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Researchers Find Off Protein For Immune System
canning writes "A team of Canadian scientists has discovered the "Holy Grail" of the signalling process
the human body uses to control its immune system, a finding that could one day halt
the development of cancer, diabetes, arthritis and heart disease.
This article explains what Dr. Penninger's team plans to accomplish with such a discovery and gives a brief history of this highly successful group of researchers."
Rheumatoid arthritis is caused by the immune system attacking the joints. Diabetes (child onset, I think) is caused by the immune system atacking insulin producing 'islets' of cells. In some types of heart disease, the immune system attacks the artery wall, causing it to thicken.
Seriously, has anybody every heard of a piece of lab gear called a "mouse homogenizer"? Not for the faint of heart...
And if you haven't, well, have fun.
-lee
stupid troll filter... bah...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Cancer is when the chemicals in your body that regulate things go haywire and start telling things to start doing things that they should not do. If you know what those chemicals are you have a big edge in treating the cancer.
And if Saddam wants a bomb to threaten the USA he would be better off with Anthrax or TB.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Also if you could selectivly turn off parts of the immune system it would make transplants much easer.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Naw - If those Somalis dare come over here on American soil:
We'll run their skinny asses over with our SUVs.
We'll shoot them with our concealed-carry handguns.
We'll clog their arteries with McDonald's cheeseburgers.
We'll poison their minds with kiddie pr0n from the internet.
We'll despoil their women with breast implants.
We'll get them hooked on bad pop music and flashy special-effects movies, then control their access with copy-protection schemes and have them paying $8 per viewing per episode of Friends.
We'll darken their eyes with rolling blackouts.
Americans are much more well-adapted to survival in this environment. The average Somali wouldn't last 2 weeks.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You're right, ./ DOES need a science editor. Anybody know if Bill Nye is available?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Seriously, the "switch" thing is just a journalistic metaphor.
It's a post that passes the Perl syntax checker.
Research is, in fact, one of the most open sourced processes going on.
Researchers get their status and thus their grant money from the number of publications and the number of times their publications are quoted by other publications, so it is in their best interest to make publications as easily obtainable as possible
For example, check out the arXiv preprint archive, which contains a large proportion of all publications in physics (at least for my field, soft condensed matter physics), in postscript and LaTeX source (!).
Of course, commercial journal publisher (like Elsevier) use this to obtain full copyright on articles, and publishing them in journals which cost 10s of thousands of dollars for a subscription. A good university or institute can't do without them, because they have a natural monopoly on what's published.
Sander
The researchers genetically engineered mice that could not make the protein so they could compare how these mice and normal mice fared against a virus.
Poor widdle mice. Mean old, nasty researchers.
Seriously, has anybody every heard of a piece of lab gear called a "mouse homogenizer"? Not for the faint of heart...
So they might be able to turn immunity OFF - seems like this might shed some light on AIDS research, and how to turn it ON.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Now with that wonder of the world in the bag, we can start building modules for the space ark.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I don't understand.
Are you asserting that if our government cuts off funds for this research, then no one in the world is ever going to make inroads along these lines?
Or are you merely stating that the government should take a hand in what people it funds, in terms of restricting the nationalities of whom these research facilities employ?
Or are you requesting that these sorts of discoveries not be publicized in the media, for fear of researchers being kidnapped by enemy nations, so that their discoveries can be used for destructive goals?
In any case, all new technologies are bound to have evil potential purposes to match the good ones. I feel that ignorance is never the right answer. I don't know when "temperance of discovery/research" crosses into hiding from the truth...
-Felix
arvind rulez
Funny? Not really, though your title was stated humorously, I feel that your points are quite serious.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Type 1 diabetes is almost always caused by an incorrect immune system response. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system typically attacks the Beta cells in your pancreas that create Insulin for you.
Arthritis (more specifically rheumatoid arthritis) is caused by the body's immune system attacking the cartiledge layers in between your joints. Under attack the cartiledge layers become inflamed, causing the characteristic joint swelling and immobility.
