Zombie Cancer!

Theory: The original zombie myth came from an old "disease" caused by immortal cancer cells.
Plan: Write a screenplay based on this.

Well, sortof. The HeLa cell line has gotten a lot of publicity lately due to the book that is still on the best-seller shelves. In brief: cervical cancer cells from a biopsy half a century ago are still alive and replicating and are one of the standard human cell lines in biomedical research. "Normal" cells stop replicating after about 50 times since there is always a little bit of DNA lost in the process. There is a bunch of "junk" DNA at the end that is lost so good stuff isn't lost. "Immortal" cells like the HeLa line actually repairs the end of the DNA so it can keep replicating (so do stem cells).

Some people (ok, maybe just one) believe the HeLa cells should be considered its own species, Helacyton gartleri. Whether or not they are, they have contaminated a variety of other cell lines and caused problems in biomedical research. They spread. They are hard to kill. They sound a bit scary... like some sort of disease... but it gets worse.



There are TWO known "diseases" that are cancers transmitted from one organism to another. Both are in mammals: Devil facial tumour disease and Canine transmissible venereal tumor. This is different from something like HPV, which is a virus that can then cause cancer. These diseases are spread by the cancer cells themselves.

So imagine: a horrible cancer of the skin/bodily fluids that metastatises into brain tumors causing severe neurologic problems (mostly, a reduction of the vocabulary to the word "brains"). This cancer can be spread by contact. And in Hollywood, it could happen so quickly to be absolutely terrifying!