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On average, humans suffer one fatal malignancy for each 100 million billion cell divisions. Cancer is bad luck in every possible sense of the term.
平均来说，每10亿亿次细胞分裂中，人会得一次致命的疾病。癌症无论从任何意义上说都是运气不好的表现。
The wonder of cells is not that things occasionally go wrong, but that they manage everything so smoothly for decades at a stretch. They do so by constantly sending and monitoring streams of messages—a cacophony of messages—from all around the body: instructions, queries, corrections, requests for assistance, updates, notices to divide or expire. Most of these signals arrive by means of couriers called hormones, chemical entities such as insulin, adrenaline, estrogen, and testosterone that convey information from remote outposts like the thyroid and endocrine glands. Still other messages arrive by telegraph from the brain or from regional centers in a process called paracrine signaling. Finally, cells communicate directly with their neighbors to make sure their actions are coordinated.
细胞的奇妙之处不在于事情偶尔会出问题，而在于它们在几十年的时间里使人体内的一切运转正常。为此，它们不停发送和监控来自全身各个部位的信息——滴滴答答的信息：指令、质问、修正、救助、更新、分裂或死亡的通告。所有这些信息大多数是通过名叫荷尔蒙的化学实体来传递的，如胰岛素、肾上腺素、甲状腺素、睾丸寒从甲状腺和内分泌腺。还有一些信息是从大脑或区域中心传输过来的。这个过程叫做“发出旁分泌信号”。最后，细胞直接和它的左邻右舍进行交流，以确保它们行动一致。
What is perhaps most remarkable is that it is all just random frantic action, a sequence of endless encounters directed by nothing more than elemental rules of attraction and repulsion. There is clearly no thinking presence behind any of the actions of the cells. It all just happens, smoothly and repeatedly and so reliably that seldom are we even conscious of it, yet somehow all this produces not just order within the cell but a perfect harmony right across the organism.
细胞最引人注目的特点是，它们总是以一种疯狂的速度处于漫无目的的运动和无休无止的撞击状态中，而驱使它们这么做的无非是吸引和排斥的基本法则。细胞的任何运动都无理性可言。所有的运动都平静地、重复地、可靠地发生着，因此我们甚至很少意识到。然而，这一切不仅很好地维持着细胞内的秩序，而且使得有机体保持在一种完美的和谐状态中。
