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Preserving Memories of a Loved One?

An anonymous reader writes "My wife is dying of metastatic (stage 4) cancer. Statistically she has between one and two years left. I have pre-teen daughters. I'm looking for innovative ideas on how to preserve memories of their mother and my wife so that years down the road we don't forget the things we all tend to forget about a person as time passes. I have copious photos and am taking as much HD video as I can without being a jerk, so images and sounds are taken care of (and backed up securely). I'm keeping a private blog of simple daily events that help me remember the things in between the hospitalizations and treatments. In this digital age what other avenues are there for preserving memories? Non-digital suggestions would be welcome, too."

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  1. Re:Nobody needs die of cancer any more by the+biologist · · Score: 5, Informative
    Ok, a point by point rebuttal to this crazy, from an actual practicing molecular biologist.

    The orthomolecular biochemists

    This word doesn't mean anything in scientific circles. "Orthomolecular" is a relatively new fad term for holistic nutrition/medicine. Examine here for an example.

    have a unified theory of cancer and it's reversible now.

    There is a unified theory of cancer, it primarily states that living things get cancer in the same way that iron rusts. It is inevitable, as a consequence of the fundamental properties of the system in question. It is not "reversible", a nonsense term in the biological context, and every specific cancer will require a different specific treatment.

    Salvesterols

    Google "salvesterols", 256 hits. Google "salvestrols", 35400 hits. Neither term is used in chemical/biochemical/molbio literature. The basic concept is that all "diseased cells" have specific enzymes which will convert specific plant-derived salvestrols into poisons, thus killing the bad cells. Evolutionarily, there is no way this would be maintained. The first mutant cell lacking this special enzyme would proliferate and the salvestrol would be of no use. See here for a representative site.

    exploit the CYPB1P1 metabolic pathway; the Cytochrome P450-1 enzyme converts them to

    There isn't a "CYPB1P1 pathway". CYPB1P1 is an enzyme involved in the oxidative breakdown of a variety of substrates. These enzymes are often used by animals to detoxify minor toxins from food. In the case of Aflotoxin poisoning, these enzymes are responsible for the production of potentially fatal liver damage by modifying the initially neutral compound into a potent mutagen/carcinogen/toxin.

    picotannins

    The word "picotannins" doesn't exist in the chemical/biological literature, or on the web according to Google. Perhaps you meant tannings at low ("pico") levels? Tannins are plant compoinds and are not synthesized by any known animal metabolic pathways. At low levels, some tannins may have benificial effects on diet. In larger ammounts, they tend to be poisonous to animals not specialized in consuming them. Specialized animals tend to have enzymes in their saliva to bind and inactivate tannins before they can be absorved in the gut.

    which selectively, in vivo and in vitro, kill only tumor cells.

    Not exactly true, but since technically the chemicals you're speaking of don't exist, I suppose I can't say.

    I've met end stage lung cancer patients whose cancer has been rerversed.

    This is wonderful news for them and irrelevant to your claims.

    I'm not interested in any nay sayers or claims of quckery. I'm just not interested.

    It is good to know you've decided you don't need to learn anything about a topic to which you obviously have no expertise, before making potentially life-changing decisions based on that erroneous assumption.

    Contact me directly if you need more information or sources; I can point you to (free) biochemists who can explain this much better than I can and offer guidance. It's extremely important to avoid sugar; whereas our cells use atp for energy, cancer cells use sugars directly.

    Cancer cells cannot use sugar "directly" in the way you imply, nothing can actually. All cells use ATP for energy, with a minor sprinkling of GTP. Some human cell types (brain/neurons) will only accept sugar from the blood as a food source, while others (muscle/skin/etc) will also accept amino acids, cholesterol, and triglycerides from the blood to use for food. Your liver actually synthesizes sugar (glu