Peto's paradox

Peto's paradox is the observation that, at the species level, the incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism.[1] For example, the incidence of cancer in humans is much higher than the incidence of cancer in whales,[2] despite whales having more cells than humans. If the probability of carcinogenesis were constant across cells, one would expect whales to have a higher incidence of cancer than humans. Peto's paradox is named after English statistician and epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first observed the connection.

  1. ^ Peto, R.; Roe, F. J. C.; Lee, P. N.; Levy, L.; Clack, J. (October 1975). "Cancer and ageing in mice and men". British Journal of Cancer. 32 (4): 411–426. doi:10.1038/bjc.1975.242. PMC 2024769. PMID 1212409.
  2. ^ Nagy, John D.; Victor, Erin M.; Cropper, Jenese H. (2007). "Why don't all whales have cancer? A novel hypothesis resolving Peto's paradox". Integrative and Comparative Biology. 47 (2): 317–328. doi:10.1093/icb/icm062. PMID 21672841.