Adventure Ausrama Blog

Genetically modified things are dangerous. Whoops! But we are already using them. GM crops have already crossed with normal plantings in adjacent farms. The producers of the GM seeds are suing these farmers for using the crossed seed which they claim belongs to them. Dogs were given a virus that had been genetically modified: the DNA integrated into the host genome. Oncogenes were activated. The virus entered into cells that influence cell growth. The affected cells' rate of division increased dramatically. Modified viruses are a popular way of treating people now. Practitioners had a ho hum attitude to this. It has to changed. The final result of such treatment will probably be cancer. Researchers have known for decades that tests on very young mice were detrimental. However, they pushed blindly ahead. The project on the dogs has been concluded. Calls were made to continue for another five years to discover whether the canine develop tumors. Vested interests stop it. Ultimatel...

Well what happened in 2015? Some odd claims were made. In October KIC 8462852, a star doing strange things was observed. Some said that it was created by intelligent life. Actually it is a comet swarm. The barbecue charcoal theory was taken a step further with suggestions that processed meat such as bacon causes cancer. However, the risk is statistically insignificant. Just don't eat too much of it. NASA's mysterious EM Drive was announced which apparently is a microwave "powered" warp drive. Roll on Star trek. Thrust was produced from nothing but at a such a low level as to be unusable. We do not have to worry about global warming because the sun will take care of it. The Maunder Minimum phase will push us into an ice age in the 2030s. Have no fear. Such a drastic 5º C fall will not happen. We have done far too much damage for the Maunder Minimum to have any effect. The little Tardigrade creature picks up genes from the environment by horizontal t...

Scientists have made mice transparent - let us hope they were dead first! Studying the human body and test animals in general is difficult because usually one has to carry out dissections to see inside.  The new process will change medicine. Lipids block sunlight in bodies, so it has to be replaced with acrylamide which is just transparent hydrogel. After the acrylamide is absorbed, the bodies are placed into detergent which absorbs the lipids. Electricity is also applied to reduce the time taken to "clean" tissue. The treated mice do not keep their original shape. They end up like gel in a plastic bag. Internal organs can be clearly seen, however. After staining, the structure of organs can be seen as shown in the picture above. Micro-slicing has been used to date. A computer assembles a 3D structure for study. Both systems will probably be used in future as each as its benefits. There are plans to adapt the transparency technique to evaluate tissue in c...

How can the state pay for drugs that are shown to be effective against disease but cost far too much? Regularly, someone will be on a current affairs television program and point their finger at the government for not continuing to supply their needed medication. In the long term a government must balance the books. There is simply not enough revenue to provide new expensive drugs. A new treatment for melanoma called Ipilimumab is very effective, but it costs $120,000 for a three month course. It stops the cancer from spreading beyond the skin. Ipilimumab can also be used to treat some types of lung cancer. Should the government subsidize this drug? Like all medications there are side effects that can be severe in some patients. Symptoms include constipation, diarrhea, urination complications, bloating, stomach pain, fever and breathing difficulties. The drug usually extends life by several months. In some cases patients survive for a year. A value judgement is needed to d...

New cancer "curing" medications are announced to the public all the time. Unfortunately, what you are not told is when they will be available. It isn't much use if you have to wait ten years - if you have cancer you could be dead before then. It is not so much chemicals that attack dangerous "bugs" that are coming to the fore : modified molecules are increasingly being tested. In prostate cancer testosterone attaches to androgen receptors. Activation in this manner allows cancer growth to take place. A helix-mimicking molecule attaches to the particular docking point thus preventing the ideal cancer condition occurring. In animal and human tests protein supporting cancer growth was not produced when the molecules attached. Moreover, it was not found to be toxic to the body. This research opens up a completely new area of treatment. The future looks bright in the fight against cancer - it we can afford to pay for it. http://www.adventure--australia.blo...

Treating the effect as the cause is wasting valuable time in finding a cure for cancer. A Study found that depressed people lived shorter lives when they had cancer. Depression per se and lack of hope, optimism and anxiety were tested. Those suffering from these "attributes" didn't live as long as "optimists" who were also cancer sufferers. A great leap of faith was made to claim that mood sufferers did not seek second opinions on cancer. Note that this was not proven it was just surmised. Overall findings were that optimism did not lead to better survival in people with cancer. Well this is game. set and match. You can't have it both ways. Either being optimistic improves survival or it doesn't. There is no doubt that psychological treatment improves the well being of cancer patients, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and say optimistic cancer sufferers live longer. A great deal of money is set aside for medical research. We have to be caref...

In the twentieth century Australia was dominant in swimming at international events. This was largely due to the high consumption of meat in the diet of Australians. As time went by other nations noticed this and their athletes ate more meat. Today, Even small island nations have access to reasonably priced beef, pork, lamb and poultry. Consequently, Australia's dominance has waned. Despite consuming a lot of meat, Australians did not die at a young age. Indeed, longevity was extended. New research points to an increase in heart disease, obesity, cancer and diabetes that do tend to shorten life. An example was given of Hawaii where these diseases are rapidly increasing. Red meat is seen as the major cause. This research has flaws. Higher red meat consumption cannot be directly linked to more "modern" maladies. It could be coincidence. No tests were done on the rising consumption of refined carbohydrates. The call for more vegetables in the diet will improve ...