Heart Disease is a common term to describe medical conditions that cause damage to the heart. These can be physical conditions (such as obstructions to the blood supply to the heart), viral/bacterial infections, or auto-immune responses.
More information on Diabetes can be found at the American Diabetes Association. Information on Rheumatoid Arthritis can be found at the Arthritis Foundation
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
One more thing: we're slowly destroying Darwin's theory - the fittest no longer survive. Now everyone makes it, even if they have some genetic disease that gives them no chance in life. It's just another view to consider...
This isn't the destruction of Darwin's theories, the fittest still survive - you just have to look at what fittest actually means. Survival of the fittest is not about physical fitness, but about how well your adaptation fits the ecological niche. Consider examples like sickle cell anemia - it leaves the sufferers unfit by normal standards but protects them from malaria. The benefits of being less fit are bigger than the panalties. In this case, it reinforces the view that the next step in evolution will be mental rather than physical. If the benefits of being smarter (or richer, in this society) outweigh the costs then they will survive because they fit the environment better.
Are you kidding? It'll get worse!
Blar.
Just going by what the article says, the study found no new "stuff" that could be injected to disable the immune system© On the contrary:
So, I don't see the weapon potential© The protein keeps the immune system from overreacting© Anyway, we already know of an agent for disabling the immune system: HIV infection©
The article mentioned nothing about anything airborne©
Helium balloons want to be free.
To my knowledge, at least some forms of diabetes and arthrites have been proven to be auto-immune diseases.
There are several animal models used in immunology, which are characterized as being prone to develop autoimmune deseases. For example, NOD mice develop auto-immune diabetes in certain (clean) conditions at some period of life.
Americans are getting fatter, lazier and dumber, they will eventually be wiped out by the tougher, craftier Somalis.
Providing the Somalis evolve an immunity to cruise missiles.....
Selection criteria these days are more likely to be based on governmental economic know-how than tougness or craftiness.
+++++
+++++
The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
I know a while ago they were working on a system where they'd bind something (usually a bad-ass toxin) to a specific antibody and they could use that to go find cancer cells and kick their asses... Something like that may be useful here...
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Play Six Pack Man. I
You are exactly right about the immune system. The actual Nature article (and my immuno book) mentions that the cd45 receptor is a negative regulator for erythropoiesis, meaning that attempts to stimulate the receptor will not only wipe out "immune cell" proliferation, but red blood cell production. Hardly helpful for any real long-term maintenance. RBCs average 120 day lifespans, so perhaps one month courses could be done without significant anemia. With such obvious major side effects (and that's before an unperfect drug is actually developed!) it's hard to see how trading prednisone for this would be helpful.
I suppose, though, that an antagonist to this receptor might be useful for revving up the immune system in pancytopenic states. In that way, I think that this receptor could be a big help.
The real work lies in identifying ways to turn off individual lineages.
Invicta{HOG}
While this makes sense logically, it is obviously not necessary to isolate any endogenous ligands to the cd45 (although several are already known). What is needed is a careful study to determine whether cd45 activation is lower in actual patients with immune-mediated disease. If not, it would be nice to see whether increased stimulation of cd45 would suppress the immune system and block progression of the disease. Then, a drug might be developed which would stimulate the cd45. However, due to the decreased erythropoiesis this would cause, such a drug would probably not be helpful for chronic (ie MOST) immune diseases.
Invicta{HOG}
Is that the mice that were infected had a 100% mortality rate. Even the ones that were vaccinated had a 50% mortality rate. Wish I could remember where I saw the article that gave those figures. It also had quotes from the researchers. They were not intending to create what they did, and were leery about releasing the results, for fear that it would give terrorists ideas. Imagine a disease that is 100% lethal and spread via airborne infection.
Best Slashdot Co
This is not fundamentally different than any other medical breakthrough technology and they will test it the same way they do in every other case. After extensive animal trials moving from mice to primates they will use it on terminally ill people who volunteer for an experiment that may save their lives. Only after these work will they begin moving down the risk ladder.
It's a pragmatic and straightforward approach that works well.
