Do you think a baby is a form of cancer, because it is a growth

Question: Do you think a baby is a form of cancer, because it is a growth
- Keywords:
  baby,
  cancer,
  disease,
  reproduction
Asked by hazel01 to Alison, Artem, Caroline, John, Gunther on 12 Jun 2012.
- Caroline Dalton answered on 12 Jun 2012:
  
  Cancer is a form of unregulated growth where something in the cells isn’t working properly and they grow out of control. This leads to the formation of tumours and sometimes cells from these tumours can detach and move to other places in the body and make new tumours.
  
  In contrast the growth of a baby is very tightly controlled. The fertilised egg divides many times and the resulting cells form all the different parts of the body. They know exactly what kind of cell to become (for example a skin cell or a muscle cell) and exactly when to stop growing and dividing so that for example you don’t end up with super long fingers or extra toes. Also the cells of the growing baby all stay in one place in the womb and don’t move around to different parts of the body so its quite a different kind of growth to that which occurs with cancer.
- John Short answered on 12 Jun 2012:
  
  I agree, however, a good question to ask is if a baby is a form of parasite growing in the mother, as it has different (although related) genetic material to the mother…
- Artem Evdokimov answered on 13 Jun 2012:
  
  No 🙂 an embryo is definitely not a cancer. Nor it is a parasite because the embryo represents the future of the species – it ‘pays’ for its nutrients and care by the promise of perpetuating one’s DNA.
  
  Cancer is a dis-organized, malignant proliferation of living tissue – it has no ‘plan’ or organization, and it follows no particular biological design.