I arrived this afternoon in San Francisco, so that I can participate in an exceptional sort of meeting: the 2nd International Biannual Evolution and Cancer Conference. Friday night I’ll be giving a talk about some of the lessons we can learn about cancer from other animals (details at the end of this post), but for the most part, I’ll be on the receiving end, learning about the latest research at this fascinating crossroads.

Cancer is fundamentally an evolutionary disease, as I explained in a 2007 article for Scientific American2007 article for Scientific American. By which I mean that cancer is an inevitable menace to any multicellular organism, which has led the evolution of lots of anti-cancer defenses in