should be distinguished from those theories of carcinogenesis that have a logical basis within mainstream cancer biology, and from which conventionally testable hypotheses can be made. Several alternative theories of carcinogenesis, however, are based on scientific evidence and are increasingly being acknowledged. Some researchers believe that cancer may be caused by aneuploidy (numerical and structural abnormalities in chromosomes) rather than by mutations or epimutations. Cancer has also been considered as a metabolic disease, in which the cellular metabolism of oxygen is diverted from the pathway that generates energy (oxidative phosphorylation) to the pathway that generates reactive oxygen species. This causes an energy switch from oxidative phosphorylation to aerobic glycolysis (Warburg's hypothesis), and the accumulation of reactive oxygen species leading to oxidative stress ("oxidative stress theory of cancer"). Another concept of cancer development is based on exposure to weak magnetic and electromagnetic fields and their effects on oxidative stress, known as magnetocarcinogenesis. A number of authors have questioned the assumption that cancers result from sequential random mutations as oversimplistic, suggesting instead that cancer results from a failure of the body to inhibit an innate, programmed proliferative tendency. A related theory suggests that cancer is an atavism, an evolutionary throwback to an earlier form of multicellular life. The genes responsible for uncontrolled cell growth and cooperation between cancer cells are very similar to those that enabled the first multicellular life forms to group together and flourish. These genes still exist within the genomes of more complex metazoans, such as humans, although more recently evolved genes keep them in check. When the newer controlling genes fail for whatever reason, the cell can revert to its more primitive programming and reproduce out of control. The theory is an alternative to the notion that cancers begin with rogue cells that undergo evolution within the body. Instead, they possess a fixed number of primitive genes that are progressively activated, giving them finite variability. Another evolutionary theory puts the roots of cancer back to the origin of the eukaryote (nucleated) cell by massive horizontal gene transfer, when the genomes of infecting viruses were cleaved (and thereby attenuated) by the host, but their fragments integrated into the host genome as immune protection. Cancer thus originates when a rare somatic mutation recombines such fragments into a functional driver of cell proliferation. Cancer cell biology Often, the multiple genetic changes that result in cancer may take many years to accumulate.