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Since when has 'restricting the spread of advanced XYZ knowledge' ever worked? Sure, the RIAA/MPAA would love to contain the spreading of the dangerous knowledge that you can use file sharing programs, and microsoft would love to keep all the advances knowledge about how to build an OS secret. After all, knowing how an OS works could arguably lead to damages and lives lost, like hacking into a power grid (yes, I am becoming a bit melodramatic, I'll stop now, I promise).

My point is: It's a bad idea to restrict the spread of knowledge, since we simply can't. Good textbooks about biology will teach you a fair bit about molecular biology, and lab techniques. All this can be used for good or for bad purposes, as with (almost) all technology. So how do you wish to contain this knowledge? Prohibit anyone from teaching biology? Or perhaps teach biology only in the US, thus protecting the homeland? (oops I am bitter again...)

In that vein, do you think that amending the GPL would help in containing information? Bad people who are planning to kill usually don't worry too much about breaking the terms of a license. And as for the Ebola genome, it's here, courtesy of the NIH. And it is there, publicly available, since some people are actually wanting to study it to find a remedy, and fortunately, they are not all employed by the USAMRIID or DoD but are all over the world.

Good stuff, the more areas of human activity that the free software way of producing things spreads to the better, another science thing is featured on the front page of Creative Commons at the moment, PLoS:

The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS emerged in October 2000 through the effort of three dynamic and highly respected scientists: Nobel Laureate and former head of the National Institutes of Health Harold Varmus, molecular biologist Pat Brown of Stanford University, and biologist Michael Eisen of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and UC Berkeley. This trio's dream, as the L.A. Times put it, is to build "a world in which the many thousands of scientific journals . . . are placed in an electronic library open to the public."

Science and education seem to be areas where this is taking off at the moment, the design of things seems to be happening at a lot slower rate. Perhaps the lack of free CAD software to compete with AutoCAD is one of the main things holding this back?

I'm looking forward to the day when I can buy a washing machine and vacuum cleaner that are build from designs under GPL style licences...

pubmed

golden path

bioconducter

public library of science

gnumeric

cluster analysis

etc. etc. etc.

What's the BFD ??? A lot of scientists are on the open source bandwagon and have been for years. Walmart's coming to town and the Ivory Towers are falling.

It's not the "government". It's the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Says so at the bottom of the Usability Guidelines page. If you aren't doing research on cancer using U.S. government money, they don't have any authority over you. So, relax, everyone.

While the amounts reported are below the current safety thresholds -
caffeine easily passes from mother to unborn child -
there is also increasing concern about environmental estrogens or chemicals that may react with them.

If you are a publisher, maybe this dtd would be of use to you.

As you can see, dtd's can get as complicated as you'd like...

This story had nothing to do with the US... The reactor is being built in South Africa.

The "BOOM" post with which you took issue was in reply to a post about the spelling of Chernobyl, a trivial sidetrack away from the best demonstration of the risks of nuclear fission. You can talk about superior "Western" technology, while another post mentioned the deadly, toxic 1999 disaster in Tokaimura Japan. Another poster pointed out that Chernobyl demonstrated the ignition of graphite in the catastrophe.

Perhaps you are actually unaware of the carcinogenic radiation released by Three Mile Island, in the steam that was vented, and initially denied. Or the poisoning of the vast area surrounding the Hanford facility, where the coverup firing the whistleblowing onsite workers. Coal burning plants' radioactive emissions are among their crimes; the shared ownership in coal and nuclear power belongs to the same criminals. Why choose between the frying pan and the fire? Truly sustainable energy sources abound, with tech entrepreneur opportunities surrounding every one.

The "rational approach" does not include calling opponents "scared sheep" and "babbling incoherent jerks". I'll ignore your spurious (yet de rigeur) reference to "terrorists", assuming that fear, sown in abundant public ignorance by the denials from the irresponsible nuclear industry, is abhorred by us both, best dispelled by reason. Best to get out of the flock of glowing sheep on the "Right", and apply some scepticism to the energy mafia. With the Cheney Energy bill being hustled through Congress, it's getting harder to see through the lies until it's too late to avoid stepping in that puddle of poison.

