When most of us set out to do anything, there’s what we think is going to work in theory… and then there’s what turns out to actually work in practice.

We are sometimes slow to realize they are not the same!

I just had one of these moments myself a couple months ago. Jon Correll, the CEO of Reversing Cancer, said, “Perry, I don’t think the thing we say we’re doing is the thing we’re best at doing.

“What we say we’re doing is raising money for very specific cancer projects. Yes, it’s true and we’re doing that, but I don’t think that’s where the real magic is. The magic is we send Perry to interesting places, he meets amazing people, and something super interesting happens. And you can never predict exactly what it is going to be.”

Take the Cancer Evolution Group for example. A tiny door popped open and I got asked to help with a conference. It turned into a professional society of 5,300 doctors and scientists. It played a major role in moving the Giant Cell Theory of Cancer Origins from a backwater to front-burner hot topic today – including an international conference at MD Anderson, the world’s largest cancer hospital.

Evolution 2.0 had financial supporters then. None of them had any idea that their money was helping this get off the ground… until it got off the ground.

Finding the first Stage Negative One cancer cell is a HUGE key to curing cancer. Yet it had been ignored since 1911.

This was so profound that ¾ of my efforts are now in cancer instead of evolutionary biology.

Jon says, “We need to ask our audience overtly for greater latitude to do more experimentation. We’re not just putting the money into these specific cancer projects that you’re talking about, but we also make room for a key experimental element.”

That conversation took place on a Tuesday. The very next Saturday morning I got a voice memo from Jordan Gerding. I don’t talk to Jordan super often, and he certainly didn’t know about this conversation I had with Jon only four days earlier.

He says, “Perry, I have a Memo from the Head Office for you. You are a superconnector and that is the most important thing that you do. Compared to that, everything else isn’t just secondary, it’s tertiary. This is not an instruction to stand down. You’re not supposed to stop anything you’re doing now, but you need to bring a different perspective to it.

“These people that you meet that have these amazing projects, it’s not your job to make these projects work or to get all of their funding for them. You just need to help in the way that you can help, and the superconnecting that you do is an important part of it.”

I didn’t often think of myself as a superconnector, but it is true that when I get really geeked about something, I jump in, get involved and pretty soon I’m pulling people into it. I can’t help myself. I’ve introduced a LOT of people to a lot of others they wouldn’t know. I’m sitting at an intersection of about eight or nine different fields of science. And it’s super fun.

Jon and I have started being more diverse in our allocation of money. For example, I’m heading to a small private conference in Europe in September. My roommate there is a quantum physicist who specializes in cancer. Reversing Cancer covers my expenses for that.

There’s also a quantum physics experiment nobody’s ever done. I alluded to this in the quantum physics paper that I published a year ago: Nobody’s ever definitively determined whether plants, animals and cells can cause light to collapse into a particle vs wave, at will, the way humans can. I also discussed this on a podcast with Subboor Ahmad. The podcast is called “Discussions About Science, Philosophy and Theology.”

I am currently investigating how much it would cost to get that experiment done, publish the results and get it out there. Somewhere in that experiment hides a VERY important surprise.

What does that have to do with cancer?

A lot. It would take about six or eight steps to explain why and how, and I won’t get into those details here. (If you, dear reader, are interested, write to us at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to fill you in.) The point is, we work on catalysts that are six or eight steps away, not just one step away, and follow the hockey puck wherever it goes.

Two months ago, I was following the hockey puck… which led to a conversation with my daughter, which provoked a new idea, which led to a phone call, then a trip to Richard Rossi’s daVinci50 longevity conference in Utah, which led me to a meeting with a vendor at a cancer conference… and we are now only a few months away from a Stage Negative One diagnostic cancer test that your doctor can order for you.

My inner ‘direct marketing lizard brain’ would love to build a marketing machine where every $1 you put into it, $3 immediately goes to cancer research, which immediately results in a super specific medical outcome. A slot machine.

That would be great… and something like that will probably exist at some point. But it’s not as straightforward as that right now.

Even though there are a lot more steps involved, I’m certain I’m working with the right people, connecting the right people, doing the right things. I don’t have any doubt about this.

Another realization was: we grew a science organization into 5,000 people, but 5,000 people are not gonna cure cancer…

FIVE People Will Cure Cancer.
And I know every single one of them.

Let’s start with James Shapiro. In 2006, I had been exploring Evolution 2.0 for two years. I thought “Evolution seems to be legit, but nobody has given me a sensible explanation of how it actually works.” Then someone sent me a paper Shapiro had written. He explained Barbara McClintock’s work, which I’d never heard of, about corn plants rewriting their own DNA. It was a giant epiphany.

Shapiro is a lone wolf and a renegade. He got an English degree at Harvard, then studied genetics at Cambridge. I asked if studying literature first, then skipping biology for genetics, influenced his unusual perspective.

He said, “Absolutely. The biologists never had a chance to tell me what I was not allowed to think.” His literature background served him well, giving him a wealth of ideas to draw from.

This was also true of Lynn Margulis, who entered the University of Chicago at 16 and studied Greek philosophers before she majored in science. The Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, saw living things as intrinsically purposeful. Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. But most people go down a different route, believing “natural selection” can make anything given enough time. This illogical idea gets planted in their imagination and they never let it go.

Jim was the first to discover that bacteria can rearrange their DNA. He became good friends with McClintock, who won the Nobel Prize in 1983. When he got tenure at the University of Chicago, he realized he could either keep his lab running or actually get something done. He closed his lab and since then, he’s become a walking human encyclopedia of PubMed, the world’s largest repository of research papers.

In my opinion he’s the best evolution expert alive. He’s been vindicated on almost every position he’s taken over his 55-year career. At 81, he’s still a professor at the University of Chicago.

