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Anthrax Cellular Entry Point Uncovered
ScienceDaily reports that scientists have identified the cellular point of entry for anthrax spores. This discovery could go a long way towards providing treatment or preventing infection.
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Server is down already. Anyone got a mirror?
We have drugs that prevent people from getting high on opiates, then we have cocaine vaccines, and now we are going to have a drug for anthrax immunity.
Medical science (and all science) is really taking off, now that we are beginning to understand the minute details of how our bodies work. Of course, there is still loads that we don't know - and there will always be things that we won't know - but I think the advances we're going to see in the next 10-20 years are going to amaze us all.
But I bet anything, anything at all, that we will not, ever, cure the common cold.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
2001 called, they want their overblown terrorist threat back.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought the common cold was anything but common. It is a virus with countless strains, each fairly different.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The site is down, so forgive me if this is in TFA, but can't we treat anthrax with common anti-bacterials?
In fact, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/anthrax_g.htm#What%20is%20the%20treatment%20for%20anthrax confirms this.
So what's the huge deal about using Anthrax as a biological weapon? You'd be about as successful using the Black Plague...
My brother-in-law's father is a professor at ISU and worked with a fellow that kept anthrax samples for over 50 years, running diagnostics on samples once a year until 2001. Then the government came in and made him destroy them all. It's pretty ridiculous considering anthrax isn't THAT big of a threat. It is indeed deadly in a sufficient quantity, but in order to ingest the amount needed for lethality you'd just about have to cut up a line and snort it.
Well not quite to that extent but the media did a fine job of playing the other extreme.
You're nothing; like me.
Nobody was talking about roosters.
what is wrong with you?
where were you? We already did and it's called Zinc. You spray it in your nose and the viruses can't do anything. I'm never sick for more than 24 hours now. Anyway, screw that, they should cure AIDS. I mean seriously, how hard is that? In fact, how is it that nobody's even found a way to destroy virus cells in general? We have antibacterial drugs that kill almost all bacteria indescriminantly. Where's the antivirus meds?
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professor at ISU and worked with a fellow that kept anthrax samples for over 50 years, running diagnostics on samples once a year until 2001. Then the government came in and made him destroy them all. It's pretty ridiculous considering anthrax isn't THAT big of a threat.
Face it, 9/11 made America stupid for 3 years. Even Democrats signed off on torture, we got ourselves into a non-terror-related quagmire, gave up lots of civil rights, and went nuts over things like this. People wonder why Germany citizens let Hitler run amuck, but we had a bit of it ourselves.
Table-ized A.I.
Viruses have an annoying habit of hiding in cells where treatments can't get to them very well.
Well, kill the damn cells then! That will teach them to stop aiding and abetting the dirty viruses!
They'd better learn now that they're either with us or with the disease.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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I thought the whole "synthetic organisms are right around the corner" thing yesterday was actually more of an indication.
It's funny: AI people are usually the ones talking about the Singularity, but I bet it's going to be the biologists who realize it first. AI is still sort of mired down and going in 20 directions at once, but medical science appears to be making a string of rapid advances. I can only imagine what's going to happen when we figure out how to start making ourselves smarter. It'll be even more interesting seeing the social ramifications if humanity ends up being split into two "natural" and "GM" camps over it.
At some point, we'll need to draw a line. Where does helping people survive end and eugenics begin?
Anyway, just some slightly tangential thoughts.
They sure don;t seem to be trying too hard to find out who mailed the anthrax around... to mostly democrats. Gosh, I wonder why that is?
This space available.
We have drugs that prevent some of the effects of opiates, luckily including many of the dangerous ones.
We don't have a cocaine vaccine yet, but the cholera with cocaine spines looks like it might work.
I'd a great time to be sick. Um, well, that is......
I'm waiting for the day when they find out Rogaine makes you limp and Viagra makes you bald. The two major male ego weaknesses go to war.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Shouldn't they be covering the entry point instead?
You can't handle the tin!
The pessimist's view:
The single biggest problem in epidemiology facing us today is antibiotic resistance. For all our advances, we are losing the race against pathogenic bacteria species that are mutating beyond our ability to treat them in vivo, thanks to the very techniques we have invented to fight them. This is an incredibly serious threat, one that is only recently gaining attention in the public consciousness because of the headlines about MRSA and XDR TB.
In light of our current state of knowledge of infectious disease as a whole, I can only conclude that despite all our advances, we have truly only begun to scratch the surface of the kind of insight, technology, and science we must yet discover in order to make a significant impact on the way humankind deals with disease. For instance, only relatively recently was it realized that certain viral infections once thought to be of minor importance actually have long-term health consequences for those who acquire them (e.g., cancer). We have yet to fully appreciate the complex relationship between the infectious agent and its host. The discovery that self-replicating misfolded proteins could cause disease was also shocking to the scientific community. The lesson to be learned, I believe, is that our discoveries so far have largely served to demonstrate to us that mankind has far, far more to learn--it is a bit like trekking that first mile up a steep mountain, only to look up and realize just how much further it is to the top.
Worse yet, we still cannot even see the top.
they're like fat guys in beaters with shotguns on Cops. They gotta come out eventually. If there's something waiting in your bloodstream to massacre them, they might find it hard to reproduce effectively. Which brings up an interesting point. There's gotta be some signal that says "hey, you're sick, make tons of white blood cells" but it's always like 2 days too slow and sometimes too little too late. Why not synthesize that hormone or neurotransmitter and give someone a super dose of it to give them a crazy abnormal amount of white blood cells as fast as possible? Yes, I know, that wouldn't cure AIDS (well AIDS by definition yes, HIV no). Or better yet, why not just cut out the middle man and find a way to synthesize the exact matching antibodies for them and just pump someone full of them? That's how it works, right? White blood cells catch a virus, make an antibody for it, then release a bunch of it I think. In fact, why not just capture the antibodies the white blood cell gives off, see what they're made out of, and make them. Or find out what pattern white blood cells use to build their antibodies, make the pattern one for a given virus, and send it to a bunch of white blood cells in a test tube and have them synthesize antibodies for us. If I was a scientist, I'd shoot for that.
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ever? given how much technology has progressed in the last 500 years, you dont think another milion years would produce a cure for the common cold? I would guess we wouldnt even need another 500.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
I've always wondered - if AIDS is an infection of the immune system, and chemotherapy kills off the immune system, wouldn't chemotherapy + a bone marrow transplant kill off the AIDS infection?
no cuz you'd have to kill every single one. The AIDS virus doesn't need the immune system, it just attacks it. I'm a big fan of running 100% of a person's blood through a heating machine that would heat it up to hot enough to kill them then cooling it down and pumping it back in. That wouldn't kill the ones in cells though.
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IIRC they are also made of the same stuff our own cells are made of. Bacteria are targeted by breaking down chemicals in their cell walls that our cells don't have. Killing viruses directly = killing us. I think.
*snort* That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever... *dies*
AIDS is a retrovirus, it implants it's genetics info into your chromosome, so it's terminal. The best we are going to get is keeping it in remission until you dye from something else; death is the only cure.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
> nobody's even found a way to destroy virus cells in general?
If they had cells to begin with, that might be something we could try.
Technically they're not even alive.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liberation_Army is not going to be happy about this.