Speculations on the Origins of Life and the Mechanism of Cancer

BRIEF PROPOSALS SPECULATIONS ON THE ORIGINS OF LIFE AND THE MECHANISM OF CANCER H. A. SAROFF* Present theories on the origin of life on earth [1] speculate that in the course of about 109 years complex organic molecules accumulated in sufficient concentrations to form an assembly of nucleic acids and proteins of sufficient size to generate a self-duplicating system. A single event, or a small number of events, is considered to have been enough to start the evolutionary process. At the time when the original "primordial soup" generated the start of the evolutionary process, the supply of nutrients was relatively low, and the more primitive life forms, in order to survive, were required to synthesize nutrients by processes involving sunlight and the simplest of available compounds. Higher life forms evolved once the base of the more primitive life forms was established. An extension of these ideas allows for the development of a speculative mechanism for such disease processes as cancer. We assume that a limited number of loci of nutrients with sufficient complexity to start the life process occurred in about 109 years. Once life began, the concentration of nutrients probably first decreased in the primitive environment and then gradually increased as life forms proliferated and evolved. Thus the probability of additional loci for the start of life should become greater as more and more organisms populate the earth. It is doubtful, however, that the nutrients in a decaying log would give rise to some life process in less than 10e years if we assume the original "primordial soup" required 109 years. An additional factor of 104 might be obtained if we consider the situation of a small locus in some tissue within a living organism. Consider a small infection within an active mammary gland with cells being disintegrated within the exceptionally rich nutritive environment. Present in the small locus would bé tiny fragments of nucleic acids, proteins, and enzymes along with some ATP. If a "primordial soup" could generate primitive life in 109 years, I speculate that such a locus might generate a very small primitive virus in the order of 102 years. Consider a very small primitive virus analogous to a typical antibiotic. A virus with perhaps from ten to 100 nucleotides, replicating and finally building up a sufficient concentration in a local region, might perturb a gene in a manner in which an antibiotic might perturb an enzyme. * National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland 20014. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1972 | 307 The properties of such spontaneously generated small viruses would probably vary considerably. Only a few would be both nonantigenic and pathological. When such a set of conditions prevailed, the result would be the diseased state generalized as cancer. With the speculations just considered, the viral diseases could be both infectious and noninfectious depending upon the finer details and requirements of the primitive virus. Spontaneous generation of the pathological agent, as described, could lead to a diseased state with properties consistent with many of the puzzling aspects of cancer. REFERENCE I. A. I. Oparin. The chemical origin of life. Springfield, 111.: Thomas, 1964. 308 I H.A.Saroff · Brief Proposal A NOTE ON THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL V. SIOMOPOULOS, M.D.* The problem designated as the problem of free will appears to derive, in a broad view, from the apparent incompatibility Of the cause-and-effect relationship between man's behavior and unconscious motives, as well as constitutionalgenetic influences, and his subjective feeling of freedom to choose among alternative possibilities of action. Here we will make an attempt to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory empirical facts: psychic determinism and the feeling of free will. We propose to leave aside the area of complicated ethical dilemmas and examine relatively simple volitional acts. We may start from the purely subjective fact that I feel free to initiate certain actions, for example, to move my arm or my leg. Here it does not seem difficult to ascertain where my sense of free will comes from. The temporal sequence of the two events, namely, that of the experience "I want to move my arm" followed by that of the action, along with the fact...