AUTOPHAGY: A NEW WORD, A NEW WEAPON

Such a nice smile

“Autophagy” means “self-eating”, and the various autophagous processes are akin to urban garbage-disposal systems; they identify, transport and dispose of unwanted, sometimes dangerous, cellular elements.  In macroautophagy, for instance, the damaged stuff is enclosed in a double membrane, then hauled off to an organelle known as a lysosome, where it is degraded and recycled. Without autophagy our cells would soon come to resemble my garage; so stuffed with junk as to be essentially non-functional.

There seem to be diseases that stem from haywire autophagy, and there are drugs that combat these diseases.  Playing, it seems, on a hunch, people at U.C. San Diego have shown that these same drugs are effective against OVCA – at least in rats.  More trials are in progress.

Make it so!

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/sd-me-ucsd-ovarian-20170218-story.html

ENOUGH ALREADY!

Mamma fur seal and baby (that little black glob)

How come they can sleep on cold gravel and I can't sleep on an expensive mattress?

This is the fourth day of February, here in old Borrego Springs.  The high temperature was 75⁰ a few hours ago; it will drop down to near 60^o just before dawn.  There is no breeze, no air pollution, almost no noise – and the surrounding mountains clearly urge me to “come out and play”.  And here I sit, hunched over a keyboard – thoroughly bummed.  I remember the opening lines from a Dostoyevsky novel:” I am a spiteful man, I am a resentful man.  I think my liver is diseased.”  (No, that’s not the actual quotation, but it gives the flavor.  Hell, it took me three tries and spell-check just to get his name right.)

So, no – it’s not my liver keeping me inside.  It’s my lungs.  I wheeze when I breathe.  If I take a deep breath, then hold it, I hear sounds from inside that remind me of an orchestra tuning up.  And I cough.  God, do I cough!  And always at an inappropriate time.  If someone phones me, I have to call them back.  I never get the punch line in a TV news story.  No way can I sleep more than 30 minutes at a stretch.  And the stuff that comes up – but we can skip that.

The point is I am going to use this little bit of enforced physical inactivity to scan back through my sources and toss out one-liners on what I find.  It will give me something to do, and you….. Well, you know where the “Delete” button is.

1)      It is reliably predicted that cancer rates in the U.K. will increase six-times more rapidly in women than in men, mainly because of obesity and smoking rates.  I would add that women there drink things like “lager and lime” whereas men drink real beer.

2)      Johnson & Johnson continues to be sued over the role of talcum powder in causing ovarian cancer, and they continue to lose – to the tune of a few tens of millions of dollars at a crack.  However, their revenue last year was over 70 billion, and their stock price actually rose over the past year by a little over 10%.  Also, they pay a dividend of nearly 3%.  What’s that my bank is paying?  0.5%?  I guess investors aren’t much worried about talc.

3)      And here it is a Thursday, ten days later, my cough is as juicy as ever, and I am beginning to starve because nothing tastes good.  Went to ole’ Doc Huet this morning and learned that half the Borrego valley has or has had this variety of crud, which goes on essentially forever.  I guess I should have stayed in Bellingham, surrounded by all that healthy snow and ice.

4)      Finally, I am so out of energy that I can scarcely follow the TV news, let alone read cancer articles.  That being the case I am going to shut this thing down and publish what’ve got.  Send food.

NEWTON AND E-CIGS

Linda is in the northern hemisphere and I am in the southern  hemisphere.  We both are hot and sweaty.  Where are we?

Not long ago I read the statement that “it requires real courage to investigate the obvious”.    This is certainly  true, in most cases, but not all.  Take Isaac Newton, for instance.  The prevailing opinion about falling in his time, insofar as anybody had an opinion, must have been something like “Well, God wants everything to be as low as possible.”  Or maybe, “the natural place for everything is on the ground”.  But, really, nobody cared:  falling was obvious.  Then Newton spoiled it all, and classical physics was born.

Well, nowadays it also takes an independent income, because no funding body will finance you if you want to investigate, for instance, why are there men? (See recent blog about parthenogenesis in ants.) Unless, maybe, the National Institutes of Health.  The NIH, has just paid for an investigation as to why there are e-cigarettes.  Well, actually, the study concerned itself with how the introduction of e-cigs has impacted things like total nicotine consumption and usage of conventional cigarettes by teens.  And guess what, by Golly: e-cigs have made everything worse!  The health practices of kids with regard to tobacco are worse now than just a few years ago.

And why would you believe otherwise?  E-cigs are not lollypops.  They are the Lucky Strikes of today, designed to infer social cachet on users, as well as provide a mild euphoria.  Teens are herd animals; they judge what is right by what the rest of the herd is doing.  Hell, when I took up smoking it was entirely because of social stimuli – and, God knows, I am not easy to influence!  I just wanted Marj and Patsy to notice me.

Note that the health argument cuts little ice amongst teens.  Teens are immortal.  Teens don’t worry about ill-health; mostly they worry about passing the next exam, making the football team, and getting laid.  We knew that those Lucky Strikes were bad for us.  Why else would we have called them coffin-nails?

So e-cigs are dangerous and must be stomped into powder. As a Liberal, in the original sense, I oppose this - but as a health nut I'm in favor.   Maybe if The Donald were to issue another Executive Order ….. ?