OK, perhaps to unmuddle what "genetic" means. Cancer cells have particular key mutations compared to the somatic genome. Those mutations are being analyzed in high detail. Someone affected with a particular type of cancer (from the myriad types) will, in ALL their cancer cells, possess the critical mutations that are not possessed by all…
OK, perhaps to unmuddle what "genetic" means. Cancer cells have particular key mutations compared to the somatic genome. Those mutations are being analyzed in high detail. Someone affected with a particular type of cancer (from the myriad types) will, in ALL their cancer cells, possess the critical mutations that are not possessed by all other regular body cells.
In that sense, cancer is "genetic in the first order".
Cancer is "genetic in the second order" inasmuch as the cell possesses remarkable mechanisms to protect against cancer. A major example is the two BRCA genes involved in DNA repair. Should such DNA-repair genes themselves be crippled - by mutations that someone can INHERIT from parents - then the corresponding proteins will be crippled, or not even created, and that someone will be at much higher statistical risk of having a cancerous mutation slip by unrepaired.
It is "genetic in the second order" in the sense that you can genetically inherit a significantly higher risk of developing the ("first-order genetical") cancer, due to a fault in the built-in mechanisms that were supposed to stop that.
And third, there are indeed carcinogenous molecules that can mess up DNA replication, more than the DNA-repair is able to fix. Asbestos is a famous example, but anyhow, there's many -- and I suppose you can file them under "toxins", though "toxins" is a quite wide umbrella. And yes, how good your body is at getting rid of those, will obviously alter your probabilities of developing cancer. The mechanisms for "getting rid of those" are varied and complex in their own right, and technically also genetically inherited (for better or worse).
None of that is a reason to dispute that cancer is a genetic disease, both in terms of being caused by changes to a cell's genome, and in terms of anyone's resistance to that being genetically inherited. Of course no-one disputes the cancerogenousness of asbestos, cigarette smoke etc, but that doesn't make it "not a genetic disease".
OK, perhaps to unmuddle what "genetic" means. Cancer cells have particular key mutations compared to the somatic genome. Those mutations are being analyzed in high detail. Someone affected with a particular type of cancer (from the myriad types) will, in ALL their cancer cells, possess the critical mutations that are not possessed by all other regular body cells.
In that sense, cancer is "genetic in the first order".
Cancer is "genetic in the second order" inasmuch as the cell possesses remarkable mechanisms to protect against cancer. A major example is the two BRCA genes involved in DNA repair. Should such DNA-repair genes themselves be crippled - by mutations that someone can INHERIT from parents - then the corresponding proteins will be crippled, or not even created, and that someone will be at much higher statistical risk of having a cancerous mutation slip by unrepaired.
It is "genetic in the second order" in the sense that you can genetically inherit a significantly higher risk of developing the ("first-order genetical") cancer, due to a fault in the built-in mechanisms that were supposed to stop that.
And third, there are indeed carcinogenous molecules that can mess up DNA replication, more than the DNA-repair is able to fix. Asbestos is a famous example, but anyhow, there's many -- and I suppose you can file them under "toxins", though "toxins" is a quite wide umbrella. And yes, how good your body is at getting rid of those, will obviously alter your probabilities of developing cancer. The mechanisms for "getting rid of those" are varied and complex in their own right, and technically also genetically inherited (for better or worse).
None of that is a reason to dispute that cancer is a genetic disease, both in terms of being caused by changes to a cell's genome, and in terms of anyone's resistance to that being genetically inherited. Of course no-one disputes the cancerogenousness of asbestos, cigarette smoke etc, but that doesn't make it "not a genetic disease".