Actually I went to Buffalo one time to try to get a picture of this occurring to put on the wikipedia page. Its harder than you'd think since the skyline isnt that huge and buffalo do alot of nothing most of the time. But here's one of Buffalo buffalo about to buffalo Buffalo buffalo that's thinking about buffaloing Buffalo buffalo.
Well one thing you probly don't realize is that alot of biomedical work is first done in cell culture using immortal cell lines because theyre cheap and you can maintain them youself or even freeze up some cells for storage and thaw them when you want to do some experiments with them again. Immortal cell lines are basically like cancer cells and since people use them for all sorts of research its not unthinkable that trying out some drug for another purpose can make you realize that its always killing off these cancer-like cells.
Here though, the drug they were using was actually rationally designed to inhibit cell division and Im not sure how they didnt realize it at the time but whatever.
I guess the point I missed making by going on that rant was that actually DMAT is a great example of a rationally designed compound that is only around because of millions of dollars and decades of concerted effort at figuring out what the differences are between cancerous and normal cells and fundamental research into how chemical reactions work and purifying and distinguishing one chemical from another. Its a standing on the shoulder's of giants... actually more like standing on the shoulders of an expensive midget pyramid type thing.
Actually that "CancerX" drug all the newspapers were talking about appears to be DMAT, which you can buy here. I mean the the guy doesn't seem to have published anything about CancerX besides on his webpage. He filed a patent in 2009 which is about using DMAT or TBB to inhibit the enzyme Casein Kinase 2 (CK2), and had a PhD student do her dissertation work on the same thing which was completed in 2008. Since DMAT was actually first synthesized in 2004 for the very purpose of inhibiting CK2 to decrease cell proliferation, and there have been numerous papers on using DMAT for this purpose (you can see these by searching for DMAT CK2 in pubmed or google) I find it hard to believe that this was a serendipitous discovery. If you do the pubmed/google search and look for the institutes where the DMAT studies have been done you'll notice they are pretty much all based in Europe. So it seems to me that these other groups failed to patent the use of this drug for whatever reason and this guy is taking advantage of that while making up a new name along with some story about accidentally discovering its anti-proliferative properties as a self-marketing ploy. Possibly to encourage funding or somehow support his patent rights.
That said he is a biochemist working on anti-coagulants and DMAT is basically a nucleotide analogue (nucleotides are involved in blood clotting) so its possible he synthesized/designed the drug himself at some point for that purpose. I don't really know anything for sure except that calling it CancerX is shady, and talking to the newspapers before publishing is shady.
I mean I can see how this is possible, kind of what goes on with causing migraines. The sensory neurons besides signaling sensation toward the brain can also release things that interact with blood vessels and cause swelling and plasma due to plasma leakage from the vessel due to signals coming the other way or they can release them in response to quick changes in temperature in either direction.
There are ion channels that open up in response to a temp change. Actually the main one is TRPV1 and that channel also opens if you lower the pH or in response to caspaicin, which is why hot peppers feel hot... its the same ion channel on the same neurons responding so your body interprets it accordingly. Its also why pepper spray makes your eyes feel like theyre burning, since it mimics acidic pH. Lowering temperature can also cause local vasoconstriction which would lead to a drop in pH as well, but I mean you dont normally get blistering from an ice cube
An ice cube shouldnt be cold enough to do this though (usually need -17 degrees C)... the surface of the ice cube in a normal room is obviously going to be around 0 degrees C.
Perhaps he has some caspacin on his finger that is just subthreshold enough so that his finger doesnt visibly blister but when combined with the sudden ice cube it can cause blistering for one of the reasons above.
If you described the time course of the blistering (how long until it started, how long did it last) we could figure that out.
Like I mentioned earlier though a similar thing happens in the case of migranes and this is at least partly due to "depression" in brain activity. Temperature changes can also trigger migranes, and so can serotonin. All these factors are also supposedly involved in hypnosis. So maybe hypnotized people are more susceptible to blistering for some reason due to a combination of these factors.
