Introduction; I.1. Organization of the Book; I.2. Autobiographical Note; 1. Cancer: Natural, Medical, and Social Kind; 1.1. Introduction; 1.2. Cancer Classification in Practice; 1.3. Natural Kinds and Disease Kinds; 1.4. Is Cancer a Homeostatic Property Cluster Kind? A Potted History and Discussion; 1.5. The End of Diseases?; 1.6. Conclusion; 2. From Disease to Risk; 2.1. Introduction; 2.2. Concerning Definition; 2.3. Naturalism: Disease as Dysfunction; 2.4. Problematizing Function;; 2.5. Objections to the Naturalist's View; 2.6. The Eliminativist View; 2.7. Conclusion: From Disease to Risk; 3. Causation, Causal Selection, and Causal Parity: What Genes Can (and Can't) Do; 3.1. Introduction: Genes as Causes; 3.2. Putting Concepts of Causation in Their Proper Place; 3.3. The Mechanistic Research Program in Cancer; 3.4. Causal Selection, Causal Parity, and Genetic Disease; 3.5. Conclusion; 4. Evidence and Environmental Epidemiology: A Pragmatic Approach; 4.1. Introduction; 4.2. Evidence in Epidemiology: An Overview; 4.3. Tobacco; 4.4. Ionizing Radiation: The Downwinders; 4.5. Summary: Evidence and Causation in Epidemiology; 5. Cancer from an Evolutionary Perspective; 5.1. Evolutionary Thinking about Disease: A Taxonomy; 5.2. Cancer Evolving; 5.3. Evolution, Modeling, and Hypothetical Explanation; 6. Explaining Cancer; 6.1. Introduction; 6.2. Puzzle 1: Why Does Cancer Incidence Increase as We Age? The Rise of the Multistage Theory and the Path to Oncogenes; 6.3. Puzzle 2: Why Don't We Get Cancer More Often?; 6.4. Concluding Discussion; Conclusion; Appendix: The Basic Biology of Cancer.