Nothing makes this that much more dangerous than other medical treatment. Even Caffeinne has the potential to kill you in the right dose.
As for your Darwin's point, unlike most of your responders I'm willing to agree that we are screwing with natural selection as describes "fitness", and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
A point I will make is that "only the fittest survive" is a misnomer. It should read "only the fittest reproduce". Evolution stops caring about you the moment you stop reproducing. It's like an event horizon, it can't see past your last child. So if life extension technology keeps millionaires living to 150, it will have no effect on evolution unless they keep cranking out kids. But they likely won't, the wealthy rarely have many children.
So if you count the wealthy as the fittest in our society, natural selection is going in the opposite direction. And this isn't an armchair hypothesis either, rather it's been brought up before in stastitical analyses of reproduction patterns.
> But you assertion that homeless people have less children than billionaires is a bit far from the truth.
I didn't assert, I asked. Admittedly I assumed that on average, a society's sucesses would have more viable offspring than it's failures (if nothing else, death rates would be higher among the homeless). If it is the other way around, there's still selection.
> It is a known fact that as populations get wealthier, their birthrate goes down.
You may have a point... *shug* Then there is selection in favour of Africans like me. The real point is that there is *always* selection, all you need is differences in rates of reproduction.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
physical selective pressures that result from individual physical problems that may not match the environment (disease, deformity, etc)
But that's just the point. For instance, people like me who would be very short sighted without corrective measures, Now do match the environment, because we have those corective measures.
and allowing people who would not normally be able to reproduce the chance to do so.
Define normal, in the context of human beings. Normal and "natural" are slippery, and next to impossible to define. Sure, if we had a big world war & bombed the world back inot the stone age, people with heridatry short-sightedness or worse would rapidy fall by the wayside, but all that is is a change in selectiion criteria, it is no more or less normal.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
> This means that if you advocate medicine, you eventually will also have to advocate genetic engineering of offspring, because you will have to fix bad genes which will accumulate
Given the definition of "bad" as "would be detrimental to survival without medical intervention", which a a normal human point of view, that is a good point.
> and don't tell me that "no gene is bad,
Ah, the intersection of the evolutionary and personal human viewpoints. In one sense, no gene is bad. It is a collection of atoms. It just is. In another, it is less fit for most environments than others, and is therfor bad.
> As I use to say, the religions that refuse medical treatment at all are not as zany as they seem to be.
Yup, it's that good of the individual vs. good of the species thing again.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
> - the fittest no longer survive.
.com billionaires? Do Dumb/unlucky/reckless people still get killed before they breed? Is there still differential reproduction based on some (any) criteria? Point made already.
A common misconception. Darwin's use of the word "fittest" *does not* mean "most healthy", it means "best fit to the environment". All that's happened is that the environmental selection criteria have changed. Our environment, for instance, is no longer so unfriendly towards short-sighted people.
> Now everyone makes it,
Do they? Do homeless people have as many children as
You cannot escape natural selection. Ever.
Anyway, for 80% of the earth's population, the selection criteria are the same as they ever where. Which is why whilst Americans are getting fatter, lazier and dumber, they will eventually be wiped out by the tougher, craftier Somalis. This IMHO a good thing - the good of the individual is not the good of the species.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I truly understand where you might be coming from. I once believed as you do. However, when you are dying with a disease, I believe your opinion will be changed.
Nowhere in the article does it say this. I read through a few extra times to make sure, but it's just not there. Your comments would be stronger if you refrained from fabricating facts.
Re-read the WHOLE-PAGE. It's obviously a campaign for moving to Canada. Not only do they have a cure for the plague's of the 20th century (They won't be plagues for the 21st, Canada has the cure), But the 75% of college chicks are having casual sex! Yeah!
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
-- Albert Einstein
Do domain names matter?
