These observations had led to a theory called the somatic mutation hypothesis of cancer. The somatic theory of cancer argued that environmental carcinogens such as soot or radium somehow permanently altered the structure of the cell and thus caused cancer. But the precise nature of the alteration was unknown. Clearly, soot, paraffin, and radium possessed the capacity to alter a cell in some fundamental way to generate a malignant cell. But how could such a diverse range of insults all converge on the same pathological insult? Perhaps a more systematic explanation was missing—a deeper, more
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