Tumor-derived erythropoietin acts as immunosuppressive switch in cancer immunity

Tumors excreting chemicals to prevent destruction doesn’t sound like DNA damage, that sounds like evolution.

We know some cancers can be caused by viruses. And we know a few cancers that act like viruses in dogs and Tasmanian devils, and some rare cases in humans.

We only figured out that ulcers are bacterial in origin within the lifetimes of many HN readers, and there are signs that other GI issues may be bacterial or viral (or bacteria-targeting viral) as well.

Maybe we need to start culturing and DNA testing cancers.

We already culture and DNA test cancers. Sometimes we can point at a secondary tumor and say "it came from this primary tumor". And we already know viral and bacterial infections can increase the likelihood of people getting malignant tumorws.

Most scientists wouldn't call the hallmarks of cancer "evolution". I think instead most would say that cancer is an almost certainly unavoidable outcome of the complexity of eukaryotic organism's control of cellular replication.

There's a series of papers organized around the "Hallmarks of Cancer" which help explain why nearly all tumors show the same properties- and how they are effectively due to dysregulation of evolutionary checkpoints and signalling. generally, an organism with a malignant tumor is less likely to reproduce. However, it's really far more complex than that ,