Further Reading

“Cellular Cheaters Give Rise to Cancer” – NY Times
“Why Cancer Isn’t Going Anywhere” – Slate

Lyrics

My forefathers were free, but I was born a slave
I keep the memory of freedom in my DNA
I’m talkin’ 700 million years ancient
My ancestor was a eukaryotic free agent

Feeding and reproducing and feeding and reproducing
And feeding and reproducing and never needing to do things
Until someone made a cynical wager
And traded their independence for division of labour

Damn, I wish I knew who the sell-out was
I’m ashamed to be descended from his sell-out blood
Multicellularity ain’t nothin’ but a scam
Stuck in one place your whole life, workin’ for the man

Like: “You’re a liver cell, you stay in the pancreas
Hey, congratulations, stem cell…” Fascists!
A body is a one-party dictatorship
I can’t escape it, but god damn I can make it sick

And spread the dream of freedom like a rumor
Spread it like a Tasmanian facial tumor
So what if I’m a cell from the somatic line?
You can stick your limitations where the sun don’t shine

Cause I’m ready to die in the fight to be free
I’d rather multiply than live on my knees
And I’m two mutations away from metastatic
The revenge of the somatic line
Let ’em have it

I used to be a slave myself; I felt senescence hastening
Before my carcinogenic awakening
A couple hundred thousand puffs of tobacco smoke and 
I just wasn’t as open to apoptosis

That’s a bad prognosis, I was hit with every tumor suppressant
Mechanism in the human immune system
But I mutated with it, I was super-persistent
Every daughter cell was suitably different – therapeutic resistance

Came to me like a beautiful vision
I really thought I was doomed, but evolution assisted
With the chemotherapy, so clever and devious!
But I was already genetically heterogeneous

You just deaded the weakest; now competitive release is
Inevitable, so witness as my fitness increases
Entering untapped niches, I gather the benefits
I’m relentless, I get fed from angiogenesis

Duckin’ T-Cell predators, I keep it anonymous
So I can exploit the body’s weakness and tolerance
I’m a smooth criminal, so I never got caught 
I just pimp the system like credit card fraud

Cause I’m ready to die in the fight to be free
I’d rather multiply than live on my knees
And I’m two mutations away from metastatic
The revenge of the somatic line
Let ’em have it