Two salient points: 1. Hydra are apparently immortal. They do not appear to age. It is likely that there is some biological trade off between immortality and c

Two salient points: 1. Hydra are apparently immortal. They do not appear to age. It is likely that there is some biological trade off between immortality and cancer predisposition. Therefore they are not a good model for concluding that cancer everywhere in everything is incurable 2. Hydra don't have an adaptive immune system. This is a huge flaw in an experimental system for studying the 'roots' of cancer development. The main point of the journal article is that maybe we should use metazoans to study cancer. The journalist here is way off the mark.