Cancer Cells

Cancer cells serve as the book's most powerful cautionary example of what happens when growth controls fail. They appear not as a metaphor but as a literal mechanism: cells that ignore contact inhibition, optimize purely for growth, metastasize indiscriminately, and raise resources continuously from the bloodstream.

The cancer cell example is central to the book's critique of 'grow or die' business thinking. The author explicitly states: 'Cancer cells are just startups that forgot to stop growing.' WeWork and Theranos are cited as organizational examples of this cellular pathology.

Peto's paradox reveals something fascinating: blue whales have trillions more cells than mice, yet don't have proportionally higher cancer rates. The cancers that do form in large animals often can't grow fast enough relative to the organism's size to become lethal. This suggests that scale itself can be a defense mechanism.