• Question: Hypothetically speaking, if I injected someone with cancer is it possible to extract the cancer infected DNA out of them and fabricate a duplicate DNA sample and use it to frame them for a murder?

    Asked by anon-329023 on 15 Jun 2022.
    • Photo: Holly Hall

      Holly Hall answered on 15 Jun 2022:

      Hypothetically, the cancer step would be unnecessary because if you can extract their DNA you can directly frame them that way.

      The immune system also wanders around trying to destroy cells which aren’t self, so you’d have a hard time injecting random cells into someone from the get go. This is why we need to immune suppress people to give bone marrow transplants, as the body would reject them before it can do any good!

    • Photo: Sophie Richardson

      Sophie Richardson answered on 15 Jun 2022:

      This is an interesting question! (although I don’t think murder is really a good way to go about things)

      As Holly has said, if you injected cancer cells from one person into another, the injected person would probably have an immune response to the cancer cells from the other person. This is because the immune system recognises things that are not ‘you’ and tries to get rid of them.

      One thing we can do in labs is take cancer cells and inject them into mice with little or no immune system (a common type of this mouse is called a ‘SCID mouse’). Experiments can then be done to compare different treatment options, look at how the cancer moves around the body (called metastasis) and much more!

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