We already culture and DNA test cancers. Sometimes we can point at a secondary tumor and say "it came from this primary tumor". And we already know viral and bacterial infections can increase the likelihood of people getting malignant tumorws.
Most scientists wouldn't call the hallmarks of cancer "evolution". I think instead most would say that cancer is an almost certainly unavoidable outcome of the complexity of eukaryotic organism's control of cellular replication.
There's a series of papers organized around the "Hallmarks of Cancer" which help explain why nearly all tumors show the same properties- and how they are effectively due to dysregulation of evolutionary checkpoints and signalling. generally, an organism with a malignant tumor is less likely to reproduce. However, it's really far more complex than that ,
Do we understand the early dynamics of cancer? Do the hallmarks need to appear more or less at the same time by chance, or can the cancer cells acquire them sequentially, which would then induce a local microevolution process?
>>> generally, an organism with a malignant tumor is less likely to reproduce.
Huh?
What is meant by this? Like if you have cancer, you are less likely to want to reproduce? Or, less likely to reproduce due to the illness?