The 2015 Charles Perkins Centre Annual Oration: The Deep Evolutionary Roots of Cancer

Cancer is the most studied phenomenon in biology, with over a million published papers, yet it remains poorly understood. In the USA alone, more than a trillion dollars has been spent on cancer research, but mortality rates remain little changed in several decades. Maybe progress is so slow because we are thinking about the problem the wrong way? For the 2015 Charles Perkins Centre Oration, celebrated theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and author, Professor Paul Davies proposes that by regarding cancer as an ancient biological phenomenon, as opposed to a modern disease, new approaches to therapy can be suggested. A Sydney Ideas event held on 4 December 2015 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2015/professor_paul_davies.shtml