At least you and I agree on the superiority of a lunar/solar power "grid". Let's get past the deadend paths of fission, coal, and other polluting cash cows, and work together constructively to tap the vast power flowing sustainably through our environment.

Why Albion pissed me off so much.

My name is Charles Booher.

I downloaded Xupiter. Xupiter claimed that it is a Microsoft Product (a crime I have also committed with some of my software projects), but Albion Medical and VigRX made my life a living hell while I was trying to put together

http://www.cafeshops.com/usnoastronomy

and

http://www.cafeshops.com/genomicbiology

I am unemployed software engineer who was trying to extend and enhance the really wonderful science that the US Federal government supports at such web sites as http://aa.usno.navy.mil/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

I have always been afraid of doctors, hospitals, and the like and I had to endure two more cancer years in 1993 and 1996. I was treated at Stanford University Hospital and El Camino Hospital and I cannot say enough good things about the doctors and people who work at these places.

I have always had a fear of people wearing medical clothing. This fear goes back to my earliest childhood. Since getting cancer the first time in 1987 this fear has turned into a problem.

Imagine if you are a woman who has had a double mastectomy who is receiving intolerable amount of ads for fraudulent pills that enlarge breasts.

My computer was taken over by Albion Medical, VigRX, and xupiter for about three months. I needed my old email to support software that I used to offer as free downloads to people who wanted it. I was constantly bombarded with pictures of doctors and people wearing medical clothing and if I am not prepared for it.

Albion medical was popping up continuing spasm on my computer screen that showed pictures of doctors. Even when I see doctors on TV or in a movie theater I sometimes need to leave the room.

Albion Medical and VigRX sell nothing but fraudulent products, and Doug MacKay is a pathological liar.

I admit that I may have committed a criminal act. I am 100% certain that the US court system will fairly hear my case. If I am guilty of a crime then I will make restitution and do whatever I can to restore and make restitution for the damages I have done to the US government.

At the risk of slashdotting a really good book, I humbly offer an absolutely excellent read on the Soviet development of pathgenic weapons: Biohazard, by Ken Alibek (the former first deputy chief of Biopreparat, the Soviet state pharmaceutical agency that developed and manufactured biological weaponry).

We already have a tuberculosis vaccine - the BCG - which is given to all schoolchildren in the UK at around age 14.

It's not actually the speed that matters, here. It's how well the applications are parallelized. Things like protein folding, most population modelling simulations, graphics rendering, etc are -highly- parallel in nature, and run beautifully on clusters and large SMP machines (by large we're talking >32 way).
A really good example is the genomic search tool BLAST. The "stock" version from NIH isn't natively parallel, however due to it being available in source form, it's been modified to run in parallel....and it's -much- faster that way.

Basically, if your problem set can be broken into chunks and -then- worked on, you can make good use of any sort of parallel system. Clusters are really the "poor man's" way of parallelizing computation...they're also becoming the most prevalent -because- you get a lot of bang for your buck...think about it: Earth Simulator cost 8 figures to build, IIRC, to get 17 TFlops. Earth Simulatr is a more tradition vektor system, so it's -really- freaking good at certain operations...but it's also freakishly expensive to design and build.

It's not actually the speed that matters, here. It's how well the applications are parallelized. Things like protein folding, most population modelling simulations, graphics rendering, etc are -highly- parallel in nature, and run beautifully on clusters and large SMP machines (by large we're talking >32 way).
A really good example is the genomic search tool BLAST. The "stock" version from NIH isn't natively parallel, however due to it being available in source form, it's been modified to run in parallel....and it's -much- faster that way.

