I like this example. But it's not just that the whales are too big to care. In fact, according to published results from folks like the late Judah Folkman, hum

I like this example. But it's not just that the whales are too big to care. In fact, according to published results from folks like the late Judah Folkman, human bodies are also full of little microtumors. The older you get, the more of them there are. Current theory is that microtumors are forming all the time, but most will remain dormant forever. Only if one of them manages to "flip the angiogenic switch" -- undergo a mutation which makes it able to summon new blood vessels to itself -- will that tumor manage to grow to a size larger than a few hundred microns in diameter. And even then it might not be that big a deal. I guess whales can shrug them off at even bigger sizes than we can. The problem is when the cancer learns to metastasize. In the immortal (paraphrased) words of cancer researcher Josh Fidler, "if you have a big primary tumor we know what to do: The surgeon cuts it out and off you go." It's not the primary tumor that kills you. It's the metastases that kill you. I bet whalers don't find whales full of metastatic tumors. Unless they're already washed up on a beach.