Tasmanian devils have a unique form of cancer. It is the only type that is contagious. Just how it is transmitted is the unknown factor. Scientists studying the disease now believe it should be reclassified as a parasite. Though at first glance it seems to be a cancer it has many characteristics of a parasite. The parasitic cancer stays in a host until the sufferer is irretrievably damaged then it will move on to a new host. It uses the Tasmanian devils predilection for violence to spread itself. It remains alive by sticking to the teeth. When devils fight they snap at each others' mouths causing blood to flow. It is really a new category of disease. Though a cancer it not in other animals. A parasite will exist in many animals. The disease originated in one female devil during the 1990s. Just how it originated is not known. It is such a difficult disease to treat. The Tasmanian devil could reach its demise in less than 15 years. http://www.adventure--australia.blog...

Australians are so obsessed about staying out of the sun to prevent skin cancer that the number of people getting osteoporosis is increasing. This is a sad consequence of a positive behavior change. Osteoporosis would not be a problem if more people took calcium tablets with vitamin D each day. Unfortunately, many would rather spend their money on other things. The disease affects young people as well as the elderly. The Nepean Consensus Statement meeting has been praised for making the disease more widely known. However, money spent on such activities is wasted, considering you can treat yourself without actually being diagnosed with the disease. Developing "fancy" management practises is unnecessary. Giving calcium and vitamin D to the elderly who already suffer with osteoporosis is a waste of time, because once you have the disease it cannot be cured. A person need not adopt a calcium rich diet: calcium and vitamin D in tablet form are easily absorbed by the body. Eve...

If you thought smoking cannabis had no health dangers and was safer than smoking cigarettes, you would be wrong. The smoke from both have similar harmful gaseous and particulate chemicals. Smoking cannabis is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes. This is due to the way people behave when inhaling. They try to keep the smoke in the lungs as long as possible in order to get the greatest euphoric effect. Indeed, inhaling smoke from cannabis causes changes in the lungs consistent with bronchitis. Cellular dysplasia indicates malignancy could be the end result. Users believe lung cancer is solely due to smoking tobacco, but a cough and morning sputum production show cannabis use can lead to cancer. Cannabis smoking is addictive and damages your health. Combining this pastime with cigarette smoking is doubly dangerous. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/b...

Australia has the highest rate of melanoma in the world. People will not listen. Many still regularly tan themselves in the sun or even go to solariums. Any improvement in treating melanoma is sorely needed in this country. Tumors put up defences against drugs that aim to destroy them. Combining drugs can break down these barriers. A new kind of anti-melanoma drug, the BRAF inhibitor, has been developed. It is not a "golden bullet". Life expectancy can be increased from 8 months to 15 months. Better results have been obtained by combining BRAF with another inhibitor called MEK. They slow down the growth of the cancer. Some tumor were shrunk. Though the tests were done on only 24 patients, improvement in treatment is promising. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . . . . ....

We are consuming sugar in increasingly greater amounts as more of it is being added to processed food. Some blame the obesity epidemic on sugar intake alone because people on high-fat, low-carb diets lose weight. There is an unclear link between high sugar intake on levels of heart disease and diabetes. Whether high-carb causes cancer is even less clear. Half of table sugar is fructose which causes fat to build up on the liver. The liver is put out of balance so the body's insulin level is raised. More palmate is also created by the liver which leads to heart disease. Hypertension is believed to increase breast cancer and cancer of the colon. The combination of high blood sugar, excess body fat and high blood pressure in a patient is called metabolic syndrome. Sufferers ultimately get very sick. Mankind in the natural state has relied on tubers, fruit, meat and fish for sustenance. Sugar is a new substance and human beings do not have natural resistance to cope with it...

People are taking more prescription drugs. Western countries including Australia make them easy to obtain because they are heavily subsidized. As developing countries move forward they too are inclined to make medications available to everyone. We take it for granted that all medicines will be "out there" ready to buy. Last year in the US 196 common drugs were in short supply. Less than 100 ran short in 2006. Most of the medications were for anaesthetic, cancer or anti-infection use. Recently, shortages became apparent in Australia. Use of alternative drugs is not ideal. Side effects and less effective treatment occur. It seems pharmaceutical manufacturers are only interested in producing products with safe patents that have high profit margins. When patents expire and governments want cheap generic drugs they are becoming harder to obtain. Governments are economically inelastic when it comes to what they will pay. They offer drug companies a fixed amount - tak...

Despite many tests there is no agreement on whether mobile phones cause brain cancer. Findings point to a trend in heavy phone users. Advice is given to use mobiles as infrequently as possible. It is clear that the skulls of children are much thinner than adults and youngsters receive twice as much microwave radiation from cell phones as adults. Three times as much radiation is absorbed into children's hippocampus and hypothalamus. Other regions of their bodies in danger are the eyes and bone marrow. Tests have mainly been carried out on adult males who have the thickest skulls of all. Scientists believe children and woman are in greater danger of getting brain cancer. One in four Australian women have reduced time spent on making calls in fear of brain damage. It is recommended that tests on children be used as the certifying method for phones. While many scientists are not convinced, research shows that heavy phone users have a 40 per cent higher risk of getting gliomas, t...

Scientists are looking to moles to enable Mankind to live longer. No, these are not the animal kind of moles. They are the moles one has on one's body - beauty moles. Rather than saying "Yuk, cover that up", we should be saying "You lucky thing." It seems people with moles have benefits that others do not have. The bones in these lucky ones are, apparently, stronger than usual. It is also claimed that they have less wrinkles making them look up to a decade younger than "non-molers". The Heart, eyes and muscles are stronger as well. The downside is the increased risk of skin cancer. Just live like Count Dracula, stay out of the light, and you should be laughing. Researchers are working on a way to turn moles off so they become less visible. This is good if you have the genes for moles, but what about the rest of us? There is no way we can get the benefits from moles which make the telomeres of white blood cells longer, thus slowing bone deterioration an...