ASCENT: The extraordinary new story of the origin of our species

by Jonathan Nyce

Why do Orca and whale sharks have such short lifespans in captivity? What data are NASA, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk ignoring, data that show that the colonization of Mars is impossible for the human body? How did “jumping genes” and cancer-causing hydrocarbons— both stirred up by the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs— lead to the origin of primates? Why is the lifetime risk of cancer more than ten times higher in humans than it is in virtually any other species, including the largest whales, that have hundreds, even thousands of times more cells at risk of becoming malignant? Can anything be done to correct our aberrant cancer risk? What are the elements that define our species’ lifespan, and how might these elements be manipulated to increase how long we can live? And most importantly, who are we? Where did we come from? Are we alone in the galaxy, or are there other space-faring species out there? Each of these questions and many more were dramatically and uniquely answered by a paradigm-busting new discovery made by Professor Jonathan Nyce— a veteran cancer research scientist, much of his 44 year career funded by the National Cancer Institute. What was that discovery? Professor Nyce uncovered the lex naturalis— a simple, natural equation that very well may be the E = MC2 of biology. This equation revealed the breakthrough insight that vertebrate species are distinguished from each other by the existence of species-specific mechanisms of tumor suppression. This discovery overturned the paradigm that has dominated cancer research for more than 70 years— that cancer is more or less the same disease from one species to another, enabling the use of mouse and rat models to study human cancer. The existence of species-specific mechanisms of tumor suppression calls into question decades of cancer research data obtained in rodents, and offers an explanation for the dismal 7% increase in two-year survival that has been achieved over the past 27 years. Professor Nyce identified the tumor suppression mechanism that originated the primate lineage, then followed it forward in time to show how “jumping genes” and the carcinogens caused by fire shaped the human genome and made us who we are. His uncovering of the human-specific tumor suppression mechanism gives every appearance of being one of the most important medical discoveries of our time because it provides a “prescription” for “normalizing” our species’ aberrant 40% lifetime cancer risk to the 4% or less of other vertebrate species. This could prevent 90% of new cancer diagnoses from ever from ever occurring! ASCENT provides one of the most complete and astonishing views of human evolution ever undertaken— and one that provides knowledge that can be immediately applied to your life. If you love science, or know someone who does, this book belongs in your library.

390 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2020