How could an immortal organism avoid cancer?

In a novel I am writing, one of the characters is an immortal* shape-shifter, called 'Creature'. Creature has been around since shortly after the beginning of life on earth. Its cells divide/replicate 1000X times faster than a human's, and it can consciously control this proccess to shape-shift and grow in any way it wants (within the constraints of normal, real-world biology).

My question is, how would Creature avoid cancer? All this super-fast cell division should result in cancer, but it doesn't. How?

The proccess can be direct action taken by Creature, or something already present in its physiology.

*Creature can be killed, but won't die of old age/has an indefinite lifespan.

OK, some of the answers/comments made me realize I need to clear up a few things:

• Creature cannot control cancerous cells. It cannot make them divide or stop them from dividing.
• Creature can cannot detect single cancerous cells. It can only detect them once they reach a critical number, around 100 million or so.
• The shapeshifting proccess is similar to The Thing in the 1982 movie., although I'm not sure about the speed.

Sorry if this negates any of your answers.

posted almost 9 years ago

Ryan Krage‭

1 reputation 2 0 0 0