Basically, if your problem set can be broken into chunks and -then- worked on, you can make good use of any sort of parallel system. Clusters are really the "poor man's" way of parallelizing computation...they're also becoming the most prevalent -because- you get a lot of bang for your buck...think about it: Earth Simulator cost 8 figures to build, IIRC, to get 17 TFlops. Earth Simulatr is a more tradition vektor system, so it's -really- freaking good at certain operations...but it's also freakishly expensive to design and build.

From the desctription of the study

A volunteer must meet all of the following inclusion criteria: (...) 8. In good general health without clinically significant medical history.

So if you are terminally ill, don't bother. Come on. This is a vaccine. Vaccines are used on healthy people. They need to check the dose and side-effects. But it won't cause the disease.

The NIH, which has a budget of over 20-something billion dollars, already spends a lot of money on brain research (The NIMH, whose budget is $1.3B is a subset of the NIH, FYI). When you add in all of the private foundations, brain research or neuroscience as it's being called now commands a pretty large amount of research money.

That's too bad, because we don't even know the molecular details on several organs/tissues/cells/etc of even healthy individuals. How are we going to do research on illnesses and disorders when we don't know how a lot of things are supposed to work.

The NIH, which has a budget of over 20-something billion dollars, already spends a lot of money on brain research (The NIMH, whose budget is $1.3B is a subset of the NIH, FYI). When you add in all of the private foundations, brain research or neuroscience as it's being called now commands a pretty large amount of research money.

That's too bad, because we don't even know the molecular details on several organs/tissues/cells/etc of even healthy individuals. How are we going to do research on illnesses and disorders when we don't know how a lot of things are supposed to work.

I'm a Vietnam Veteran, I'm just not too scared of the whole thing. TCDD is very deadly to rats, there is no question about that. If I were a rat I would be very scared (of course, I would also be long dead).

However, there is no good epidemiological evidence that it is significantly harmful to man. It is still treated in the US as a horribly deadly carcinogen, in spite of the lack of evidence. Go look closely at your own links and read the *scientific* report from the National Academies instead of all the propaganda.

To give you an idea of research on the subject, consider that there was an accident in a industrial plant in Seveso which released 5 kg of dioxin into the atmosphere. People received the highest doses ever recorded, and many developed chloracne (unlike those in Vietnam). Many small animals died. And yet, here is a quote from Medical and Toxicological Informion Review: "The Serveso 15-year update has been published. The findings, surprising many, including IARC, concluded there were no statistically significant reports of cancer for individuals exposed to Dioxin in 1976. See Epidemiology 8 (1997): 646-652"

There is an entire industry devoted to getting money for Vietnam Veterans because their health problems were "caused by Agent Orange." There are a number of cancers, which, if I get them, I can get compensation for as "Agent Orange" service connected health problem.

The communist government of Vietnam of course blames all birth defects on it.

As far as eye witnesses, that claim is utterly absurd. The ONLY known short term harm of extremely high dosages of dioxins is a non-fatal skin condition known as chloracne. Thats at HIGH DOSAGES, not the trace dosages Americans, Australians and Vietnamese got from the defoliation.

Cancer mortality among Vietnam Veterans is INVERSELY proportional to Agent Orange exposure.

If you carefully read the National Academies reports, they are able to find some associations between *pesticides* and an increased cancer risk - among farmers who use the pesticides a lot for a long time.

They have been unable to find any statistically significant evidence of Agent Orange damage to Vietnam Veterans. Go read the report.

Now, when you consider all the other things going on in Vietnam at the time, and the high level of violence, and the risk level which is so low that it has yet to be reasonably measurable after 35 years, calling AO a chemical weapon is utterly and completely absurd. That's like calling a bulldozer a weapon because it clears jungle.

Notice your own quote "TCDD's are thought to be harmful to man." If there were scientifically valid evidence, that statement would read: "TCDD's are known to be harmful humans." In fact, many of the chemicals we used in our aviation work were more dangerous that AO.