I can see this being a good thing in terms of autoimmune diseases like arthritis, but heart attacks and cancer? Maybe some kinds of cancer, but certaintly, most of them are related to other problems like genes that regulate differentiation or growth rather than the immune system. This will have some far reaching consequences, mainly in unraveling the immune system's inner workings, but it's not the "Holy Grail" at all.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Not kidnapping, no, do you think this is some Third World dictatorship? But if knowledge like this is placed into the public domain we are basically giving away the fruits of our labors, and this is in no way consistent with the sensible capitalist policies that has seen our nation outstrip the rest of the world in every way that counts.
Except keeping your power on, or maybe electing a leader.
... a Jon Katz article on the potential dangers of this.
This may be news to you, but many of these diseases have already been cured. The cure is prevention.
A non-smoker, non-druggie, non-drinker on a low-fat, high-fiber properly planned vegan diet who has moderate excercise has practically given himself immunity to most degenerative diseases. Nearly all of the diseases that plague our elederly are attributed to poor diet and lack of excercise and a bad lifestyle. You would be very surprised to find out how much less heredity has to do with disease.
Don't wait for a magic pill. Take action to prevent it with the most genius machine ever created-your own body. You alone have the power to prevent disease. Don't commit yourself to a slow suicide.
Make the cause now and live to see all the many days ahead.
Some resources:
http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq
http://www.meatstinks.com
http://www.notmilk.com
http://www.milksucks.com
Also check out "Diet For a New America" by John Robbins and "The McDougall Plan" and "The McDougall Program" by Dr. McDougall.
Did I really just see you warn the slashdot readership of the danger of giving away the fruits of their labors? I feel I should remind you that you are in the midst of the nets' greatest concentration of people who believe that information should be free for all and frequently do give away their work. How many times have you seen "information wants to be free" here? The irony astounds me.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
In what ignorance or apathy? Lemme guees, you don't know and you don't care. Shame you did not read the article which would have informed you this discovery was made in Canada. Last time I looked, we were not American.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
The catch is that we don't live long enough for smartness to outpace beauty. If we all lived 200 year old lives, I am sure the cult of the "beautiful people" will simply disappear.
Tomato that stays juicy for the whole year already "regulates the immune system!"
But the tomato acts indirectly and this new knowledge will be applied directly and explicitely. Big deal, didn't you hear, the cancer growth could be stopped with this in cancer patients. I don't think they would mind.
You can't handle the truth.
And heart "disease" is just junk building up in the arteries and such, isn't it?
Type I diabetes mellitus and rheumatoid arthritis are regarded as autoimmune diseases. Atherosclerosis, the building up of junk in the walls of blood vessels, is largely dependent on immune system white blood cells called monocytes leaving the bloodstream and differentiating into cells called macrophages. Although it is probably not an autoimmune disease in the sense of some host protein being mistaken for foreign, it is an immune system process gone awry, and the best approaches for fighting it are ones that interfere with the improper functioning of the immune system.
I'm hoping that this will help in finding a cure for Crohn's Disease. It seems that my immune system is having an inappropriate response to something which absolutely wreaks havoc on my large intestine unless I'm taking medication for it. (Don't know what my body wants to protect me from, but it can't be worth the destruction of my digestive track. I kinda need that).
Getting off Prednisone permanently would be a plus, too.
-Tyler
"If you had a choice between being God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?"
Happy people make bad consumers.
This is not the scary part.. this is the good part that confirms their findings and proves that it works.. now it's a matter of localizing the treatment and controlling it's affects.. Unless your some lab rat fanatic..
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
Just what we need, something that will prevent the natural "thinning of the herd". Get rid of some of the means by which nature creates some type of balance. 6 billion people on this planet must not be enough.
While the average lifespan of h. sapiens has more than doubled during the past few thousand years, the maximum lifespan hasn't really seemed to change much. People will still die, but with this discovery their last years might be a little more pleasant. If anything comes of this there would be a population boom, but probably not even of the magnitude antibiotics brought after WW2.
--
As a writer, I'm certainly familiar with the concept of metaphor, but I still have to express some discontent with the propensity of the press to release these awful pop science stories - particularly when the science behind them is so darn interesting.
Still, a big switch on my head sounds like a good idea. Imagine how something similar could replace Viagra...
