We know from autopsies, for example, that many women have breast cancer cells, just as many men have prostate cancer cells, without ever developing the disease of cancer. The question is, What drives the progression of these cells into clinical illness? What keeps the immune system from successfully confronting the internal menace? This is where stress plays its incendiary role: for example, through the release of inflammatory proteins into the circulation—proteins that can instigate damage to DNA and impede DNA repair in the face of malignant transformation.
