| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
11 Jan 2005 08:01:11 AM |
| Object: |
ID screws up again. Human gene to fight AIDS defective. |
This also might point the way to a possible cure.
---
Gene clue to HIV origin in humans
Scientists say they have uncovered an important clue to understanding
the origins of the Aids epidemic.
They have pinpointed crucial differences in a gene found in rhesus
monkeys that can prevent HIV infection, and its human counterpart, that
cannot.
It appears that only a single change to the human gene is needed to
enable it to block HIV infection.
The study, by the National Institute for Medical Research, is published
in Current Biology.
The scientists say their work indicates that HIV would not have become
established in the human population if mankind carried the same version
of the gene found in rhesus monkeys.
Lead researcher Dr Jonathan Stoye said: "This discovery has significant
implications for the development of effective gene therapy to combat
Aids.
"In theory, it should be possible to take cells from an HIV-infected
individual, make them resistant to HIV infection with the modified gene
and reintroduce them into the patient. These cells could then block
progression to Aids.
"Alternatively we could seek for drugs that activate the human gene
against HIV."
Long term approach
Christopher Gadd, editor of HIV & AIDS Treatments Directory, told the
BBC News website: "What is particularly exciting is that the researchers
have identified that changing just one amino acid 'building block' in
one protein can switch a cell from susceptible to insusceptible to
long-term HIV infection.
"However, it is important to stress that any therapeutic benefits that
may arise from this research are unlikely to be felt for many years.
"This type of gene therapy would involve removing white blood cells from
patients, cloning them, and altering their genetic make-up before
reintroducing them to the patient on an individual-by-individual basis.
"Although it is theoretically possible, this approach is unlikely to be
practical or cost-effective with currently available technologies."
Jo Robinson, a senior treatment specialist at The HIV charity Terrence
Higgins Trust agreed that gene therapy was a promising approach which
might yield results in the longer term.
But she said: "We should stress that although this research is important
we are still a long way from it having a practical application for
people with HIV. There is still no cure for HIV and no vaccine."
According to the latest UNAIDS figures, at the end of 2004, 39.4 million
people worldwide - 37.2 million adults and 2.2 million children younger
than 15 years - are living with HIV/Aids.
HIV is a retrovirus that infects cells of the human immune system and
destroys or impairs their function.
Infection with this virus results in the progressive depletion of the
immune system, leading to 'immune deficiency', or Aids.
---
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4160849.stm
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
Intelligent Design has as much to do with science as reality
television has to do with reality. - Barry Lynn on CNN 12/25/04
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: ID screws up again. Human gene to fight AIDS defective. |
12 Jan 2005 03:26:12 AM |
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In article <jhachm-F0EFF8.00011111012005@news.giganews.com>,
jhachm@ixpres.com says...
"What is particularly exciting is that the researchers
have identified that changing just one amino acid 'building block' in
one protein can switch a cell from susceptible to insusceptible to
long-term HIV infection.
This is amazingly good news for mankind and extraordinarily bad news for
an incompetent designer god who could ***** up something so simple and
make millions pay the price for his negligence.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: ID screws up again. Human gene to fight AIDS defective. |
12 Jan 2005 06:48:58 AM |
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In article <MPG.1c4e46c18fb8fc9e989b6a@news.individual.net>,
quibbler <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote:
In article <jhachm-F0EFF8.00011111012005@news.giganews.com>,
jhachm@ixpres.com says...
"What is particularly exciting is that the researchers
have identified that changing just one amino acid 'building block' in
one protein can switch a cell from susceptible to insusceptible to
long-term HIV infection.
This is amazingly good news for mankind and extraordinarily bad news for
an incompetent designer god who could ***** up something so simple and
make millions pay the price for his negligence.
If there were a designer god, it would be liable to such a class action
lawsuit.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
Intelligent Design has as much to do with science as reality
television has to do with reality. - Barry Lynn on CNN 12/25/04
.
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| User: "Marc Satterwhite" |
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| Title: Re: ID screws up again. Human gene to fight AIDS defective. |
12 Jan 2005 08:47:18 PM |
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quibbler wrote:
In article <jhachm-F0EFF8.00011111012005@news.giganews.com>,
jhachm@ixpres.com says...
"What is particularly exciting is that the researchers
have identified that changing just one amino acid 'building block' in
one protein can switch a cell from susceptible to insusceptible to
long-term HIV infection.
This is amazingly good news for mankind and extraordinarily bad news for
an incompetent designer god who could ***** up something so simple and
make millions pay the price for his negligence.
Twain expounding on the same topic (from The Letters From the Earth)
Just so with diseases. If science exterminates a disease which has been
working for God, it is God that gets the credit, and all the pulpits break
into grateful advertising-raptures and call attention to how good he is!
Yes, he has done it. Perhaps he has waited a thousand years before doing
it. That is nothing; the pulpit says he was thinking about it all the time.
When exasperated men rise up and sweep away an age-long tyranny and set a
nation free, the first thing the delighted pulpit does is to advertise it
as God's work, and invite the people to get down on their knees and pour
out their thanks to him for it. And the pulpit says with admiring emotion,
"Let tyrants understand that the Eye that never sleeps is upon them; and
let them remember that the Lord our God will not always be patient, but
will loose the whirlwinds of his wrath upon them in his appointed day."
They forget to mention that he is the slowest mover in the universe; that
his Eye that never sleeps, might as well, since it takes it a century to
see what any other eye would see in a week; that in all history there is
not an instance where he thought of a noble deed first, but always thought
of it just a little after somebody else had thought of it and done it. He
arrives then, and annexes the dividend.