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
...could, of course, have some interesting repercussions. It surprises me that the enthusiasm of the press always seems to outweigh their analytical capabilities, especially in the area of health reporting.
Why doesn't anyone mention that this really needs to be a tightly controlled manipulation of CD45, rather than just a big, system wide shutdown? Sort of like blocking the sun to stop the rampaging robot agents? =)
Still, way cool.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
Thank you for not breeding.
--
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
After reading the article and stuff, this looks a little more promising then the normal everyday "cure for cancer, savior for mankind" medical info. I think this is really neat...using our own immune system and proteins to potentiall ward of disease. I think this is cool...of course...because of the way our country is, there will prolly never be funding for research and development. :( It would have been nice if this had come a few years earlier...could have saved quite a few grandparents, especially mine.
The anti-salmon
Yep, the "delicate balance" of human body has certainly been affected, why else would so many suffer from heart attacks, cancer, arithitis, allergies and so on?
We are fighting against this "imbalance" in our bodies with precision drugs. Medical science has been going fast forward for some time now, but how many degenerative diseases have been cured?
Take a look at how our environment (foods eaten, exercise, air quality, intake of various chemicals, stress level) has changed from the time we evolved.
Do you see a system incompability issue?
Good luck debugging!
The fact is, virtually any kind of research has it's dangers. But claiming that we shouldn't do this kind of research, simply because there's potentially evil uses for the knowledge? That's plain ridiculous.
Don't you think your generation and mine can come up with a solution to support more people?
Every generation has looked at things that seemed insurmountable and has always far exceeded their own known limits on solving problems.
Granted thinking that bitching about it is going to make people procreate less isn't a bad idea entirely but every generation is handed a set of problems to deal with from the previous. This is one we're going to get as well as pass on.
If you discount extremely poor and disorganized third world countries and their simple problem of starvation (solution: tell them that sex creates babies and spend the $ to give them contraceptives) I can't think of any time that man has struggled against large problems and lost the battle.
Smallpox, the plague, two world wars, President Clinton, whining vote stealing Democrats, the Bay of Pigs, Richard Nixon, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, overreaching British rulers, the list goes on... Ohhh... I know why you don't want more people... You think prairie grass was here first and deserves free reign over the plains and nobody should get to sled down that hill in the neighborhood because there used to be prairie grass there and that's more important than the good that comes from recreation and comraderie and human well being... Hmm?
For years, scientists thought that they knew everything there was to know about how CD45 functions. Here's a bit of what Dr. Penninger had to say about the discovery (Nature)
"People weren't interested in it any more, because everyone thought they knew what it was doing. We only found this because we wanted to revisit an old finding." "This, I found scientifically exciting. There we were thinking we had figured out this thing and then we had a completely new function which we had missed for the last 10 years. This was definitely a Eureka moment."
I think that this could be a good development, but I'm curious as to how they're going to test this without making anybody croak.
One more thing: we're slowly destroying Darwin's theory - the fittest no longer survive. Now everyone makes it, even if they have some genetic disease that gives them no chance in life. It's just another view to consider...
My karma's bigger than yours!
SIG: HUP
Typical media over-hype here. Finding proteins that control immune response are good first steps, but whenever someone talks about "Master Switches" as "Holy Grails" I get worried.
Immune response is more subtle and complicated than "on" or "off" states. The real power of immune response is a highly targeted destruction of bad cells while neighboring good cells are allowed to grow and proliferate. A system like this is surely not controlled by the master switch of a single protein. Any therapy based on a master switch would probably have similar downsides to treatments we have now, where immune suppression is traded for higher risk of infection in other areas.
The immune "Holy Grail" won't be found in a single protein, but understanding the entirety of a much more complex system. CD45 is a good step in that direction, but not the final prize.
Are you asserting that if our government cuts off funds for this research, then no one in the world is ever going to make inroads along these lines?
No, I'm sure that other countries could manage to develop these things sooner or later, it's just that because America leads the world in terms of free market capitalism it has a much higher amount of money placed into research and development than socialist economies like England or France.
