TOWARD CULTURAL ONCOLOGY: THE EVOLUTIONARY INFORMATION DYNAMICS OF CANCER

extends the theory of immune cognition to include an elaborate tumor
control mechanism constituting the principal selection pressure acting
on pathologically mutating cell clones. The interplay between them
occurs in the context of an embedding, highly structured, system of
culturally-specific psychosocial stress. A Rate Distortion argument
finds that larger system able to literally write an image of itself onto
the disease process, in terms of enhanced ‘risk behavior’, accelerated
mutation rate, and depressed mutation control. The dynamics are
analogous to punctuated equilibrium in simple evolutionary systems,
accounting for the staged nature of disease progression.

We conclude that ‘social exposures’ are, for human populations,
far more than incidental cofactors in cancer etiology. Rather, they are
part of the ‘basic biology’ of the disorder. The aphorism that ‘culture
is as much a part of human biology as the enamel on our teeth’ appears
literally true at a fundamental cellular level.

KEY WORDS: Cancer, cellular cognition, culture, evolution, informa-
tion theory, interpenetration, mutator, punctuation, renormalization, second
order selection, tumorigenesis, universality.

Introduction

Cardiovascular disease and cancer are major causes of mortality in the
United States structured by ‘race’, class, and gender [28]. Cancers of the
breast and prostate - ‘hormonal’ cancers - particularly show large disparities
by ethnicity and economic class in incidence among young adults, stage at
presentation, and mortality rate (e.g. [39]).

Although certain genetic alleles predispose individuals to higher suscep-
tibility for these cancers (e.g. [23] for prostate cancer), recent changes of
incidence and mortality in time and geography indicate genes alone do not ex-
plain the expressed population-level patterns. At present, African-American
women under age 35 suffer an approximately two-fold higher age-specific rate
of breast cancer, compared to white women, and the mortality rate is about
three times higher [44]. For prostate cancer, African-American men have a
2-fold higher mortality rate, and 50 percent higher incidence rate, than their
white counterparts [43].

During the 1980’s, when ideologies of individualism particularly influ-
enced US scientific thinking, interest in health differentials waned. In its
stead, the life style doctrine arose: people get sick because they don’t take

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