PLATELETS to the RESCUE

It's a good flower season here in Borrego right now,

and half the world is here to enjoy it

However, this is about platelets, not flowers

 

This is encouraging news, and a good use of Moonshot money.  Platelets are the little cellular firemen who dash in to combat problems; they cause blood clotting.  Some smart guys have figured out how to combine platelets with immunotherapy drugs.  That way when a solid tumor is removed surgically these platelets, eager to help, surge to the sight of the wound, and in the process cause any escaped cancer cells to croak.  Not a breakthrough, but progress.

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2017/platelet-immunotherapy?cid=eb_govdel



Ho Hum: Cloning and stem cells

Linda and my Mom, 1982

Mom was 84 at the time

Taken in Cherry Valley, CA

I’m not exactly recommending this article; more like bringing it to your attention.  If you want a painless, science-free summary of the development of cloning technology and the politico-ethical war over stem cells, waste a few minutes on this.  Otherwise, take a nap.  I usually rave about Economist articles, but not this one.  It appears possible that Donald Trump has thrown the Economist into a tizzy.  Not only can they write of little else, and without their customary touch of irony – they are sending me the magazine here in Borrego, while simultaneously informing me by increasingly frantic emails that copies sent to Bellingham are being returned and that they will have no option other than to suspend my subscription.  It is said that “elections have consequences”.  Who knew this might be one?

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21717035-ways-reproducing-without-sexual-intercourse-are-multiplying-history-suggests-they-should

DO NOT READ THIS BLOG

On cancer mortality: A personal view.

Serious warning:  This blog will be depressing well beyond anything I have ever written.  I won’t post it anywhere other than here.  If you are having a happy day and don’t want to spoil it, stop reading r now.

What, still there?  Well, you have been warned.

I have been wallowing in gloomy thoughts today.  Why, I don’t know; my aches and pains are no worse than usual, my bird feeders are aswarm with little creatures of a dozen descriptions, and the weather is warm, clear – and, of course, windy.  I get to go home to PNW weather in less than a month.  Joanne is feeding me tomorrow.  I’m having dinner at the Moaning Mongoose next Thursday with Paul and Mary.  So what’s the problem?

Hell, I don’t know.  Whatever it is, I have devoted most of the day to thinking about my good friends who have died of cancer.

First there was Dr. Norman Watkins, way back in the 1970s.  He died of colorectal cancer in his 40s.  Norm was a pioneer paleomagnetist, making big waves.  He was fearless, and he made some enemies.  We will never know what he might have done, given the time.  Lots, I think.

And then there was Dr. Robert Speed, a geologist mostly associated with Northwestern University.  Bob was one of a very few go-to guys where Cordilleran geology was concerned.  I met him at Stanford, and worked with him in Nevada and the Caribbean.  Bob was the only guy I have ever met who could really enjoy a very hot beer at the end of the day – hot because we had forgotten to stick the beer in the ice chest that morning.  Bob died of melanoma at about age 70.  He had just retired.

My golfing mentor, Dr. Richard Levin, died at about that same age (70), of a kind of cancer I cannot characterize other than to say that it was recurrent and affected the mouth.  Rich was a math professor at my university, and perhaps the nicest, most patient, gentlest man I have ever met. 

Next came my lifelong friend, Dr. Samuel J. Sims.  I first encountered Sam on a high school football field.  I went to Caltech and Stanford with him, down mines with him, into drinking establishments, low and high, safe and unsafe, with him.  He may qualify as my best – long-term – friend.  Sam died a few years ago, of what I believe may be called soft-tissue sarcoma.  He was a great guy.

And finally comes the death of Dr. Robert Keller a few days ago, of something called “Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation”, a very rare, and invariably fatal, condition most often caused by cancer.  Bob was a history professor at Fairhaven College, a part of WWU.  He also was the person who introduced me to   mountaineering in the Cascades, and with whom I first explored the Wind River Range of Wyoming.  He was a unique and enigmatic (to me) character about whom much more should be written.

So, five good friends dead of cancer – and all younger than me!  I am approaching 84.  Somewhere I think I read that a person’s probability of dying of cancer roughly doubles with every decade of life.  If so there may be dozens of cancerous mutations lurking in my DNA, waiting to pounce.  I have written nearly 500 blogs about ovarian cancer, but OVCA can’t get me.  If some other cancer does, I hope I have the courage to spit in its eye.

But I would rather be hit by a bus.

You will have noticed that I made no mention of another cancer death above, that of my beloved wife, Linda, at only 65 years of age.  The guys enumerated above were important friends; Linda was an essential part of my core existence.  I have been stumbling on without her for almost six years now, often wondering why it was that Fate took her and not me.  Hell, I was 78 and good for very little; she was just beginning a productive, creative, joyful retirement.  If fate had spared both of us, what fun we would have had!  And now, as I stumble toward helplessness, she would have been here to help.

You have much to explain, Fate.  Get started.

Aspirin and the USPSTF

                         Borrego was a lot more fun then

If you don’t know what the acronym USPSTF means, you haven’t been taking me seriously.  It stands for United States Preventative Services Task Force and I have written about it frequently, with usually a negative twist.  I also have discussed evidence that indicates, fairly convincingly, that a daily small dose of aspirin significantly reduces the probability of contracting cancers of various sorts, including ovarian.  Well, the USPSTF – which generally tosses wet blankets on prevention/early detection protocols because of cost, false positives and the like – has surprised me by recommending the aspirin regimen.  See below:

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/research/aspirin-cancer-risk?cid=eb_govdel

Now it simply remains for you to pester your doctors about this new medical wrinkle.

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 ….. ?