Or are you merely stating that the government should take a hand in what people it funds, in terms of restricting the nationalities of whom these research facilities employ?
Well I suppose only employing American nationals would cut down on security risks, but that wasn't what I meant at all.
Or are you requesting that these sorts of discoveries not be publicized in the media, for fear of researchers being kidnapped by enemy nations, so that their discoveries can be used for destructive goals?
Not kidnapping, no, do you think this is some Third World dictatorship? But if knowledge like this is placed into the public domain we are basically giving away the fruits of our labors, and this is in no way consistent with the sensible capitalist policies that has seen our nation outstrip the rest of the world in every way that counts.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
This is not a national Security risk, you could not make bomb of this stuff, you would need to inject it personaly.
How naive. Genetic engineering is done via means of a tailored virus that inserts the modified DNA into someone's chromosomes, this could, with some research, the made into an aitborn virus which spread CD45 blockers throughout a population relatively easily.
And if Saddam wants a bomb to threaten the USA he would be better off with Anthrax or TB.
Both of which are quite difficult to get hold of and not nearly as deadly.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Although I've kept a concerned eye on the risks of biotech as a whole, this advance in the state of scientific knowledge is quite incredibly worrying for anyone considering the wider ramifications of biotechnology. I mean, it's one thing to make a tomato that stays juicy for longer, it's a different thing entirely to play around with the chemical that regulates the immune system!
I mean come on folks, this is getting to the point where there are immense risks to the health of millions. As the article says, mice which couldn't make the protein CD45 died very quickly from cancers and auto-immune diseases. This sounds like a perfect opportunity for nefarious rogue states to develop biological weapons for use against Western targets. I'm sure Saddamn would like to have a "cancer bomb" with which to threaten the US.
Although scientific openness has got us this far, I think that when it comes to developments that are inherently dangerous we need to have a little less self-promotion and a lot more respect for the potential consequences. Government bodies that fund these projects should be a lot stricter about the conditions for which they grant research funds to ensure national security in the face of a world increasingly anatagonistic to our rich culture.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
...but what will we lose ?
Don't play with Mother Nature to counterpart the effects of some (mostly) human problem.
If this CD45 can just help regulate immunity, won't there be another molecul that would prefer that we don't play with it?
I bet I'd prefer to keep my sane life instead of taking one more drug.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Prove to me that they did not breed. Why is it that it seems that those least capable/prepared to have children seem to have the most? I know of a couple who were going to adopt a child just to get the tax credit. Scary.
I had a feeling you were going to say that.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Cell turns on, cell turns off...
Seriously though - it's nice to see that some of the mechanisms in the human body at the cellular level are starting to come together.
I won't be holding my breath for miracle cures in the next year or two, but in 10 years, I think we could expect directed control over some normally rampant disorders.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
According to the "medical" people I know, you always should consider the source of which the original data was published. Nature and Science are the top journals with regards to valid data and claims. I read the article and then tried to reread it, given this information, but it seems the article got /.ed. I'm hopeful for this being the cure for our current ills, but I'm always cautious to avoid the media hype.
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
What did I do wrong ? I know, I should have written "started living differently" instead of "died" - sorry for that.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The article fails to mention an intersting point. The immune systems is connected to the brain via a system of chemical messengers. The "miracle" stories of cancer patients diagnosed as terminally ill and then recovering in a year are often given as examples of mind-over-body quality of human organism.
CD45 actually works on the cell side of the immune systems, causing cell death when receiving a certain chemical messenger. Locating CD45 only helps scientists to know which genetic switch to target, but finding the brain's chemical messenger that turns CD45 on or off will actually lead to the cure to cancel.
This is a remarkable breakthrough in basic research. However, it will take years to determine how to load this reaction with the correct information to attack the disease, if that can be done at all in a safe way. I am hopeful that this will provide a cure for some of these dreaded diseases, but I am not optimistic that it will happen any time soon. The time frame is at least 20-30 years before anything could become generally available based on this, and I think that is a generous estimate of the time required to create a drug of some sort, test it, and get it approved.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
One thing we've seen over and over again... The Human Body is so much more complex than anybody ever expected. I can't count how may people have said "this is going to change medicine and cure disease".
