Annalee Newitz, who Wikipedia says is allegedly a journalist (we have our doubts), is the latest to try and tie Zombies to something that she personally finds unpleasant in a pop-science article.

Of course, she had to one-up the legion of quasi-writers tying Zombies to dying ants, mental illnesses or communicable diseases, so Ms. Newitz reached deep and found something new:

She ties Zombies to cancer.

Yeah, really:

Today a group of medical researchers reported the discovery of something very intriguing in a type of pancreatic cancer called PanNET. Turns out PanNET is associated with mutations in two genes that help control a part of your DNA that determines whether you die.

…

Unfortunately for people suffering PanNET, the extra long telomeres are what keep cancerous genes alive even when they are malfunctioning horribly. That’s why it’s probably more appropriate to call these cells undead rather than immortal. Yes, they’re alive, but they’re shambling along and trying to replicate and replace every other cell with a version of themselves.

*sigh*

We’ve been over this with people who have no understanding of biology before, on the stem cell issue; Undead is not equal to ‘Living tissue doing something weird’. Undeath represents a profound transformation from normal Living biological life, not some minor tinkering. A Living cancer cell is still, fundamentally, a Living cell; it requires the same nutrients, the same oxygen, the same heat and stable conditions as a regular cell, it just acts out a little.

This does not meet any reasonable conception of the Undead. Even the Infected types of Zombie are altered in ways that defy normal medical science and its understanding of the body.

But of course, that’s not really the point for Anti-Zombie writers like Ms. Newitz; the point is, hating Zombies is hot, and banging out a short piece using the frame of Anti-Zombiism is a lot easier than *thinking* or looking for a more accurate metaphor.

So here we are: cancer cells are Undead, and promising research that could extend lifespan is actually a key to creating Zombies, and that’s bad, because… of something. It’s not stated, but we can assume it is a bad thing from the venomous tone.

If a greatly extended lifespan with minimal alterations to the way our cells keep track of their internal clock is the threshold for Zombiism now, then I have two observations: 1) These Zombies have it pretty good. and 2) Zombiism is about to become much, much more popular.

Whether Zombie haters like Ms. Newitz like it or not.

Tags: Journamalism, Social Justice

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 at 8:13 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.