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6785. wonkers2 - 3/28/2007 12:17:03 AM Thanks, thoughtful! Like alistaire, I find you more credible on diet than climate. 6786. wonkers2 - 4/1/2007 3:56:40 AM Dennis Kucinich on Health Care 6787. robertjayb - 4/2/2007 9:16:12 PM Epigenetics a promising approach to cancer treatment...(HouChron)
As they completed the "book of life" earlier this decade, scientists with the Human Genome Project declared they had struck upon the path leading toward eventual cures for most diseases.
By scribbling down all 3 billion DNA letters of the genetic code, the scientists reasoned, they could ferret out the defective genes in sick patients that explained why diseases such as cancer flourished and ultimately killed their hosts.
But less than a decade later, a related science called epigenetics may have begun eclipsing traditional genetics. In epigenetics, it is factors such as diet and smoking, rather than inheritance, that influence how genes behave.
A deepening understanding of this process has led to the development of drugs to rehabilitate cancer cells — by wiping away their bad memories — instead of bombing them into submission.
"There are more people working now on the epigenetics of cancer than the genetics of cancer," said Jean Pierre Issa, a professor at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
6788. wonkers2 - 4/3/2007 12:16:44 AM Interesting--like plants well fertilized, weeded and watered. 6789. betty - 4/3/2007 12:38:48 AM Wow, that's really interesting. My dad has just had radiation in his eye for eye cancer...his second bought with the "big C" at 56. His doctors keep telling him that his twinkies and coke diet and thirty plus years of smoking probably have nothing to do with it, it's probably more closely linked with genetics.
considering what thoughtful posted above and what I know about other topics, it seems that Medical science is not very good science. how cutting edge is our medicine? 6790. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 1:20:19 PM I've seen a lot of statistics, none consistent, on what % is determined by genes and what % is determined by lifestyle. My conclusion is that lifestyle accounts for a lot more than many people think.
I look at my brother who is 54 but looks like he's in his 70s vs me who many people presume i'm a decade younger than I am. He smokes, doesn't watch his diet, drinks too much, doesn't exercise, and has ended up with diabetes and has a stent in his carotid artery as he's had a stroke and was losing his vision due to poor circulation to his brain.
I drink very little, never smoked, exercise daily, and try to eat nutritiously. I also have no significant health issues. 6791. alistairConnor - 4/3/2007 3:31:22 PM I intend to die old and leave a good-looking corpse (to science?) 6792. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 4:24:53 PM Funny you should mention that AC.
A long time ago I signed up with an area med school to donate my body to them when I die. Only thing is, I might be rejected. Can you imagine failing to get into med school even as a cadaver???
They won't take you if you are obese or emaciated or have died of something infectious or are mangled or have too many body parts missing....like you were first an organ donor...they much prefer you to be an organ donor if possible for obvious reasons.
I suppose if i get rejected, i can always try to get accepted at the body farm.... 6793. alistairConnor - 4/3/2007 4:51:05 PM Or failing that, at the pig farm. As long as I can be useful.
Perhaps I could get anoxically cremated! Yes, reduced to charcoal, so that my ashes would be sequestering carbon.
Sounds like a promising business venture, actually. 6794. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 6:02:07 PM we can just throw you in the la brea tar pits and you can fossilize 6795. arkymalarky - 4/3/2007 6:37:10 PM My dad's good friend once wrote a nice song, "Send Me to Glory in a Glad Bag."
The last line of the chorus: "Just set me on the curb on Tuesday, and let the sanitation locals take me home." 6796. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 9:09:48 PM I've been teasing mom about at least her being too old to die young. Wouldn't you know it the car talk guys had a song on last week "Just Too Old To Still Die Young." 6797. alistairConnor - 4/4/2007 1:27:20 PM Funny how these subjects pop up...
I just read an article about Keith Richards... guess what he did with his father's ashes?
You guessed right... mixed him with some coke and snorted him...
An odd variation on ritual cannibalism eh? (The old bugger always got up my nose, so...)
I certainly hope my kids don't do that to me. 6798. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 2:12:06 PM That is disgusting. I heard it on the news this a.m. That guy is nuts. Of course I'm always so suspicious of crematoria, I suspect those were probably ashes from someone or something else. I mean do you really think they clean those furnaces after each body? I view the ash thing as more symbolic than anything else.
Remember that joint in GA? Yuck. 6799. betty - 4/4/2007 3:31:16 PM I have a soft spot for cemetaries because they were some of the first municipal parks (see, AC, cemetaries started the green revolution), but the idea of actually rotting away in one makes me ill. Plus I get into the whole Decca Milford politics of the funerary business...so it's cremation for me, thanks. 6800. clydefo - 4/4/2007 4:56:31 PM Please leave my bones to the Kilimanjaro vultures. 6801. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 5:51:21 PM I'm afraid the vultures don't want your bones, but the meat on them... 6802. clydefo - 4/4/2007 6:47:17 PM Bone Crusher
"The Lammergeier or Bearded Vulture, Gypaetus barbatus, is an Old World vulture, the only member of the genus Gypaetus. It breeds on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, Africa, India and Tibet...
Like other vultures it is a scavenger, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals. It usually disdains the rotting meat, however, and lives on a diet that is 90% bone. It will drop large bones from a height to crack them to get smaller pieces. Its old name of Ossifrage (or Bone Crusher) relates to this habit. Live tortoises are also dropped in similar fashion to crack them open.
Seen on National Geographic TV:
Old water buffalo climb above the Kilimanjaro freeze-line to escape predators, starve, and are picked clean by small critters. Bone Crusher finds the skeleton during it's thirty mile cruise around the heights of the cone, lands and eats the bones. There was a shot of one of them tilting his head back some funny way and swallowing an intact buffalo leg bone. Looked like a good way to go. 6803. arkymalarky - 4/4/2007 8:23:38 PM I'll bet it's a lot less gross when they puke on your car.
In an article about an archaeological dig of a neolithic city in Turkey, evidence showed that the people left the dead to the buzzards and then brought the bones into the home rather than burying them in a common graveyard. I like that idea, actually.
I must confess to being fairly morbid, and when I had my hysterectomy I made Bob take me to a cemetery between where I live and work--called, appropriately, "Halfway." I thought I'd love it, but I hated it. It's where his great-great-grandmother, a half-Caddo Indain woman whose first name was Caddo, is buried. It seems to work for her, but I didn't like it. I would rather be buried as close to here as possible. I don't want to be cremated and I want Bob next to me. But I don't want to be on a highway, either, which is where most of his family on his mother's side is buried. We have two cemeteries here, but one is a family plot. I think they'd let us in, but it's on a highway too. I would also like a stele instead of a tombstone. I figure it's like everything else. People will agree with me and then do what they want when I'm not around to gripe about it. 6804. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 8:38:32 PM It depends on the people. Dad wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread in the gulf stream. I did just that with the help of the US Navy which buries veterans at sea.
My SIL wanted the same thing, but my brother hasnt parted with her yet. Ive offered to take care of it for him when he is ready.
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