Chemputer t1_iwoiwzh wrote
Reply to comment by AkioDAccolade in How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1
Not particularly, not in humans, no. It's even one of the misconceptions/myths on cancer.gov not specifically that story you mentioned (I googled my best and couldn't find it), but that cancers are contagious.
If what you remember reading is actually what you read and it's actually true (not a knock on you, just far more likely for your memory to be your brain trying to confabulate a story from something different, possibly vaguely related. Our memory sucks, especially fuzzy ones, and our brain just fills in the gaps), perhaps it was a cancer caused by a virus or bacteria (which is very possible, some decent percentage -- I've read 15-20% but can't find a citation for that exact number -- of cancers are linked to viruses or bacteria) and said pathogen spread, then causing cancer. The cancer itself would not spread in that manner.
AkioDAccolade t1_iwok10y wrote
So I looked it up when I remembered it but I'm having difficulty finding the case study for a third time, but in the case I was remembering it was indeed a nurse that contracted it, however she was HIV+ (that she acquired during another accident, guess she would have taken the hint) which is the part I was missing. It was sometime in the early 90s
That pretty well makes anything possible.
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