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Cell Division Reversed for the First Time
SubtleGuest writes "Gary J. Gorbsky, Ph.D., a scientist with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, has found a way to reverse the process of cell division.
The discovery could have important implications for the treatment of cancer, birth defects and numerous other diseases and disorders. Gorbsky's findings appear in the April 13 issue of the journal Nature.
"No one has gotten the cell cycle to go backwards before now," said Gorbsky. "This shows that certain events in the cell cycle that have long been assumed irreversible may, in fact, be reversible."
In the lab, Gorbsky and his OMRF colleagues were able to control the protein responsible for the division process, interrupt and reverse the event, sending duplicate chromosomes back to the center of the original cell, an event once thought impossible.
Here is a video of it happening."
In Canada (I'm sure the USA is similar), the overall cancer rate is now 1 in 2 ... that's right 50% of the population will contract cancer at some point in their life (most of those will eventually die from it). Here's the real shocker. The Government response... (snip rant about carcinogens)
You're the victim of a very fundamental misunderstanding. The overall cancer death rate is actually 1 in 1. If you live long enough, you will eventually die of cancer. It's a perfectly-normal consequence of telomere loss due to aging.
As we get better at preventing and treating heart disease and other vascular problems like stroke, it's only reasonable to expect cancer death rates to rise. It is not reasonable to start leaping to wild-assed conclusions about carcinogens, cell phones, and conspiracies. None of those are the problem. The problem is that most of the low-hanging fruit in the health-care business has been picked, and only the hard problems like cancer (which, as others have noted, refers to a great variety of different diseases) remain.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
It's not a cure for old age, its no longer possible after a certain point so you can't reverse an entire lineage back to one cell.
It's not going to reverse cancer either, for the same reason. What it *might* do, if you can determine on a cellular level which cells are cancerous, is halt the growth (assuming it doesn't just start dividing again. It doesn't even say if the DNA recombines, which I doubt it would do.
The real value is that old scientific standby, knowledge. Greater knowledge of what makes a cell tick, what factors trigger when its ready to divide will result in new cures, safer cures, and, of course, new understanding. If we can figure out why a cell divides, we can perhaps block those triggers and stop the division of cells like cancer. Greatly slowing or even stopping cell metabolism and division will be an important part of imposing a long term stasis or hibernation in humans experiencing long space travels to mars and the like. Understanding how to trigger cell reproduction could be one of the most important steps in reviving persons who have cyrogenically frozen themselves, too.
Demented But Determined.