This year at least 31,000 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of their body, such as bones and lymph nodes. Most of them will be treated by highly skilled and experienced oncologists, who have access to 52 drugs approved to treat this condition. Yet eventually more than three quarters of these men will succumb to their illness.
Cancers that have spread, known as metastatic disease, are rarely curable. The reasons that patients die despite effective treatment are many, but they all trace back to an idea popularized in 1859 by Charles Darwin to explain the rise and fall of species of birds and tortoises. Today we call it evolution./.../