Teresa could not sleep that night, haunted by the fear that her husband might be on the verge of developing cancer. Mark, like many who carry too much weight, had surrendered to the heaviness of his body and drifted into sleep.

He looked like a giant infant—content, careless, almost blissful.
But Teresa whispered into the dark,
“You look peaceful… but I know you’re just as afraid as I am.”

That silent confession pushed her out of bed. She walked to the desk with the urgency of someone who had seen a shadow on the wall and knew it belonged to death.

She typed into the search bar: “Cancer: Causes and Symptoms.”
Hundreds of articles flooded the screen.

She chose the shortest—
“The True Causes of Cancer Beyond Medicine.”

The article opened with a chilling preface:

“Cancer, one of humanity’s most lethal diseases, is the sworn enemy of the body— just as tyrants who inflict mass suffering for their own gain are the sworn enemies of the world.”

The text continued:

Some forms of oppression are capitalistic in nature— they disguise themselves as promises of prosperity, plundering nations in the name of “economic growth,” turning communities against each other, and siphoning wealth until nothing remains.

Others weaponize national or religious sentiment, manipulating their people with the illusion of a sacred leader— a chosen, irreplaceable figure. Such tyrants exploit belief to ignite conflict, deepening fractures in the fabric of society.

Rejecting democracy, they cling to their thrones, even at the cost of thousands of lives, even if millions must be displaced, left homeless, wandering, stateless. They preserve their crowns through fear, even as their nations burn.

The article’s voice grew darker:

“By poisoning the thoughts of a society, these rulers prevent people from thinking rationally, fairly, collectively. And because of that, they maintain their kingdoms or their divine status for decades.”

Whether in the East or the West, while one corner of the world groans beneath mass oppression, the people living beside them — or thousands of miles away — often ignore the cries.

Some look away because they feel powerless, because they fear losing their own lives. These are understandable excuses. But others turn away for darker reasons: small, petty calculations, self-interest, selfishness.

Every act of oppression, sooner or later, returns like a boomerang and strikes everyone in the community. Tyrants spread seeds of hatred to justify their cruelty. Those seeds grow into a thousand poisonous weeds in society:

domestic violence,
road rage,
self-obsession,
drug addiction,
desires that violate human nature,
sexual degradation,
the numbing of the mind with alcohol,
and countless other deformities.

Oppression is simply another name for injustice. And where justice is absent, no investor wants to go. Which means the nation falls into economic despair. It is not only economists who declare that tyranny breeds poverty. Those deeply rooted in divine teachings have always said the same: where justice fails, prosperity cannot survive.

To them, economic collapse is also a warning from God — yet societies rarely listen to those messengers, or only after paying a terrible price. Is it not telling that the two greatest obstacles to Africa’s progress are injustice and distrust?

This article seeks to draw one disturbing parallel: just as mass oppression devours nations, cancer devours the individual — the human body, the miniature earth. As you read, you will begin to notice how the world’s injustice mirrors the behavior of cancer cells.

And every sane, conscientious reader will feel a cold question rising within them:

“ If I remain silent in the face of genocide, mass injustice, and collective cruelty, will I one day pay for that silence with my own body — with cancer?”

Study the points that follow carefully, and you will see that mass cruelty and cancer, like twins sharing one fate, resemble each other far more than we ever admit.

Teresa was astonished as she read those parts of the article. She couldn’t help but mutter, “One intent, another outcome.” She had opened the paper to learn about the medical causes and symptoms of cancer, only to discover that it was, in fact, about the very thing she had devoted her life to—preventing mass cruelty and, indirectly, personal forms of oppression. The realization made her smile. Her smile, as always, was not a gesture of lightness, but a reflexive turning toward the Creator who spurred her into righteous action.

She understood once more that fate allowed her to deal with family matters only to a certain extent, and barred her from the rest. When her son Robert—freshly appointed as a police officer—was assigned to an obscure island in Canada, she had faced a similar lesson. It was through Robert that they learned how those who imagined they could manipulate society by tampering with human DNA had been using scientists as pawns to redesign the island.

Teresa continued reading the article.

“The chief characteristic of tyrants is their mastery in legitimizing their cruelty and securing their thrones through unthinkable schemes. They never hesitate to stage whatever theater is necessary to bind the hands of those who might oppose them. They are adept at selecting their actors, assigning roles, and setting boundaries. And when the curtain closes, they earn the right to wash mass civilian deaths and injustices clean.

Likewise, cancer calculates its invasion, summoning new vessels to feed the colony of cells it has occupied. To avoid detection by leukocytes—the law enforcement of the body—it performs a thousand contortions. The reason medications fail, the reason the body cannot enforce order against these cells, is that cancer disguises itself, just as oppressors cloak their lies and true intentions in countless forms.”