I became friends with him in 2011 when his book came out. In the acknowledgments of my Evolution 2.0, the last item in the list is “a shout out to the first man to cross the Berlin wall without getting shot.” That was a reference to Shapiro, whose evolution book was the first to openly criticize the orthodoxy and get away with it. Everyone before him lost their career for contradicting the dogma.

At that time, it wasn’t safe for us to be friends in public because I was too controversial. But he played a central role in my book, which is essentially “James Shapiro for Mere Mortals.” He fact-checked the entire book and wrote part of the Barbara McClintock chapter.

Jim introduced me to several important people, including Denis Noble, Frank Laukien and Henry Heng. Four and a half years ago, Jim invited me to help with a Cancer and Evolution Conference, which I immediately agreed to. One of the best decisions I ever made.

During conference preparations, Jim recommended Azra Raza’s book “The First Cell.” I read it and interviewed her for a podcast, starting our relationship. I invited her to keynote at our conference and she accepted.

Henry Heng, a cancer researcher from Detroit, is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. From his cancer research, he concluded the standard Theory of Evolution couldn’t be correct. He developed his own theory, later finding it aligned almost exactly with James Shapiro’s work. This pattern of independent discovery repeats with others like John Hands, author of Cosmosapiens.

Frank Laukien is CEO of Bruker, which makes mass spectrometry equipment used in protein studies and cancer labs. He also reached similar conclusions about evolution, independently, and has written a couple of excellent books.

Henry, Jim, Frank, and I are all outsiders who shared a common view of evolution despite coming from totally different backgrounds.

Henry was knowledgeable about the intricacies of the cancer field, while Frank had an extensive network of contacts. Frank knows everyone at Harvard and MIT. Henry emphasized the importance of Jinsong Liu’s theory of giant cancer cells.

Shapiro read one of Jinsong’s papers and was extraordinarily impressed. Jinsong, a pathologist at MD Anderson, has encyclopedic knowledge of 5,000 different tumor types.

Jinsong insists every tumor he’s ever cut open has “Giant cells” which are symbiotic, pregnant-mother pre-cancer cells. These are resilient, very difficult to kill, and have been almost completely ignored for 100 years.

Jinsong mapped the human birth cycle to tumor reproduction, showing they’re almost identical. He tied this to Barbara McClintock’s work, demonstrating this is the critical stage where environmental information gets programmed into the tumor for adaptation. We made this a centerpiece of our conference.

The conference was successful, making us a working group of AACR with 5,300 members. More importantly, a small group of people has figured out how to attack cancer at Stage Negative One.

Jinsong held the world’s first conference on giant cells at MD Anderson in February. Azra Raza has a patent on marking these cells.

Evolution 2.0 and Reversing Cancer raise money for researchers like Azra and Michael Levin. We connect people from different fields who often know of each other but haven’t met. The Cancer and Evolution Symposium brought together people from 25 different fields, a pivotal moment in medical history.

We’ve introduced Azra to various people, including Michael Levin, Jinsong, Kevin Ham (who helped raise $300,000 for her tissue repository), and Eric Kuelker (who added a psychological test to the repository).

I helped Azra with her pitch deck, leading to connections with Richard Rossi and his longevity conference; and many other potential donors.

Toby Baxendale, a UK investor, advised Azra: “Don’t ask for $2 million or $10 million. Ask for $100 million.” She listened to him and raised $200 million for a project that will go into clinical trials late this year.

Azra connected with Creatv MicroTech, a company with a Stage Negative One diagnostic test. We’re now working with Tom Hollon, a science grant writer, to turn our efforts into large grants. This involves attending conferences, meetings, and getting into private rooms with influential people.

My role has evolved from public spokesperson to facilitating private, often extremely confidential conversations. Almost every meeting with scientists includes information I can’t share publicly. It’s become a very private endeavor, contrary to my initial expectations of public recognition.

In May, Azra and I met with Richard Rossi’s daVinci50 longevity conference. Richard’s group of functional medicine doctors is working out how to integrate our Stage Negative One diagnostic test into their patient protocols.

In June, Azra and I flew to Vancouver BC and met with a number of potential donors, including a billionaire. One generous donor so far has said yes.

Right now we are applying for a $100 million private grant, with cooperation from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson, Northwestern, and Montefiore Einstein hospitals. Grant writer Tom Hollon is ensuring we leave nothing to chance, and Reversing Cancer is covering his fee.

There is SO MUCH packed into what I just told you… you might want to re-read the 2nd half of this newsletter 2-3 more times. Like I said, we are only a few months away from a “Cancer at Stage Negative One” diagnostic test your doctor can order for you.

If you’re interested, email [email protected] and we’ll get you details. This will flip the entire paradigm of cancer treatment upside down.

In the last 12 months we have made more tangible progress in arresting this horrific disease than most cancer charities, who are far larger than us, achieve in a decade.

That’s why we need your financial support. Your gift of $500, $5,000 or $50,000 wields tremendous power because we are connecting people and resources who would never otherwise come together. Dan Sullivan has a famous book “Who Not How” and we are all about the WHO.

Thank you so very much for helping us financially and making this incredible journey possible. We are moving so fast!

Your mother, father, sister-in-law, aunt, uncles and cousins… and yes, your children and grandchildren, will thank you for decades to come.

Perry Marshall

(This post is the current Evo2 Newsletter – this and previous newsletters are at: https://evo2.org/evolution-2-0-newsletters/

Download The First 3 Chapters of Evolution 2.0 For Free, Here – https://evo2.org/evolution/

Where Did Life And The Genetic Code Come From? Can The Answer Build Superior AI? The #1 Mystery In Science Now Has A $10 Million Prize. Learn More About It, Here – https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0