ABSTRACT
Cancer somehow invades otherwise healthy organs of the bodies, and then insidiously spreads to other parts of the body until a person is killed. That leaves us feeling the need to identify something, especially something blamable, that might be causing this terrible thing. But an expert-level discussion of what causes cancer is extremely complicated. It is certainly true that given the salience of cancer and given its peculiar properties, then so long as fungibility can be easily missed, cancer has a powerful potential to trigger special concern. And that concern can quickly come to be guarded by powerful social and emotional commitments. Finally, although the discussion has focused on what is special about cancer, familiarity with a series of such episodes opens the door to anchor-and-adjust effects for other subtle risks that in one way or another can be perceived as "looking like" the cancer cases.