What she read dragged Teresa’s mind back to the tragedies in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and in scattered corners of the world. How could those with the most advanced surveillance systems fail to detect armed men? She had often suspected that bloody spectacles were staged deliberately—to create a public narrative of victimhood, to justify the war to come.

“The second characteristic trait of tyrants is selfishness. While millions of civilians, in full view of the world, are condemned to starvation, thirst, and death beneath falling bombs, the tyrants do not so much as flinch. One drops the bomb, the other performs a hollow display of outrage. One cannot help but say that the human being—created with such intricate dignity—should not be so selfish, so indifferent. Arrest one tyrant, execute another; aside from their names, they share many common traits, the foremost of which is egotism. Yes, we don’t wish for anyone to be publicly lynched because they were indifferent to injustice. But neither are we obligated to defend an oppressor merely because he shares our religion or ethnicity. Who deserves honor—the activists from distant lands and alien faiths who risk their lives for innocent civilians, or the selfish, indifferent elites who swim in wealth while the world burns?

Many medical textbooks also call cancer cells selfish. Under normal circumstances, each cell has a defined lifespan—sometimes days, sometimes months, and in the case of neurons, a lifetime. Once it has fulfilled its task, a cell dies for the sake of the body, making room for a new one. Cancer cells do not die; they reproduce ceaselessly, creating more of their own kind to secure their dominion.

The third trait of tyrants is that they execute their invasions according to a program, and they prepare the ground for it. To foment division, they resurrect petty disputes or ancient grievances, sectarian differences or religious conflicts that should have died centuries ago. They do this through media that appears independent but serves their ideology, and through embedded agents planted among the people.

Houses of worship are filled with bodies, yet the noble values for which their ancestors sacrificed their lives—honesty, justice, love—are nowhere to be seen. In their artificial world, built with boastful speeches and bloodstained hands, they imagine themselves giants, but in truth they are fearful dwarfs. What defeat could be greater than the collective madness born from the collapse of values? And yet, because they themselves have mutated beyond recognition, they remain utterly indifferent to the ruin they have sown.”

Teresa understood that the author was alluding to the injustices and atrocities occurring in various parts of the world. She recalled how, during the Bosnian civil war, tyrants had weaponized the media to inflame religious and sectarian divisions, turning ignorant civilians into blood-soaked soldiers. When she remembered the social unrest and the alarming suicide rates in states built upon blood and conquest, she felt compelled to agree with the author.

“Cancer cells, before metastasizing to distant regions, conduct extensive preparations. In other words, they do not simply appear suddenly in remote organs. They first send chemical signals that both suppress potential resistance and mark the targeted cells with receptors, indicating that the territory is to be occupied. They perform their work so covertly and with such sophistication that even today medicine still does not fully understand why certain cancers colonize specific tissues.

The fourth trait of tyrants is that they secure the support of local actors by offering money, status, or praise. The purchased local agent eliminates those who might obstruct the plan, by fabricating convenient pretexts. And if he cannot find a pretext, he proceeds to devise and enact a brutal scheme with the backing of his superiors. Cancer cells act similarly: with their vanguard units, they ensure that the conquered cells in distant tissues do not signal their occupation to the immune system. The cell no longer serves the body, but rather the foreign invader called cancer—just as an entire nation becomes enslaved to the destructive ambitions of a tyrant.

The fifth trait of tyrants—known in modern language as exploiters—is that they do not wish the nations they oppress to collapse. If a state collapses entirely, it is uncertain whether the new regime can be controlled. Moreover, in the absence of state structure, chaos reigns, and under chaotic conditions they cannot siphon wealth or enslave the population. Therefore, they prefer that the government under their influence remains standing.”

Cancer cells, much like viruses, do not wish for the body to die. Like all living entities, their singular objective is survival. To avoid outcomes that would jeopardize their existence, they prefer that the host cells they occupy remain alive. Yet their way of life is not grounded in mutual benefit; it is not even a simple parasitism. They invade, damage, and ultimately plan the destruction of the very cells they depend on.

It is reminiscent of the scorpion crossing the river on the back of a frog. When the scorpion stings, the frog cries, “What are you doing? If I die, you'll drown too.” The scorpion replies, “I know. I do not desire your death. But I cannot help it; I am accustomed to poison, and I cannot stop myself.” If cancer could speak, it would undoubtedly utter the same confession—just like tyrants who prey upon weaker nations.

Sixth, we may say this: tyrants have followed the same ancient method for centuries. Find a justification for your violence. If you cannot, manufacture one. Do not concern yourself with whether it is legitimate. Declare war, kill, exile, starve, and dispossess in the name of whatever narrative you’ve constructed. Rain bombs upon civilians, and do not hesitate to kill even the child whose only crime is playing with a toy car. Methods change according to the tyrant’s ambition, but the cry of the oppressed remains the same.

“What have I done? Why are you executing me, destroying my family, and condemning us to exile and misery?”

