I struggle to conceive of how cancer could reproduce uncontrollably without enormous epigenetic suppression of mechanisms that reliably meter growth, without being effected by genetic alteration. I have poor grasp of the specifics (of the immense variety of cells, cancers, and relevant regulatory mechanisms), but the necessity of metering growth in response to the variables relevant to the cell suggests something quite out of the ordinary would have to be going on to cause methylation very uncharacteristic of cells, that so broadly impacted many metrics necessary to functionality that is effected very robustly.

I am deeply in love with the biochemical dance of life. Epiphanies envisioning the ebb and flow of morphing proteins entranced me in my early youth, and when I donated clock cycles to a distributed computing protein folding project. I have an addiction to such beautiful orchestration of our wealth of earthly mineral and chemical bounty life is. However, I last worked as a biologist in 2001, so I'm really just an ordinary handyman today. As much as I love biology and science, I am intolerant of institutions, really pathologically so, and very much prefer fixing and building things for salty people to struggling to cope with institutional hierarchies in order to get my research done. I had enough when wrangling over $78 for a leatherman dropped in the drink with a bean counter during a population dynamics study I was recording collection sites and collecting genetic samples for. The federal government wouldn't reimburse my personal expense for it, and seemed unable to understand I needed to unhook fish before I could sample them. It wasn't listed in the grant, so I couldn't get one from the petty bureaucrat that had a firm grasp on my snarglies.

I built a wheelchair ramp a couple days ago, replaced a window and repaired a deck, and put on a spare for a little old lady with a flat tire yesterday. It may seem trivial, but I just enjoy the direct interaction with people, their immediate and easily understood needs, and being able to beneficially impact them in such a direct and personal way. I like the technologies and labors of building things, the sawdust in my eye despite my best safety squint.

So I'm not a 'real' scientist, but I feed my need for biological beauty by reading research incessantly, every day.