Overview

Why do our bodies inevitably decline, and why does cancer emerge so reliably from the process of ageing itself? In Why We Fall Apart, Dr. Sasi Shanmugam Senga presents a rigorous and original explanation for one of biology's deepest problems. Drawing on evolutionary theory, cellular biology, and cancer research, the book argues that ageing and cancer are not separate phenomena, nor simple failures of biology, but consequences of the same bargain that makes multicellular life possible. That bargain depends on restraint. For tissues to function, individual cells must suppress competition, limit growth, accept removal, and yield their place to successors. These constraints are costly to enforce and imperfect by design. Over time, they soften. What follows is not chaos, but a patterned unravelling that is both predictable and measurable. Dr. Senga captures this process through seven cellular sins, recurring excesses that emerge as cooperation relaxes. Maintenance becomes permissive rather than exacting. Growth persists beyond need. Damaged cells resist exit. Inflammation fails to resolve. Metabolic signals saturate. Replicative limits are resisted. Cellular competition quietly returns. None of these processes is pathological in isolation. Together, they explain why ageing accelerates and why cancer risk rises so reliably with time. The book unfolds in three movements. The first establishes the conceptual framework of the seven sins. The second subjects it to stress, drawing on history, epidemiology, tissue ecology, and cellular behaviour to test whether the framework holds across biological scales. The third steps back to ask what kind of knowledge this is, and what responsibility remains once limits are understood to be structural rather than accidental. What distinguishes Why We Fall Apart is its discipline. This is not a book of cures, hacks, or longevity fantasies. Instead, it shows why interventions inevitably involve trade-offs, why progress in biology is asymmetric rather than cumulative, and why suppressing one form of decline so often accelerates another. Cancer, in this account, is not an invasion from without, but the most uncompromising expression of selection returning to spaces where it was once held at bay.

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