Cancer behaves similarly. Once it occupies a cell, it disregards the signals indicating that something is wrong, signals sent to halt growth and prevent mutation. It disables those alarms. Not only does it ignore the distress signals from the cell it inhabits, but also the warnings transmitted by the surrounding tissue—just as tyrants ignore the pleas of the oppressed and suppress their voices.

The seventh and final trait of tyrants is their relentless pursuit of collaborators to legitimize their injustice. They distribute wealth, status, and public prestige to buy loyalty. For them, loyalty is the only criterion that matters. They strive to corrupt honest individuals, to drag righteous and untainted people into illegal schemes. The morally upright, the just, the uncorrupted—these are the true dangers to oppressive systems.

Thus tyrants seek leverage over them, something they can use against them or against entire nations. It is no coincidence that scriptural revelation speaks not merely of Pharaoh, but of Pharaoh and his people committing oppression; tyranny is never carried out alone. Without a portion of the public’s complicity, would the military juntas in Africa have survived for decades?

Cancer cells do not merely invade neighboring tissues in a process called invasion; through metastasis, they spread to distant organs and tissues that are not adjacent at all. This spread is not random. Each cancer type tends to colonize specific organs—much like tyrants who, in their campaigns of oppression, are not always aided by those closest to them, but by individuals of different beliefs, races, or ideologies. Does it not mirror the reality that some travel from across the ocean just to seize the wells that produce wealth?

No tyrant is born a tyrant. Their brutality may emerge under the influence of authority, or when long-suppressed inclinations—anger, resentment, the urge toward domination—find a fertile ground. The transformation takes place not in their biology or physical structure, but in their inner world. Their imagination and their choices alter their hormones, their impulses, and their judgement.

The medical world compares cancer to mutation. Cancer does not turn a person into a different species; it destroys the species itself. A child nurtured in love grows into a loving human being. But a child raised amidst conflict, selfishness, and constant struggle may think survival requires aggression. Likewise, the human being is born with an innate inclination toward goodness, and in a harmonious world, this inclination flourishes, producing happiness.

 Yet in a world governed by corruption, the human body becomes a battleground between good and evil. And when corrupt impulses defeat the innate drive toward goodness, the cells undergo malignant transformation, committing a kind of biological suicide—just as a youth, overwhelmed by despair, may take his own life. The triggers of cancer—radiation and environmental toxins—have their parallel in society: is not suicide often the result of a world where values have been overturned, and where destructive ideologies saturate the atmosphere?

Ultimately, every individual must understand that the cries of those buried beneath bombs or devastated by injustice may manifest as malignant cells in the bodies of those who stood indifferent—those who did not care, and those who even supported oppression for profit or revenge. Everything in this world is interconnected.

Today, billions of dollars are spent on education programs to resolve family conflicts, workplace rivalries, addiction, and social disorder. But when humanity recognizes that the root of these problems lies in collective oppression, and when we truly abolish wars, injustice, and tyranny, that will be the day cancer disappears and joins the list of once-deadly diseases.

A similar explanation can be made for cardiovascular diseases, currently the leading cause of death. What happens that vessels once normal suddenly narrow and create pressure? Why does one person develop hypertension while another, consuming the same amount of salt, does not? Why is a person’s DNA encoded to command arterial constriction after a certain age, triggered by salt?

Medicine can describe how diseases develop, but it cannot explain why they emerge. The answers to such questions lie behind the truths we have discussed. One final warning: this article is not intended to condemn a cancer patient in the most painful stage of their life with words like, “You supported oppression, so you deserve this.” It is written so that each person may conduct their own reckoning. Would it not be better, just once, to refrain from judging others and instead retreat to a quiet corner to evaluate ourselves? Otherwise, one day we may be forced to confront a harsh truth: perhaps a pandemic, perhaps a chronic illness, perhaps psychological collapse, perhaps even the violent epidemic of society harming those closest to us.

When Teresa finished reading, she realized she had found the answer to a question that had lingered in her mind. “The divine books speak of civilizations destroyed by calamity. Plagues still exist today, but not on that scale. In our age, injustice and oppression are far more rampant than in the ancient world, so why aren’t civilizations being wiped out? Yes, we experience earthquakes and floods, but in developed countries very few die from them. Are we to assume, then, that they are innocent of wrongdoing? Maybe widespread illnesses like cardiovascular disease, cancer, and even crippling obesity are forms of divine warning or retribution.” Teresa had finally understood why modern societies were spared from the old forms of destruction.

She reflected on what she had read and realized that the language used did not serve a particular nation, ideology, or religion. She admired how the author painted the portraits of tyrants and their accomplices without naming a single identity, place, faith, or ethnicity. From all of this, she drew a quiet conclusion:

“The writer might be English, French, German, Turkish, Arab; perhaps Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist — but what is certain is that they care deeply about human dignity and world peace.”

After contemplating this for a while, Teresa finally drifted into sleep.