Then again if you just push down real hard on your skin you get a response for a short period of time, or he could just have a little needle under a fingernail or something coated in some irritant.
Anyway if you describe in more detail what you observed we could figure out what went on. The idea that the person thought they were being burned by a cigarette so then the body responded as it uniquely does to a cigarette burn in response to this thought is one of the least likely explanations in my opinion.
Its more negative reinforcement. If you don't do what you're supposed to do you don't get the reward. Also, seeing other people get rewarded while you had the chance to but failed could lead to feelings of inferiority or neglect, which would indirectly be punishment. On the other hand, just because someone gets "punished" for something doesn't mean they won't find a way to get around it. For example, you just sit back and relax or do whatever you want then beat up, intimidate, and/or scam the good kid to get the money later. That way would probably be the most rewarding since you get to disobey authority, get the reward, and do it in your own way all at once.
It doesnt have to be hypocritical as long as you recognize the practical limitations on what you're trying to accomplish by not supporting some corporation. I mean at least you tried right?
Google is actually a good way to find scientific papers, their search engine gives better results than the academic databases offer most of the time... the problem is you usually have to pay. The best thing to do alot of the time is google what you want then log in through your schools VPN or go their library to get the paper without paying.
Genetic disorders occur because of either over- or under-activity of whatever protein is encoded by the mutant gene. Once the gene is discovered it is possible to figure out the characteristics of the protein it encodes and treat with drugs that can counter the over activity by inhibiting the protein or counter the underactivity by mimicking or stimulating the protein.
Bone has living cells in it that secrete hydroxyapatite crystals and connective tissue (forming the hard bone part) as well as a bunch of relatively rapidly dividing cells that replenish many of your blood cells. All the blood vessels needed to support these cells are there too. While UV radiation may not have much effect on bone mutation rate, there are many chemicals generated naturally in the body as a natural part of cellular metabolism (oxidants like H2O2, superoxide, peroxynitrate) that can also cause DNA damage and thus mutations. Also since there is a blood supply, any mutagenic chemicals that get into your blood stream can also access your bone (some chemo drugs even actually preferentially collect there if I remember right). Cancers do often develop from the cells of the bone, especially the rapidly dividing ones. Leukemia is an example of this.
Also the treatment involves removing the precursor cells to your bone creating cells and stimulating their rate of division in a flask to above normal levels. When in the flask the cells are possibly more exposed to environmental carcinogens like UV light or chemicals during the time when DNA is most vulnerable (while being replicated), plus they may have undergone physical damage during the removal, culturing, and reinjection processes leading to cellular stress and excess oxidant production. They have also been removed from an environment in which immune cells are constantly surveying looking for mutant cells to kill, so any mutants that do arise are more free to multiply.
As a result it should be expected that stem cell therapy, even using bone stem cells, carries with it an increased risk of cancer. These people say they've shown that's not what is happening, ultimately fact trumps theory so it comes down to how strong the proof is that someone provides and how much you trust them. They've only waited 2 years and it can take awhile for a cancerous cell to divide enough times so that a tumor is detectable, I'm not sure how long this would be for the types of cells theyre growing or how many cells were used or anything so I'm not sure if that should be long enough to judge or not.
yea I guess youre right... the real criteria should be which species gets into space first thus allowing the multitudinous spawn of mother earth to spread ever farther throughout the solar system. I guess in that case, though, bacteria may have still won out just because they're more hardy, diverse, and adaptable... but if there are crazy comet based earth descendants of earth bacteria or whatever, they didnt bring any other life along with them, or at least not as many as humans probably could.
Seriously though 1) Previous attempts at eradication of rats stopped short because humans didnt think it was worth it for whatever reason (such as, for example, not wanting to poison the birds they wanted to save). I qualified my original claim with that already.