All the evidence indicates that AO was less dangerous than gasoline or oil or many of the other chemicals used by people in their daily lives. Furthermore, the evidence from those who got vastly higher doses than anyone in 'nam is that the slight risk observed is more likely due to the pesticide than the TCDD.

Furthermore, significant amounts of dioxins are produced in nature. One dioxin scare in the US was traced to the clay used in a food processing phase... clay from a many millenia old stratum.

If you have the ability to read scientific reports, try: Birth Outcomes of Women Exposed to Dioxin in Seveso Italy

The obvious conclusion is that dioxins may be slightly toxic in low doses, with possibly a very small risk of future cancers, but this has not been proven. They also have known effects, at high dosages, on sex ratios in human births.

This is hardly a chemical weapon!

As to your offensive attitude, mate, I suppose it's what to expect th

You can compare compiled genome data on various viruses at the NIH Viral Genomes Resource

You can look at the genome lengths in basepairs and compare them.

NONE, FUCKER! BECAUSE THERE IS NO IBOLA VIRUS! UNLESS APPLE GETS INTO BIOWARFARE!

now, if you are talking about the ebola virus, it has 18959 base pairs. see the details on the ebola zaire genome

Ebola Zaire: 18959 base pairs
Ebola Reston: 18891 base pairs

Marburg: 19112 base pairs

Ebola Zaire: 18959 base pairs
Ebola Reston: 18891 base pairs

Marburg: 19112 base pairs

Ok, I'm confused. According to the article:

...scientists have never been able to identify a VMO in humans, despite evidence that they do respond to pheromones.

But that doesn't sound right. Believe it or not, I actually wrote a paper for my freshman psychology class back in Fall '96 on the effect of human pheromones and the VMO. At that time, at least, it was fairly well known that the VMO did indeed exist in humans, and that even its location in the human body was known (See this and this, for example).

So when did it vanish from scientific literature, or was its existence called into question?

The six genes specifying the utilization of L-fucose as a carbon and energy source are known as the "fuc" genes. Among them is L-fuculose kinase, also known as "fucK." The abstract of the paper where the genes were cloned (and I think named) can be found on PubMed.

This makes sense, even from the view point on increasing density and complexity of data alone being packed into smaller and smaller containers. Even if you only allocated 1 electron per bit, after a while all of those bits start to add up. Unless you go to another system.

As an example, people often cite the human brain, with all of it's nueral connections and pathways. But this might not be all that is going on.

Biomineralization of ferrimagnetic magnetite is known to occur in a number of organisms including animals. Recent investigations have revealed the presence of biogenic magnetite in human brain tissue as well. The presence of magnetite in the brain has been established using a variety of magnetic and electron microscopic techniques.

This has interesting implications for data processing in the brain, as well a exotic areas of research into the phenomena of consciousness

Regardless of your opinion on the above (some of which is highly speculative), this leads us to the vision of a computer technology where not not only electronics states are used for data processing, but magnetic ones as well.

Gee, reovirus will CURE CANCER! And Longhorn will CHANGE YOUR EXPERIENCE on the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!!!

As Doktor Memory said, the post contains no links to substantive biology articles, no discussion of the long and checkered history of attacks on the Ras pathway, and little information about what is actually going on. If you want real information go look at the PubMed on 'reovirus ras'.

It'll be great if reovirus increases survival rates in Ras cancers, but it will not be a magic bullet and it could easily fail final clinical trials for one reason or another. It just ain't over 'til it's over in the pharmaceutical industry.

As one of slash's physicians, I feel I should contribute a little research on the topic. The summary of the research is that Atkin's probably works and probably lowers cholesterol. I recently read a study that followed people out for 12 months that found the diet safe.

I tend to follow the Mediterranean diet but have no better science supporting it either.

This New England Journal of Medicine article agrees with my beliefs. The important thing to remember is that weight loss requires changes to diet for life! Any diet, even Atkins, only works as long as you can follow it...

