Hey everyone. I need to share with you a story that’s been unfolding right in front of me - a horrifying reality that’s more sinister than any ghost story, more unsettling than any tale of haunted houses or cursed objects. I’m a medical doctor, and my usual focus is human health, but today I want to tell you a tale that begins with our best friends, our canine companions, and ends with a very human horror.
Have you ever watched, or read, Pet Semetary? Or Poltergeist? Or any other of the myriad pieces of pop culture that attributes misfortune to ancient native american curses? It is a popular well to draw from, but despite what one may think there does indeed exist an ancient curse left by long- since deceased denizens of the americans- they just were not human.
Let’s step back in time to pre-Columbian America. Before the arrival of European settlers, the continents were home to indigenous breeds of dogs. These dogs had evolved in isolation from their Eurasian counterparts for thousands of years, leading to distinct breeds that were truly American. But they have long since gone extinct, outcompeted and replaced by breeds brought by the European settlers.
However, a relic from those extinct dogs, a deadly and horrifying echo, has survived. One of these prehistoric dogs developed a form of cancer. But this wasn’t your typical cancer - this was transmissible. It had the rare and terrifying ability to spread from one dog to another, a trait that has allowed it to survive to this day.
Transmissible cancers are rare in nature. Aside from this, only two other cases are known in mammals: one affects Syrian hamsters, and the other is a scourge on Tasmanian devils. But this canine cancer is unique for its persistence. It’s as if the spirit of the extinct dogs still lingers, exacting a deadly, biological revenge for their displacement.
I am sorry for my long digression, but there is a point to it; recently, I’ve seen a number of patients presenting with an aggressive sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that affects the connective tissues. Such a cluster of cases in a small area within a short span of time is unusual enough to warrant investigation.
My epidemological investigation led me to an unexpected and chilling link - all these patients had been treated in the same COVID ward during the pandemic. But the horror didn’t end there. The cancer cells from these patients, when analyzed, revealed almost identical DNA sequences that did not match the genetic material in the patients’ own blood samples. The conclusion was as shocking as it was inevitable - the cancer was transmissible, and it had jumped from one human to another.
The thought of a transmissible human cancer, lying dormant for years before adapting to its new host, is terrifying. The fact that it seems largely untreatable, and that patient zero remains unidentified, only adds to the dread. Who knows how many could already be infected?
And now, I can’t help but think of the frightening parallels between this new epidemic and the ghostly cancer that still haunts our dogs. What if this is the start of a similar narrative for us? What if this cancer evolves, as the canine cancer did, and becomes an inescapable part of our legacy? With our massive global population and the resultant vast biomass, this disease will have countless opportunities to mutate and adapt. Perhaps it will become airborn, or jump the species barrier?
I have no idea how many are already infected. I might well be. So might you for that matter. All the patients were old, with compromised immune systems. Perhaps healthy young people cant be infected or, more likely, they can be but the incubation period is rather longer.
I expect we`ll find out soon.