The insurmountable reality about cancer is that it is not amenable to science, being, what Weinberg 154 calls, trans-science. Not one known structural, biochemical or immunological feature helps in distinguishing a cancer cell from a normal cell. A cancer cell suffers from an incurable selfsameness. By this one feature of selfsameness, the cancer cell has as it were cured itself, once and for ever, of any selective action by radiotherapy or chemotherapy. A cancer cell carries in itself an indelible stamp of its own uniqueness - rendering itself neither susceptible to a specific drug nor preventable by a vaccine.
Cancer cells are, in the human or animal body, in an inexhaustible supply.
It is little wonder that patient with acute leukemia, even when bombarded with heavy doses of cell poisons over protracted periods, are never free of leukemia cells. This is a classic example of the cancerrealistic fact that whilst some cancer cells can be destroyed, a cancer itself cannot. A cancer cell's faculty of leaving its site of origin and migrating elsewhere is predetermined, individualistic, and unpredictable. The best we can do is to paraphrase an academic circumlocution on matter. 158 Cancer cell is, what it is, For it does, what it does.