Peto’s Paradox

We saw possibilities of random errors during cell divisions leading to mutations. Despite all the corrective mechanisms that the body has, some of those can lead to genetic diseases such as cancer. Naturally, one would expect the probability of cancer to be proportional to the number of cell divisions. If you extrapolate the logic further, it is logical to conclude that the number of cells, the larger the animal, will lead to more occurrences of cancer.

In other words, an elephant has more probability than humans, which, in turn, has a lower chance than a blue whale. But that is never seen in real life. This lack of correlation between animal size with the propensity to get cancer is known as Peto’s Paradox.

Peto’s paradox: Wiki
What is Cancer: NIH