Extraordinary times for molecular biology

Post #323,473 by rcareaga 3/25/10 9:00:06 PM Reply	Extraordinary times for molecular biology I was born the year before the "double-helix" structure was identified. The past three decades have seen remarkable advances in our understanding of how genes work, and I suspect that this may be one of the few instances of "collateral benefit" from the AIDS epidemic. If this treatment works as advertised (and I remember thinking during V's declining months in 2007 that with the accelerating advances in oncology she might have had a fighting chance had the beast first got its claws into her a decade later), what, I wonder, replaces the Big C as the mortal ailment of last resort ("the disease all the others were designed to save us from" as the late John Updike—himself a victim last year—once wrote) for those of us who live long enough? Perhaps that old standby congestive heart failure, or pneumonia, which I remember used to be described as "the old man's friend." I've had pneumonia. With friends like that... cordially,
Post #323,477 by drook 3/25/10 9:17:02 PM Reply	Both relatively recent ailments Cancer and congestive heart failure are both relatively recent, as humans go, and strongly correlated with the Western diet. I wonder what we'd die of if we ate better and still had high-tech medical care. -- Drew
Post #323,478 by rcareaga 3/25/10 9:38:37 PM Reply	Food for thought I'm going to think about your post. While I'm thinking I'll be eating a heavily-marbled ribeye steak off the backyard BBQ, thereby covering both bases. dangerously, If God hadn't intended us to eat animals He wouldn't have made them out of meat.
Post #323,552 by jake123 3/27/10 3:34:54 AM Reply	If god hadn't intended us to eat babies, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.
Post #323,556 by Another Scott 3/27/10 7:08:17 AM Reply	:-)
Post #323,509 by jay 3/26/10 10:31:41 AM Reply	Re: Both relatively recent ailments Cancer and congestive heart failure are both relatively recent, as humans go, and strongly correlated with the Western diet. I wonder what we'd die of if we ate better and still had high-tech medical care. I read an article once that considered the same question, I think it was something written by Carl Sagan years ago. He ran the numbers from actuarial tables and came to the conclusion that if we could eliminate aging in general and the other major medical reasons for death, we would die from accident with an average life span between 900 and 1000 years. Of course, that is a lot of other medical problems to take care of first, and living that long would surely create some new ones. And the article pointed out the 900 year figure is contingent upon not just technology but society staying the same, which it surely wouldn't over a period that long. More to the point, eating better wouldn't solve heart and circulation related problems, just delay the onset of them. A significant part of the reason why cancer and circulation problems have risen to the top of the list is that humans now live long enough to die from them. We need a way to repair damage to return functionality something close to original operational levels. Jay
Post #323,511 by drook 3/26/10 10:51:20 AM Reply	Re: "live long enough to die from them" I wondered about that for quite a while. That and the fact that for a long time when someone over 70 died, cause of death was, "They were over 70, duh!" Now we have to know the cause for everything. But that might not be the case. Diet probably accounts for 20-50 percent of cancer deaths: http://www.straightd...eporting-of-cases Sure, that range is pretty wide. But even the low end shows that our diet leads to a huge number of deaths. Latest theory on how diet (and other factors) causes cancer: http://www.thetech.o...cs/ask.php?id=136 -- Drew

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