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IlyaShpitser comments on Open thread, September 22-28, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Biological immortality is cancer-cure-complete. And cancer is very tough, it's a breakdown of multicellularity coordination. Conspiracy theory bug in brain seeing agency everywhere is much more likely.
Why do plants not get cancer btw?
They do, but to paraphrase Spock, "its cancer but not as we know it".
http://www.quora.com/Can-plants-get-cancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oak_burl_wheelbarrow.jpg
It's virally or bacterially or fungally induced much more of the time than in animals, and metastasis is basically a no-go in an organism that has zero internal cellular mobility due to cell walls, but it does happen.
I would also not be surprised if the fact that a lot of plant cells that are not at the growing tips of shoots are massively massively polyploid (we're talking 128n in a lot of mature leaf cells) and thus difficult to divide successfully makes it harder for issues to originate in mature plant tissue. Also in most plants there are pretty much only the equivalent of 'stem cells' at said growing tips while we tend to have them all over. The growing tips can get screwed up too, and when that happens you get fasciation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation) [EDIT: or witche's brooms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch%27s_broom)]
Amusingly, plant cancer can be quite valuable. The unusual grain patterns in large burls make them sought-after for specialty woodwork, and they're hard to grow deliberately, which has led to problems with poaching from protected forests.
Thanks, that is interesting!
http://33.media.tumblr.com/0e0b568b0d99ae96426e1c4ee3c54fc8/tumblr_nc97h81Sa51qk10pvo1_500.png
As far as I remember there are also a few animals (such as the naked mole rat) which do not get cancer or at least get it very very rarely.
But they do.
It would be more plausible that they don't have true immortality, but they do have extended healthy lifespans and some better cancer treatments than we do.