New England Journal of Medicine Article

BACKGROUND: Despite the popularity of the low-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat (Atkins) diet, no randomized, controlled trials have evaluated its efficacy. METHODS: We conducted a one-year, multicenter, controlled trial involving 63 obese men and women who were randomly assigned to either a low-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat diet or a low-calorie, high-carbohydrate, low-fat (conventional) diet. Professional contact was minimal to replicate the approach used by most dieters. RESULTS: Subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet had lost more weight than subjects on the conventional diet at 3 months (mean [+/-SD], -6.8+/-5.0 vs. -2.7+/-3.7 percent of body weight; P=0.001) and 6 months (-7.0+/-6.5 vs. -3.2+/-5.6 percent of body weight, P=0.02), but the difference at 12 months was not significant (-4.4+/-6.7 vs. -2.5+/-6.3 percent of body weight, P=0.26). After three months, no significant differences were found between the groups in total or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. The increase in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations and the decrease in triglyceride concentrations were greater among subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet than among those on the conventional diet throughout most of the study. Both diets significantly decreased diastolic blood pressure and the insulin response to an oral glucose load. CONCLUSIONS: The low-carbohydrate diet produced a greater weight loss (absolute difference, approximately 4 percent) than did the conventional diet for the first six months, but the differences were not significant at one year. The low-carbohydrate diet was associated with a greater improvement in some risk factors for coronary heart disease. Adherence was poor and attrition was high in both groups. Longer and larger studies are required to determine the long-term safety and efficacy of low-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat diets.

Where do you see "defense contract". Sorry but most scientific funding comes from the US government by means of the National Institute of Health.

If you visited his website you would see his funding comes from the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which is part of the NIH.

~Dan
Photos

Where do you see "defense contract". Sorry but most scientific funding comes from the US government by means of the National Institute of Health.

If you visited his website you would see his funding comes from the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which is part of the NIH.

~Dan
Photos

Sorry to reply to my own message... but I just found some of Buller's old research as well. He's been playing with this stuff since 1993.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7685412&dopt=Abstract

Gamma interferon is shown to be critical in recovery of C57BL/6 mice from mousepox. Anti-gamma interferon treatment of mice infected in the footpad with ectromelia virus resulted in enhanced spread to and efficient virus replication in the spleen, lungs, ovaries, and, especially, liver. All treated, infected mice died within a mean of 7 days, 2.5 days earlier than mice with severe combined immunodeficiency that were given a comparable infection. On the other hand, alpha interferon appeared not to have a major role in controlling virus replication in tissues examined, and beta interferon was important for virus clearance in the liver and ovaries but not the spleen. Either anti-alpha, beta interferon or anti-beta interferon antibody therapy resulted in only 25% mortality. Infected control mice survived but showed persistence of ectromelia virus at the site of infection (the footpad) and transient presence of the virus in the spleen, liver, lungs, and ovaries and in the fibroreticular but not lymphoid cells of the draining popliteal lymph node. Depletion of gamma interferon but not alpha and/or beta interferon resulted in a significant reduction in the numbers of splenic T (especially gamma delta-TCR+), B, and Mac-1+ cells, although the proportion of Mac-1+ cells in the spleen increased compared with control values. Depletion of alpha, beta, or gamma interferons did not severely affect the generation of virus-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses or natural killer cell cytolytic activity. This study, in which a natural virus disease model was used, underscores the crucial importance of gamma interferon in virus clearance at all stages of infection and in all tissues tested except the primary site of infection, where virus clearance appears to be delayed.

Read some of the research for yourself:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11152493&dopt=Abstrac t

Don't accept the media's spin on things!

Why not just use the new electronic nose technology? Why do we need people for this?

We use it for tea
We use it for water purification
Diagnosis of female issues
Predicting who has diabetes

Davak

Why not just use the new electronic nose technology? Why do we need people for this?