2)I also said "on purpose." The fungus is just reproducing and killing the frogs along the way. Humans do that too, but we also have the capability to decide that some other species is just such a pain in the ass to everyone it should be eradicated at all costs. Likely in the case of microscopic organisms complete eradication would never really happen, but our ability to work together on a long term plan makes it more likely that we could do it to them than they to us. Really its all just a mind experiment though.
While I don't know the exact procedure (only scanned the article)... In general you would fear cancer because the cells are being extracted then cultured in a flask and being stimulated to divide (using growth factors present in your own blood platelets I'm assuming) moreso than usual. Since theres something like 3-300 errors everytime a cell divides (but compare that to the 3 billion nucleotides in each of your cells, and that most of the mutations won't lead to cancer and its not that big a deal), the logic is that the more times a cell divides the more likely a set of mutations can happen that makes a cell start doing its own thing which is grow whether the other cells around it tell it not to (cancer). Within the body you also have immune cells surveying everything making sure cells arent expressing mutant proteins or in the wrong place and killing them off before they become an issue. This isnt occuring in the flask. Also the cells in the flask may be more exposed to whatever UV radiation or chemicals are around thus increasing the mutation rate. Disclaimer: thats just off the top of my head. I don't know very much about stem cell culturing in particular, its just what I would expect to happen.
Humans kill rats at will... if we really wanted to we could wipe them out, its just a matter of them being good at hiding and your average human having other things to worry about or not caring that much. I would say that ability (although hypothetical, try imagining rats wiping humans out on purpose...) makes humans more advanced.
Ill say this... in medschool, at least the one I'm at (not a MD but Phd student but classes overlap) they only use the generic names in lectures (for the most part... its all you need for the test but the proprietary names might still be in parentheses because youll need to know those names eventually too in order to know what people are talking about) and the pros and cons of each drug are just stated outright. That being said, evaluating which drug is "best" is really subjective at this point, unless you have the money to get genotyped, and someone else got the money to do the genotyping research beforehand, the doctor cant really know which one is best , only which drug works most often for certain signs and symptoms (which is subjective) and certain ethnic groups at best. And thats if theyre up to date on the literature, which is sometimes wrong. So ultimately it is a decision being made that can be swayed by the fact that youre lmore likely to try the most common drug first. If the data is ambiguous you tend towards what is least likely to get you sued eventually.
grammar is passe. Its pointless to understand it beyond what you need to know to get your own ideas understood... and that requirement changes all the time.
The problem is that it takes so much specialized knowledge to be able to really judge how a scientist has interpreted their data due to all the background info needed to take it in the correct context. But thats just how it is... the world is complex... you arent going to get anything more than a superficial understanding of what goes on inside cells from an NPR episode because you have to consider the model (in vitro... cell type, buffer, concentrations of various ions, source of the cells, etc) or in vivo (what did they have to do to manipulate the organism to have to study it, what other systems are regulating that one, possibly vice versa at the same time...) My point is to really know whats going on take specialized knowledge that you just cant incorperate into your worldview properly by reading one article plus looking up what you dont know at wikipedia/google/whatever. It really is literally impossible to explain it fully to someone in a time period measured in less than years. People have other things to do and need to sleep to consolidate the knowledge.
That is exactly what happens... You dont get that if you only read news articles about it though. If theres one thing that sets science apart in figuring out the world around us its that noone really trusts anyone else. Not because theyre necessarily trying to be misleading but because all the experts know theres 1000 factors coming into play and noone can ever get rid of all the confounds and dose-response and timecourse issues and still get paid since it would cost too much. If youre figuring out fundamentals that might work but not these days.
Well first of all this will apparently start out as Netherlands technolodgy, but even it was somehow monopolized by the US what makes you think the Chinese or Indians wouldnt just grow their own vat meat?
Slashdot Mirror
well you never did anything with that knowledge...
