The word gene is so ingrained in society it will be difficult to stop using it. The best way to replace faulty scientific words (e.g. phlogiston, caloric) is to provide superior concepts (oxidation, kinetic theory of heat).

With regards to cancer, oncogene and tumor suppressor gene are the present day equivalents of phlogiston and caloric. In my view, the reemergence of the aneuploidy theory will lead to a clearer, more productive understanding of cancer and cancer genes will fall by the wayside.

I recommend two good books on the demise of the gene:

The Century of the Gene, by Evelyn Fox Keller (2000), Harvard University Press.

Not In Our Genes: biology, ideology, and human nature, by R. C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin (1984), Pantheon Books.

I completely concur with your argument for a new lexicon. The history of science shows that sloppy speech leads to sloppy thinking, although unfortunately precise speech is no guarantee of clear thinking.

A key question in my mind that has not been much discussed yet among cancer geneticists (at least not as much as it should be) is whether our persistence in using a one-dimensional gene concept known to be false has been preventing us from seeing the genetic trauma of cancer–which occurs in four dimensions at multiple scales from the nucleotide to the nucleus–in a new light that will suggest new avenues of treatment.

Cancer research, like most forms of science, is driven by its tools, and we lack good tools for analyzing systems with this many degrees of freedom and this much heterogeneity. But is there a productive community of theorists developing such tools? There ought to be.