Let’s say, for instance, someone with lung cancer coughs, and a few cancer cells are present in the aerosol, and is breathed in. Or, if someone has a cut, and lives with a family member who has cancer, and cancer cells end up in the cut.

Cancer cells are a bit like HIV in that they evade the immune system by releasing some chemical to trick it. Hence why in an infamous unethical experiment after the war, people injected with another person’s cancer developed cancer. So even if it is another person’s cancer cells, the cancer will metastasize in the body.

This would make cancer the most overlooked infectious pandemic in all of human history.

    • chewypoops@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Chester Southam injected live cancer cells into people who already had cancer to see if their immune systems would respond a certain way. His experiments do not in any way prove that cancer can be spread between people. His subjects had cancer before he injected them.

      What Southam is mostly known for is being an immoral quack who experimented on people without their consent. He was convicted of multiple crimes related to the cruel human experiments you seem to admire for some reason.