Actually I went to Buffalo one time to try to get a picture of this occurring to put on the wikipedia page. Its harder than you'd think since the skyline isnt that huge and buffalo do alot of nothing most of the time. But here's one of Buffalo buffalo about to buffalo Buffalo buffalo that's thinking about buffaloing Buffalo buffalo.
http://tinypic.com/r/xcqa06/5
Well one thing you probly don't realize is that alot of biomedical work is first done in cell culture using immortal cell lines because theyre cheap and you can maintain them youself or even freeze up some cells for storage and thaw them when you want to do some experiments with them again. Immortal cell lines are basically like cancer cells and since people use them for all sorts of research its not unthinkable that trying out some drug for another purpose can make you realize that its always killing off these cancer-like cells.
Here though, the drug they were using was actually rationally designed to inhibit cell division and Im not sure how they didnt realize it at the time but whatever.
I guess the point I missed making by going on that rant was that actually DMAT is a great example of a rationally designed compound that is only around because of millions of dollars and decades of concerted effort at figuring out what the differences are between cancerous and normal cells and fundamental research into how chemical reactions work and purifying and distinguishing one chemical from another. Its a standing on the shoulder's of giants... actually more like standing on the shoulders of an expensive midget pyramid type thing.
Actually that "CancerX" drug all the newspapers were talking about appears to be DMAT, which you can buy here. I mean the the guy doesn't seem to have published anything about CancerX besides on his webpage. He filed a patent in 2009 which is about using DMAT or TBB to inhibit the enzyme Casein Kinase 2 (CK2), and had a PhD student do her dissertation work on the same thing which was completed in 2008. Since DMAT was actually first synthesized in 2004 for the very purpose of inhibiting CK2 to decrease cell proliferation, and there have been numerous papers on using DMAT for this purpose (you can see these by searching for DMAT CK2 in pubmed or google) I find it hard to believe that this was a serendipitous discovery. If you do the pubmed/google search and look for the institutes where the DMAT studies have been done you'll notice they are pretty much all based in Europe. So it seems to me that these other groups failed to patent the use of this drug for whatever reason and this guy is taking advantage of that while making up a new name along with some story about accidentally discovering its anti-proliferative properties as a self-marketing ploy. Possibly to encourage funding or somehow support his patent rights.
That said he is a biochemist working on anti-coagulants and DMAT is basically a nucleotide analogue (nucleotides are involved in blood clotting) so its possible he synthesized/designed the drug himself at some point for that purpose. I don't really know anything for sure except that calling it CancerX is shady, and talking to the newspapers before publishing is shady.
springer and ovid are both terrible
I mean I can see how this is possible, kind of what goes on with causing migraines. The sensory neurons besides signaling sensation toward the brain can also release things that interact with blood vessels and cause swelling and plasma due to plasma leakage from the vessel due to signals coming the other way or they can release them in response to quick changes in temperature in either direction.
There are ion channels that open up in response to a temp change. Actually the main one is TRPV1 and that channel also opens if you lower the pH or in response to caspaicin, which is why hot peppers feel hot... its the same ion channel on the same neurons responding so your body interprets it accordingly. Its also why pepper spray makes your eyes feel like theyre burning, since it mimics acidic pH. Lowering temperature can also cause local vasoconstriction which would lead to a drop in pH as well, but I mean you dont normally get blistering from an ice cube
An ice cube shouldnt be cold enough to do this though (usually need -17 degrees C)... the surface of the ice cube in a normal room is obviously going to be around 0 degrees C.
Perhaps he has some caspacin on his finger that is just subthreshold enough so that his finger doesnt visibly blister but when combined with the sudden ice cube it can cause blistering for one of the reasons above.
If you described the time course of the blistering (how long until it started, how long did it last) we could figure that out.
Like I mentioned earlier though a similar thing happens in the case of migranes and this is at least partly due to "depression" in brain activity. Temperature changes can also trigger migranes, and so can serotonin. All these factors are also supposedly involved in hypnosis. So maybe hypnotized people are more susceptible to blistering for some reason due to a combination of these factors.
Then again if you just push down real hard on your skin you get a response for a short period of time, or he could just have a little needle under a fingernail or something coated in some irritant.