We use it for tea
We use it for water purification
Diagnosis of female issues
Predicting who has diabetes

Davak

Why not just use the new electronic nose technology? Why do we need people for this?

We use it for tea
We use it for water purification
Diagnosis of female issues
Predicting who has diabetes

Davak

Why not just use the new electronic nose technology? Why do we need people for this?

We use it for tea
We use it for water purification
Diagnosis of female issues
Predicting who has diabetes

Davak

Alchohol is NOT the only drug with deadly withdrawl. Heroin withdawl can, and does kill people.

Heroin withdrawal is never fatal to otherwise healthy adults.

With regards to your brother's bipolar medicine, I think the context ably demonstrates that we are talking about recreational drugs, but I apologize for the confusion nonetheless.

fMRI doesn't tell you what neurons do with any spatial or temporal accuracy.

See this paper:

The authors find that:
* fMRI gives you a really strong signal in the blood vessels
* Less than 50% of the time, when you average the neural activity over several SECONDS (an action potential lasts 0.015s), and over 1 cubic CENTIMETER (containing 10^8 neurons), fMRI tells you something about that average activity. Only problem is: we know that this averaging can work in SI, the brain area studied in the paper. For other brain areas, who knows?

Not to mention the issues with statistics in fMRI.

There are a very few groups doing good MRI studies, e.g. Heeger, Boynton, but they study humans doing relatively simple things.
Marketing is NOT simple. Marketing + fMRI = crap.

Here's a link to the NIH's list of common radiation sources & doses. It appears I was on the conservative side. 30 cigarettes a day = 2,000 Chest X-Rays a year. Ouch.
http://www.nih.gov/od/ors/ds/rsb/sectionf.htm

I also remember reading that burning coal releases tons of radioisotopes into the atmosphere every year... Give me good, clean, controlled nuclear power any day. And I'll be happy to use solar, wind, or whatever to supplement. If I live someplace which is always sunny or always windy. Which I don't. That, and I don't want to obstruct the view.

The launching of PLoS Biology -- http://www.plosbiology.org/-- an outcome of Harold Varmus's highly influential 1999 Ebiomed Proposal -- http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/ebiomed. htm -- is a very important event for research and researchers, for two reasons:

(1) It is another step forward in providing open access to peer-reviewed research, a major step.

(2) It both demonstrates and will further stimulate the research community's growing consciousness of both the need for open access and the possibility of attaining it.

It is all the more important, therefore, that on this auspicious occasion for the open-access publication strategy (BOAI-2) we not forget or neglect the other, complementary open-access strategy, open-access self-archiving (BOAI-1) --http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml -- particularly because systematically supplementing BOAI-2 with BOAI-1 has the power to bring us so much more open-access, so much more quickly.

A KEY-STROKE KOAN FOR OUR OPEN-ACCESS TIMES

Here is an extremely conservative calculation that will give you an (I hope unforgettable) intuition for the importance of not neglecting the other road to open access:

If, in addition to signing the PLoS open letter (pledging to boycott toll-access publishers unless they become open-access publishers http://www.plos.org/support/openletter.shtml), not even all the 30,000 PLoS signatories had self-archived not even all their own toll-access articles, nor even the 55% corresponding to the proportion of blue/green (self-archiving-friendly) toll-access journals -- http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/rcoptable. gif-- but only the 18% of signatories corresponding to the proportion of postprint-green journals had self-archived just one of the articles they had published in just one of those toll-access journals, the resulting 5400 articles that had been made openly accessible by this act would still have been 5 times as many as PLoS Biology will publish in 5 years (1200 articles, assuming 20 articles per PLoS issue at $1500 a pop). And at the cost of only a few keystrokes more than what it cost to sign the petition.

