
Tapeworms can transmit cancer cells to humans - mhb
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/11/04/cdc-details-bizarre-unsettling-case-of-41-year-old-man-infected-with-cancer-cells-from-tapeworm/
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stephengillie
> _Tapeworms can transmit_ their _cancer cells to humans_

This is freaky stuff! They're not actually sure where the cancer cells came
from. They're definitely cancer-like, but they're not necessarily human cells.

I'd never thought of cancer as contagious before.

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pygy_
Cancer is usually not contagious for the same reason grafts are rejected.

Homozygous twins could catch one another's cancer.

Tasmanian devils have such a reduced gene pool that they suffer from a
contagious form of facial cancer.

In this case, I suppose the immunosuppressive abilities of the worm allowed
its cancer to infect its host.

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nshepperd
The patient also had HIV, which explains why the cells were able to multiply.

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pygy_
Indeed, that definitely helped (I didn't read TFA).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer)
has other interesting examples, including the case of a surgeon who caught his
patient's cancer after getting injured during the surgery.

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hvmonk
Sorry, NOT RELATED TO THIS POST: I wonder how some articles got to the first
page even when they have 0 to very few points... this post has 8 points so far
and I see posts which have > 100 points still on the second page. Is it page
views?

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stephengillie
This was the first result in Google. It may be out of date.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013)