Anyway if you describe in more detail what you observed we could figure out what went on. The idea that the person thought they were being burned by a cigarette so then the body responded as it uniquely does to a cigarette burn in response to this thought is one of the least likely explanations in my opinion.
What makes you think that?
Its more negative reinforcement. If you don't do what you're supposed to do you don't get the reward. Also, seeing other people get rewarded while you had the chance to but failed could lead to feelings of inferiority or neglect, which would indirectly be punishment. On the other hand, just because someone gets "punished" for something doesn't mean they won't find a way to get around it. For example, you just sit back and relax or do whatever you want then beat up, intimidate, and/or scam the good kid to get the money later. That way would probably be the most rewarding since you get to disobey authority, get the reward, and do it in your own way all at once.
It doesnt have to be hypocritical as long as you recognize the practical limitations on what you're trying to accomplish by not supporting some corporation. I mean at least you tried right?
Google is actually a good way to find scientific papers, their search engine gives better results than the academic databases offer most of the time... the problem is you usually have to pay. The best thing to do alot of the time is google what you want then log in through your schools VPN or go their library to get the paper without paying.
Genetic disorders occur because of either over- or under-activity of whatever protein is encoded by the mutant gene. Once the gene is discovered it is possible to figure out the characteristics of the protein it encodes and treat with drugs that can counter the over activity by inhibiting the protein or counter the underactivity by mimicking or stimulating the protein.
What makes you think embryonic stem cells are less likely to develop into cancer?
Bone has living cells in it that secrete hydroxyapatite crystals and connective tissue (forming the hard bone part) as well as a bunch of relatively rapidly dividing cells that replenish many of your blood cells. All the blood vessels needed to support these cells are there too. While UV radiation may not have much effect on bone mutation rate, there are many chemicals generated naturally in the body as a natural part of cellular metabolism (oxidants like H2O2, superoxide, peroxynitrate) that can also cause DNA damage and thus mutations. Also since there is a blood supply, any mutagenic chemicals that get into your blood stream can also access your bone (some chemo drugs even actually preferentially collect there if I remember right). Cancers do often develop from the cells of the bone, especially the rapidly dividing ones. Leukemia is an example of this.
Also the treatment involves removing the precursor cells to your bone creating cells and stimulating their rate of division in a flask to above normal levels. When in the flask the cells are possibly more exposed to environmental carcinogens like UV light or chemicals during the time when DNA is most vulnerable (while being replicated), plus they may have undergone physical damage during the removal, culturing, and reinjection processes leading to cellular stress and excess oxidant production. They have also been removed from an environment in which immune cells are constantly surveying looking for mutant cells to kill, so any mutants that do arise are more free to multiply.
As a result it should be expected that stem cell therapy, even using bone stem cells, carries with it an increased risk of cancer. These people say they've shown that's not what is happening, ultimately fact trumps theory so it comes down to how strong the proof is that someone provides and how much you trust them. They've only waited 2 years and it can take awhile for a cancerous cell to divide enough times so that a tumor is detectable, I'm not sure how long this would be for the types of cells theyre growing or how many cells were used or anything so I'm not sure if that should be long enough to judge or not.
yea I guess youre right... the real criteria should be which species gets into space first thus allowing the multitudinous spawn of mother earth to spread ever farther throughout the solar system. I guess in that case, though, bacteria may have still won out just because they're more hardy, diverse, and adaptable... but if there are crazy comet based earth descendants of earth bacteria or whatever, they didnt bring any other life along with them, or at least not as many as humans probably could.
Seriously though 1) Previous attempts at eradication of rats stopped short because humans didnt think it was worth it for whatever reason (such as, for example, not wanting to poison the birds they wanted to save). I qualified my original claim with that already.
2)I also said "on purpose." The fungus is just reproducing and killing the frogs along the way. Humans do that too, but we also have the capability to decide that some other species is just such a pain in the ass to everyone it should be eradicated at all costs. Likely in the case of microscopic organisms complete eradication would never really happen, but our ability to work together on a long term plan makes it more likely that we could do it to them than they to us. Really its all just a mind experiment though.
