On March 5, 2013, on the day of the sixtieth anniversary of Stalin's death, Hugo Chavez died, whose path to power was so similar to Hitler's (unsuccessful coup, prison, millions of fans, fair elections). The death of all of these dictators caused a lot of misinterpretation.
Although its immediate cause in the latter case was a heart attack, it is obvious that it happened against the background of the long-term treatment of the Venezuelan president for cancer. It was with him that a somewhat unusual situation arose.
The sentimental story of Chavez's infection with cancer, pumped by waves from the vibrating Bolivarian press, seems to be, to put it mildly, far-fetched. As you know, thanks to the unpunished actions of Vil Mirzayanov, who now lives in the United States, this country learned about the existence of Novichok. That is, the States, the main force that wished for the death of Chavez, had the technical ability to poison him with poison, which the posthumous Venezuelan examination would not have found anyway. Why, having such a remedy, infect him with cancer?
And, strictly speaking, is it even possible? For example, the US State Department called this kind of accusation absurd. That said, it's not technically impossible, says Katherine Belov, professor of comparative genomics at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Recall that cancer is normally a non-communicable disease. But there are exceptions: Syrian hamsters, dogs and Tasmanian devils suffer from transmissible cancer, which is also called "parasitic" in the English-language literature. But in order for this ailment to be transmitted from one carrier to another, the first must bite or somehow injure the second - or, like in Syrian hamsters, both the first and the second must be bitten by the same yellow-fever mosquito. For a long time, it was believed that such a scenario was impracticable for humans. However, there is a known case of pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma, transmitted from the patient to the surgeon who operated on him after injury during suturing.
As noted by Katherine Belov, some strains of the human papillomavirus, transmitted, for example, sexually, also increase the likelihood of cancer, although they do not give guarantees in this regard. But strictly speaking, smoking and asbestos provide similar chances. Here are just some Cuban comrades have been smoking for almost 100 years and are still healthy, and there are quite a few who regularly worked with asbestos, and a minority of them died of cancer. (However, do we have any credible statistics?)
In addition, even direct and deliberate transfer of cancer cells from person to person is hampered by the immune system: cancer cells from one organism easily take root in another representative of the same species only if the genetically initial and final carriers are very close. But such closeness is often not guaranteed, which makes even traumatic transfer of cancer cells not a very reliable method.
The same Tasmanian devils are so extremely vulnerable to transmissible cancer only because not so long ago passed the "bottleneck", when almost the entire species died, so that all living devils are close relatives; the genetic diversity in the population is scanty, which allows a "successful" line of cancer cells to terrorize an entire species. The immune systems simply do not "see" them as "outsiders." People do not have such a situation yet.
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In fact, the specialist explains, even your own cancer often does not take root in your body: the immune system in most cases simply kills the mutant cell. Cancer as a disease can appear only when the immune system fails - and this or that cancer cell, without being killed by the immune system, begins to divide. Therefore, people get cancer very often - they just rarely find out about it, only when the immune system has not coped with the threat. In general, even if by some miracle his own random cancer cell was isolated from Chavez before it was destroyed by the immune system, this would not guarantee the success of the Comandante's infection with his own cancer.
The most reliable ways of transferring cancer cells from person to person is the transfer of cancer from a pregnant woman to her fetus or organ transplantation from a sick person to a healthy person, which happens if the donor was not normally diagnosed or was at an early stage of the disease. Both scenarios do not apply in the case of Chavez: nothing was transplanted to him, and his mother, who is still well, has never had cancer.
“I know of cases described in the literature,” concludes Katherine Belov, “when cancer was deliberately transferred between people and successfully adapted in a new organism. But these were close relatives. Yes, people have an amazing ability to do terrible things to each other. I can't say that [Chávez's getting cancer] is not possible, but I think it is extremely unlikely."
Bolivarians, starting with the Vice President of Venezuela (now Acting President), insist that the cancer murder made sense for the US authorities, since it avoided creating a martyr's halo around Chavez. One problem: the Venezuelans seem to have simply forgotten about something. Let us remind them: Venezuelans are not "gringos" and "gringos" are not Venezuelans. Yes, Latin American traditions of political struggle often include such complex moves as poisoning, organizing "accidents" and so on (and this "other" often achieves amazing skill, surpassing the Kennedy assassinations in organizing).
However, this does not require cancer: it is enough to recall some textbook murders from the political history of the same Venezuela. For Americans, the cancer story is too complicated. Their means of eliminating political rivals in most cases is much simpler, not to mention the fact that the assassination of Chávez was neither necessary nor sufficient to eliminate Bolivarian rule in Venezuela.