Yet all researchers did was sign the PLoS open letter, and then wait, passively, for toll-access journals to turn into open-access journals in response to the petition. And now researchers seem ready to wait yet again, passively, with the popular press now cheering from the sidelines, for more open-access journals like PLoS Biology to be created or converted, one by one.

As we make our estimate less conservative and arbitrary, and scale it up first to 55% of all annual biology articles, and then beyond that, to the many journals that will support self-archiving if asked, I hope the scales will at last begin to drop from the eyes of those who have not yet noticed the tunnel vision and paralysis involved in focusing only on open-access publishing, when it is *open access* that is our target.

And perhaps then we will be less surprised that the 23,500 toll-access publishers did not take our boycott threat seriously -- and, by the same token, that they still have no reason to take the handful of open-access journals created since the beginning of the '90s (of which PLoS Biology is about the 543rd) seriously -- if that's all we're prepared to do to demonstrate our need for and commitment to open access for our research, as we just keep sitting on our hands instead o

Journals are very expensive. No doubt.

Likewise, journals save lives... at least in the medical profession. Working in a university hospital we get the worse cases, and the rarest cases--and we reference the literature frequently. Just last week I was getting one of my buddies to translate an article from German...

The medical journals, at least, are making this work by giving discount rates on subscriptions... or charging huge fees if you need access to an article on a one time basis. Thus, the hospital/university just buys subscriptions to all the electronic journals to keep from having to pay these really high fees.

Anyway, we can all access this information... at least in abstract form. Enjoy reading about your favorite disease on pubmed.

Why are guys so often the risk takers ? Why is it that so many more males die in car accidents ? A prof at Caltech has an interesting idea that human males have a neuro/genetic predisposition to risky behaviors, and that females are evolutionarily designed to be conservative since they have to stay alive to care for the kiddies. He has studied that in species of primates where MEN take care of the kids, WOMEN tend to take more risks and have a correspondingly shorter life-span. Parenting and survival in anthropoid primates: caretakers live longer.

CF is a disease that could be perfectly treated by gene therapy... it comes from a single defect, though the defect itself can vary, in the cell membrane Chloride channel. Treat the defect, and you can avoid all the consequences of CF (pneumonia, pancreatitis, sterility, Pseudomonas colonization, etc). CF is one of the most common genetic diseases, and is THE most common lethal genetic defect among caucasians.

For the non-medical, non-bio-science geeks, Here's some info courtesy of the NIH. Much like genetic counseling for various hemoglobinopathies, an argument can be made for the same approach here, particularly since some estimates put the CF gene prevalance at 5% in the white/northern european population.

Curiously, there's speculation as to how that gene became so prevalant... it appears to be protective against Cholera, and perhaps some other diarrheal illnesses. Additionally, it may also offer some resistance against Typhoid. The theory has been advanced that partial resistance among heterozygotes provided a genetic advantage during the plagues of humanity's past, which included Typhoid and Cholera.

KFG: I've taken care of many CF patients... Do you mind terribly if I ask your approximate age?

Regarding the second statement, it was a personal conclusion. There are a couple of cases of mobile phone "abusers" who developed tumors spatially close to the cellphone's antenna. There are studies that show how the blood brain barrier is negatively affected by cellphone-like radiation and some others that show how mininuclei are formed when blood is subjected to the same kind of radiation (mininuclei are thought to be a cause of cancer). Other studies (some of them sponsored by you-know-who) say that statistical data regarding cancer and cellphones is inconclusive and that the risk is clearly small. But cancer is not completely random, some people are more likely to develop it than others (in other words it is an uneven russian roullette).

P.S. I'm clearly not a microbiologist, and there are many things that I'm missing. I just happened to be alarmed by the continuous reports on cellphone unsafety.

Get Cn3D here and then look at the potassium channel here in 3D.

Get Cn3D here and then look at the potassium channel here in 3D.

He did it through straight x-ray crystallography. See abstracts from the papers here and here. Find the structure here.

He did it through straight x-ray crystallography. See abstracts from the papers here and here. Find the structure here.