While I don't know the exact procedure (only scanned the article)... In general you would fear cancer because the cells are being extracted then cultured in a flask and being stimulated to divide (using growth factors present in your own blood platelets I'm assuming) moreso than usual. Since theres something like 3-300 errors everytime a cell divides (but compare that to the 3 billion nucleotides in each of your cells, and that most of the mutations won't lead to cancer and its not that big a deal), the logic is that the more times a cell divides the more likely a set of mutations can happen that makes a cell start doing its own thing which is grow whether the other cells around it tell it not to (cancer). Within the body you also have immune cells surveying everything making sure cells arent expressing mutant proteins or in the wrong place and killing them off before they become an issue. This isnt occuring in the flask. Also the cells in the flask may be more exposed to whatever UV radiation or chemicals are around thus increasing the mutation rate. Disclaimer: thats just off the top of my head. I don't know very much about stem cell culturing in particular, its just what I would expect to happen.
why is this insightful? While everything the AC said may be true and sound like informed skepticism, nothing is said to support his claims...
Humans kill rats at will... if we really wanted to we could wipe them out, its just a matter of them being good at hiding and your average human having other things to worry about or not caring that much. I would say that ability (although hypothetical, try imagining rats wiping humans out on purpose...) makes humans more advanced.
Ill say this... in medschool, at least the one I'm at (not a MD but Phd student but classes overlap) they only use the generic names in lectures (for the most part... its all you need for the test but the proprietary names might still be in parentheses because youll need to know those names eventually too in order to know what people are talking about) and the pros and cons of each drug are just stated outright. That being said, evaluating which drug is "best" is really subjective at this point, unless you have the money to get genotyped, and someone else got the money to do the genotyping research beforehand, the doctor cant really know which one is best , only which drug works most often for certain signs and symptoms (which is subjective) and certain ethnic groups at best. And thats if theyre up to date on the literature, which is sometimes wrong. So ultimately it is a decision being made that can be swayed by the fact that youre lmore likely to try the most common drug first. If the data is ambiguous you tend towards what is least likely to get you sued eventually.
grammar is passe. Its pointless to understand it beyond what you need to know to get your own ideas understood... and that requirement changes all the time.
The problem is that it takes so much specialized knowledge to be able to really judge how a scientist has interpreted their data due to all the background info needed to take it in the correct context. But thats just how it is... the world is complex... you arent going to get anything more than a superficial understanding of what goes on inside cells from an NPR episode because you have to consider the model (in vitro... cell type, buffer, concentrations of various ions, source of the cells, etc) or in vivo (what did they have to do to manipulate the organism to have to study it, what other systems are regulating that one, possibly vice versa at the same time...) My point is to really know whats going on take specialized knowledge that you just cant incorperate into your worldview properly by reading one article plus looking up what you dont know at wikipedia/google/whatever. It really is literally impossible to explain it fully to someone in a time period measured in less than years. People have other things to do and need to sleep to consolidate the knowledge.
That is exactly what happens... You dont get that if you only read news articles about it though. If theres one thing that sets science apart in figuring out the world around us its that noone really trusts anyone else. Not because theyre necessarily trying to be misleading but because all the experts know theres 1000 factors coming into play and noone can ever get rid of all the confounds and dose-response and timecourse issues and still get paid since it would cost too much. If youre figuring out fundamentals that might work but not these days.
I agree with this, in fact the only people Ive ever met who claim to be good drivers are in fact the worst drivers I know
Well instead of brainless how about just painless.. knockout whatever the cow version is of the SCN9A gene.
Actually good point... apparently PETA didnt pick up on that though
Well first of all this will apparently start out as Netherlands technolodgy, but even it was somehow monopolized by the US what makes you think the Chinese or Indians wouldnt just grow their own vat meat?