Otto Warburg published his Nobel lecture in 1931 and said, with the directness that won him the prize:
"Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause.
Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar."
For forty years, his work was the leading framework for understanding cancer.
Then the genetic mutation theory emerged. Oncogenes. Tumour suppressor genes. DNA damage. The molecular biology of cancer became the dominant research paradigm from the 1970s onward.
Warburg's metabolic theory was not disproven. It was superseded by a framework that had more funding and more pharmaceutical applications.
The problem: the genetic…
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