Actually, reports on the gene go back to Jan '97!

The oldest reference I can find in the MedLine database is from 1993:

"Sonic hedgehog, a member of a family of putative signaling molecules, is implicated in the regulation of CNS polarity."
Cell. 1993 Dec 31;75(7):1417-30. "

Actually, reports on the gene go back to Jan '97!

The oldest reference I can find in the MedLine database is from 1993:

"Sonic hedgehog, a member of a family of putative signaling molecules, is implicated in the regulation of CNS polarity."
Cell. 1993 Dec 31;75(7):1417-30. "

Gene versus protein, huh?

American media penetrates most of the world. You can get Fox and CNN in the Middle East. American movies are popular the world over. Let me give you a clue. Iraq has several movie theaters. There is no big name movie studio in the Arab world. Besides, I said within the American "sphere of influence." That includes United Nations programs and probably a lot of other things I can't think of right now.

What about africa?

Great question. African Christian pastors are fighting AIDS by teaching abstinence. The youth are receptive to the message. Correspondents report that it's been effective in slowing the spread of HIV in their localities.

Africans' main problem has been ignorance of the nature of diseases. The officials now know, but the masses are still in a process of coming to understanding. First world countries don't have this excuse. We understand what viruses are and how they spread. For the most part, we choose to put ourselves at risk.

perhaps this virus spread because people are having UNSAFE sex. Use a condom.

Only 85% safe from HIV. And there is NO proof that condoms provide ANY protection from gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, chancroid, syphilis, genital herpes, or human papillomavirus.

Scientific Evidence on Condom [ In ]Effectiveness for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Prevention

The prescription for truly safe sex is sex only within a lifelong monogomous marital relationship. It protects you not only physically but emotionally and socially. Every other kind of sex is unsafe in every way.

Condoms decrease STD risk somewhat, but they increase risks of guilt, social conflict, and related forms of corruption, which lead to further personal devastation. It leads to more damage of families, and in the long run, the whole of society.

Really? Name someone doing "nothing at all" for an "HIV" infection who is worse for it? One. Just one. Any studies?

Plenty of studies. Here is the NIH fact sheet with numerous references.

I have one. The late tennis pro Arthur Ashe. He started the path to turning from AZT but never did. His wife and child both had HIV, but never received treatment.

They can't have "had" HIV--it's a persistent infection--it stays around for life. And, yes, many people live with HIV for a decade or longer before showing AIDS symptoms. Some people never progress. But AIDS is, if anything, remarkably lethal. Hepatitis B, for example, establishes a persistent, lethal infection only in a much smaller percentage of patients.

HIV is a harmless retrovirus. It's been around for ages, much longer than 20 years. Poppers have not been in use as a daily recreational drug for more than twenty years. Look into it rather than spewing off the party statement. It's quite awakening.

There is an excellent correlation between HIV and AIDS: almost all people infected with HIV will eventually develop AIDS, while immunosuppression or AIDS symptoms in people not infected with HIV are very rare. Poppers are not a reasonable explanation for AIDS because they are not used in much of the world where HIV is prevalent, and all the other factors that Duesberg has proposed have existed for much longer than AIDS has been around.

Given for how long people believed in a flat earth, it's not surprising that there are people like you around. And that wouldn't matter if those ideas didn't cause people to harm themselves. But they do.

Whether and when you start treatment with anti-retrovirals is your business. I think it's a perfectly rational choice not to use anti-retrovirals even if you believe that they help. But declaring HIV to be a "harmless retrovirus" and, by implication, telling people that they don't need to practice safe sex is irresponsible. Because even if, against all odds, Duesberg is right, safe sex would be a sensible precaution until we were certain of that.

The problem with Duesberg and you is not the theory about AIDS itself--plenty of scientists have plenty of doubts about how HIV and AIDS are related--it's the irresponsible way in which it is advanced.