Charlton B G
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
J R Coll Physicians Lond. 1996 Jan-Feb;30(1):10-2.
The integrity and health of an organism can be considered as a state actively imposed by specialised 'salutogenic' mechanisms (immune, endocrine, paracrine etc) on an innate tendency towards internal conflict. One major source of internal conflict arises from the operation of natural selection upon replicating sub-organismal components such as cells, organelles and gene sequences. From this perspective cancer is seen not as a pathological process arising in a healthy organism but as caused by the capacity of replicating cells to evolve 'selfish' adaptations and elude the finite repertoire of integrative mechanisms. Cancer can therefore be regarded as one instance of a more general tendency towards senescence due to the failure of salutogenesis and accumulation of endogenous parasites. This may provide a new and potentially fruitful approach to framing, analysing and understanding the aetiology of the degenerative diseases of senescence.
生物体的完整性和健康可被视为由专门的“健康促进”机制（免疫、内分泌、旁分泌等）积极施加于内在冲突倾向之上的一种状态。内在冲突的一个主要来源是自然选择作用于诸如细胞、细胞器和基因序列等复制性亚生物体成分。从这个角度来看，癌症并非被视为在健康生物体中产生的病理过程，而是由复制细胞进化出“自私”适应性并规避有限的整合机制所导致的。因此，由于健康促进失败和内源性寄生虫的积累，癌症可被视为衰老这一更普遍倾向的一个实例。这可能为构建、分析和理解衰老退行性疾病的病因提供一种新的且可能富有成效的方法。
