of cancer epidemics, where the cancer-mortality rate was reduced to half after such substitution. A few experimental hospital trials confirmed that terminal cancer patients could be cured when they drank nitrite-free water daily. We dispute an establishment claim that terminal cancer patients are incurable, and present and postulated hypothesis that cancer should be treated as disease of chronic nitrite poisoning. We call on fellow scientists to carry out experiments and clinical trials to test the hypothesis that at least half of the terminal cancer patients could be cured when the source of their potable water supply is nitrite-free. At the same time, we should integrate the important contributions of devoted medical scientists during the past half-century into a new synthesis.