I am going to wait until I see more convincing results than these before I pop the champaign corks.
What scares me about this is that in the 1930's and 1940's, radium was touted as the cure for many similar diseases. Unfortunately, radiation poisoning proved them all wrong.
I just want these scientists and doctors to sign a contract with the world stating that they won't genetically manipulate apes.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I'm talking about people with severe radiation poisoning, victims of the gullibility of doctors and the blind faith in radium. Ever heard of Eben Byers? He was a professional golfer that drank two bottles of a radium-laced soft drink every day. After several years, he was suffering from severe radium poisoning in his jaw.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
another article from the National Post's magazine. You'll have to click on the article "Of Mice and Men" on the main page as there is no direct link.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Well, there's a flaw to your logic as well. You don't have to hire your own children, and frankly it's still cheaper to feed them than to pay someone else's.
Virg
I agree that some of the "cures" foisted off on the world have been (at best) snake oil and (at worst) patently hazardous. One needs look no farther than Thalidomide to see that. However, I think this points up an issue that you were perhaps trying to make in the first place. Blind faith in anything medical is likely to get you into trouble. Anything touted as "the new cure for fillintheblank" should be taken with a grain of salt. That is not to say, however, that it should be rejected. A great deal of caution is warranted when you're dealing with the public health, but it's the patient who is responsible for the choices in the end. And sometimes, it's a gamble. That doesn't excuse incaution.
Virg
Okay, in answer to your query, I'm going to throw my hat in with "smart", because as you age you tend to get less beautiful and more smart. Being smart to begin with, your opportunities for success (being created by you yourself) don't tend to disappear over time. Getting by on your looks will eventually burn you, unless you're smart enough to realize it isn't going to last forever.
Virg
Well, just one, if you're talking about whopping people with it. Hoewever, since it takes (I would guess) about 3 minutes to whop someone to death with a spray can, and there are about 6 billion people in the world, you'd need about (3 X 3,000,000,000) minutes (17,123.28 years) to do it. A tough job, indeed.
Virg
Cash in your two cents, sir (or madam). Calling Dr. Penninger a trophy hunter because of the number of published articles to his credit would be an insult if not for the lack of insight that caused you to make the statement. He himself is the one following through on these advances. He doesn't do this for the glory, or the money (just look at his publications if you need proof). He's prolific because he finds out a lot of stuff. To say that he's not the one doing the legwork on this is just plain incorrect. I'm not sure what you mean by stating "...he must regularly change band-wagons" but if by that you imply that he changes the nature of his research you're incorrect there too. You'll find upon research that "regular" scientists had already given up on finding out anything new about CD45, assuming they already knew it all. He went back for a closer look, because he had the thought that there was more to find.
You should be more careful before you assume he's a sloppy scientist just because he's prolific.
Virg
> If this CD45 can just help regulate immunity,
> won't there be another molecul that would prefer
> that we don't play with it ?
>
Molecules don't prefer anything. Preference implies sentience.
> I bet I'd prefer to keep my sane life instead
> of taking one more drug.
>
That's most likely because you're not dying from anything immuno-related. Would your preferences change if you had six very painful months left to live?
I'd truly like to know by what reasoning you think that diabetes (or multiple sclerosis) is a mostly human problem.
Virg
] My freind has a sever case of arthritis and even though this kind of news gives me joy it also brings a certain kind of sadness , because perhaps by the time they are thruogh with their research and offer a remedy it may be too late .
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
"...cancer, diabetes, arthritis and heart disease."
Diabetes isn't related to the immune system, is it? For that matter, neither is arthritis or hear "disease".
The immune system deals with foreign matter in the body. Diabetes is just malfunctioning insulin (either missing or ineffective). Arthritis is a simple mechanical problem of the joints (although maybe the mechanical problem is caused by something the immune system is related to--or even by the immune system itself). And heart "disease" is just junk building up in the arteries and such, isn't it?