Very well, six thousand years ago Shem was full of hookworms. Microscopic
in size, invisible to the unaided eye. All of the Creator's specially
deadly disease-producers are invisible. It is an ingenious idea. For
thousands of years it kept man from getting at the roots of his maladies,
and defeated his attempts to master them. It is only very recently that
science has succeeded in exposing some of these treacheries.
The very latest of these blessed triumphs of science is the discovery and
identification of the ambuscaded assassin which goes by the name of the
hookworm. Its special prey is the barefooted poor. It lies in wait in warm
regions and sandy places and digs its way into their unprotected feet.
The hookworm was discovered two or three years ago by a physician, who had
been patiently studying its victims for a long time. The disease induced by
the hookworm had been doing its evil work here and there in the earth ever
since Shem landed on Ararat, but it was never suspected to be a disease at
all. The people who had it were merely supposed to be lazy, and were
therefore despised and made fun of, when they should have been pitied. The
hookworm is a peculiarly sneaking and underhand invention, and has done its
surreptitious work unmolested for ages; but that physician and his helpers
will exterminate it now.
God is back of this. He has been thinking about it for six thousand years,
and making up his mind. The idea of exterminating the hookworm was his. He
came very near doing it before Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles did. But he is in
time to get the credit of it. He always is.
It is going to cost a million dollars. He was probably just in the act of
contributing that sum when a man pushed in ahead of him - as usual. Mr.
Rockefeller. He furnishes the million, but the credit will go elsewhere -
as usual. This morning's journals tell us something about the hookworm's
operations:
The hookworm parasites often so lower the vitality of those who are
affected as to retard their physical and mental development, render them
more susceptible to other diseases, make labor less efficient, and in the
sections where the malady is most prevalent greatly increase the death rate
from consumption, pneumonia, typhoid fever and malaria. It has been shown
that the lowered vitality of multitudes, long attributed to malaria and
climate and seriously affecting economic development, is in fact due in
some districts to this parasite. The disease is by no means confined to any
one class; it takes its ton of suffering and death from the highly
intelligent and well to do as well as from the less fortunate. It is a
conservative estimate that two millions of our people are affected by this
parasite. The disease is more common and more serious in children of school
age than in other persons.
Widespread and serious as the infection is, there is still a most
encouraging outlook. The disease can be easily recognized, readily and
effectively treated and by simple and proper sanitary precautions
successfully prevented [with God's help].
The poor children are under the Eye that never sleeps, you see. They have
had that ill luck in all the ages. They and "the Lord's poor" - as the
sarcastic phrase goes have never been able to get away from that Eye's
attentions.
Yes, the poor, the humble, the ignorant - they are the ones that catch it.
Take the "Sleeping Sickness," of Africa. This atrocious cruelty has for its
victims a race of ignorant and unoffending blacks whom God placed in a
remote wilderness, and bent his parental Eye upon them - the one that never
sleeps when there is a chance to breed sorrow for somebody. He arranged for
these people before the Flood. The chosen agent was a fly, related to the
tsetse; the tsetse is a fly which has command of the Zambezi country and
stings cattle and horses to death, thus rendering that region uninhabitable
by man. The tsetse's awful relative deposits a microbe which produces the
Sleeping Sickness. Ham was full of these microbes, and when the voyage was
over he discharged them in Africa and the havoc began, never to find
amelioration until six thousand years should go by and science should pry
into the mystery and hunt out the cause of the disease. The pious nations
are now thanking God, and praising him for coming to the rescue of his poor
blacks. The pulpit says the praise is due to him, for the reason that the
scientists got their inspiration from him. He is surely a curious Being. He
commits a fearful crime, continues that crime unbroken for six thousand
years, and is then entitled to praise because he suggests to somebody else
to modify its severities. He is called patient, and he certainly must be
patient, or he would have sunk the pulpit in perdition ages ago for the
ghastly compliments it pays him.
Best, Marc
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: ID screws up again. Human gene to fight AIDS defective. |
13 Jan 2005 01:33:52 AM |
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In article <41E58B2B.7C2D37DD@athena.louisville.edu>,
mtsatt01@athena.louisville.edu says...
quibbler wrote:
In article <jhachm-F0EFF8.00011111012005@news.giganews.com>,
jhachm@ixpres.com says...
"What is particularly exciting is that the researchers
have identified that changing just one amino acid 'building block' in
one protein can switch a cell from susceptible to insusceptible to
long-term HIV infection.
This is amazingly good news for mankind and extraordinarily bad news for
an incompetent designer god who could ***** up something so simple and
make millions pay the price for his negligence.
Twain expounding on the same topic (from The Letters From the Earth)
I sure am glad that people like Sam Clemens had the courage to stand up
to the god-soaked fools of his age. We certainly are greatly in his
debt, for his ready wit, that still rises up beyond the grave and makes
a laughing stock of theocrats today.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
.
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| User: "johnebravo836" |
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| Title: Re: ID screws up again. Human gene to fight AIDS defective. |
12 Jan 2005 08:54:56 PM |
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Marc Satterwhite wrote:
quibbler wrote:
In article <jhachm-F0EFF8.00011111012005@news.giganews.com>,
jhachm@ixpres.com says...
"What is particularly exciting is that the researchers
have identified that changing just one amino acid 'building block' in
one protein can switch a cell from susceptible to insusceptible to
long-term HIV infection.
This is amazingly good news for mankind and extraordinarily bad news for
an incompetent designer god who could ***** up something so simple and
make millions pay the price for his negligence.
Twain expounding on the same topic (from The Letters From the Earth)
[snip]
I'm sure I've never laughed as hard at any other book I've ever read.
It's a treasure from beginning to end . . .
.
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