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
You forgot to mention a spontanious phase transition of the vacuum triggered by a run on the Large Hadron Collider.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
But what about those networks.... In short others will provide resources to those who cannot provide for themselves. Humans aren't the only animals that do this, but we are certainly the only ones that do it on the scale of millions, and our effectiveness in this endevour is difficult for the animal kingdom to match. (Note that examples of bees, ants etc, and any animal raising young don't apply as they're genetically related.) We use our network sort of like karma. We constantly put a little good karma in the bank and know that if we need to make a withdrawl the bank will be there even if we need to take out more than we've put in. Hell, our taxes and FEMA help buy new houses for people who live on rivers that flood every damn year, yet who for some reason didn't think to buy flood insurance. The farther someone is from me the less responsibility I have. If someone has a heart attack in front of me, I have the obligation to at least call 911 and perform CPR if I can. Farther away? I might just contribute some of my tax dollars. Another country? Foreign aid programs, buying habbits, charity. Other social networks in other countries will work in similar fashions, but they might not be as rich and powerful as the one I enjoy. If people can choose which network to be in why wouldn't they choose the best? They will, they do. Sometimes they pay smugglers a lot of money to pack them into a shipping container for a trip they might not survive. Or maybe they're smart, or beautiful.
In short, our social network insulates us from enviromental pressures. It does however create new pressures. But Darwin's theory only applied to enviromental pressures, should one apply the hypothesis to social pressures one must draw different conclusions. People aren't rich because they're better people, they're rich because they're fortunate to be rich in the vast majority of cases. Poor people aren't poor because they deserve it. Strict application of Darwin's ideas to our social structure leads to some fairly stupid expectations. At this point in time, our only real enviromental pressures are global warming (if you believe in bad science), or a celestial object striking the earth.
Lemme pose a question: Which is better being beautiful, or smart? I'd say beautiful. If you're smart you can create opportunity, but if you're beautiful other people do that for you.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Of course it would be the Canadians! And like any Canadian invention all the scientists behind it and the discovery itself will be exported to the states.... Canadarm, CANDU reactors, Michael J Fox....(okay we can live without the last one ;)
--------------------------------- Born Again Bourne Again Believer: New Life, GNU/Linux Be Free!
As other's have so eloquently put it already, Darwin's theory is not destroyed.
Though, as humans we are quickly escaping our need to adapt to the environment because we are adapting our environment to fit us.
"i blew a booger that i'd swear had it's own spinal cord" "OUCH" Caroline's Spine
Just what we need, something that will prevent the natural "thinning of the herd". Get rid of some of the means by which nature creates some type of balance. 6 billion people on this planet must not be enough.
I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. (evil tone) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
To the moderators: how is this off topic? Article is on a theorized way to end cancer,etc.
I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. (evil tone) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
pancreas not liver
What if this thread were going somewhere? The "What-ifs" are worth very little unless they are relevant; and this pill has little bearing on our current discussion, or any discussion involving any number of sober and sane individuals... Immortality is a dream; we can get closer and closer to it, living longer, making ourselves more impervious to disease, etc. But I truly doubt you can be immortal. Time will come for us all, and you're a fool if you think otherwise. Making a reference to an impossibility in a "what-if" is all meaningless. I say we'll find some other inhabitable planet, and we may need this technology to survive it. I too once believed that overpopulation/thinning of the herd was vital to our survival. I still hold those ideals close by, but living longer will probably only hurt the generations directly following the first implementations, as they may not be prepared to take care of the people they assumed would be long dead. My example here is the baby boomers, making a slow fadeaway, as my sister, and many other people who may have had better jobs, make a mad dash to become a nurse/doctor/caregiver for these large numbers of older folks. The birth rate per person is likely to stay the same, and the humans will take more resources and space... Sorry, woolly mammoths. The komodo dragons are probably next. At least our human lives will be more pleasant, and more fulfilling (we hope). Anyway, I've spoken my dirt.