They'd Rather See You Dead (conspiracy)

Originally posted by bsl4doc

Can you qualify this with evidence?

BSdoc - As Long Lance pointed out, man has been playing with things he did not understand since the beginning of time. Much of what we call "science" involves that very tendency. Yet you say there is no proof that this occurs, and claim 'scientific events' did not and could not have happened in the ways suggested here.

Please feel free to prove that your interpretation of the facts is correct. I would like to see historical evidence of your hypotheses, with links, and to hear your analysis in that context.

Please remember: Regurgitation of the dogma does not constitute argument or proof. Substantiating evidence with links is required.

Thank you.


.

As a Christian, I've long believed that my spirit will and in fact already has started living forever. I was also under the apprehension that my body would die in a certain number of years of which only God knows the count.

What if I told you the Bible clearly indicates that we not only can but SHOULD expect to live forever bodily?

The pastor at the church I now attend says, and very convincingly, that the Bible does say the above.

What do you say?

curiousity -

IMO, this thread is more about getting insurance coverage for existent medical technologies to cure disease than it is about immortality. But hey, if that's what interests you, go at it.

Vive la diversite.

Sorry, forgot to include my reasoning for the previous posting to be done on this subject board:

Is it possible that the recipients of medical payments, doctors, hospitals, etc, are among those who have kept this knowledge from being taught in churches? If there is any truth to that, how is it possible that they have been able to so effect the teaching of the church?

One passage the pastor has said demonstrates the "living forever" thesis is John 11:25-26 which states "Jesus said unto her, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?'"

you see, growing a fungus is something even ants can do, don't need a lab for that, bacteriopahges are similar, just need a 2 step process.. wait, do you even know how effective and efficient phages are? have you ever used them? heard of them? no? why is that? because you're mind controlled, that's why.

i don't mean to insult you, but please, please look beyond and understand that our entire society is based on control. THAT's why microchips, as small as a fingernail are produced in large complex production plants, why chemical antibiotics are preferred over phages, because phages regrow themselves, you couldn't sell them, everyone could cultivate the stuff and it doesn't take repeated doses, because they are capable of self-replication.

No, Long Lance, I have never heard of phages despite the fact that my father and now I have performed work in acadaemia on genetics. < /sarcasm > The reason antibiotics are preferred over phages is because NO system of DNA replication is perfect. Read that again. NO system is perfect. In your own human system of DNA replication, you are running at about 13% error. These errors range from fatal for the cell to possibly cancerous. The reason they don't result in anything bad very often is that your Natural Killer cells (thought to be a relative of mast cells and cytotoxic T cells) will kill off single celled cancers fairly efficiently if caught quickly enough. It happens every day, which is why we have faily high levels of Natural Killer cells. If we made phages specifically for killing, oh, let's say brucella, and then we just allowed them to self replicate in tissue cultures and continued to use them, they may eventually mutate into something extremely harmful. It would take a dosage of hundred of particles of phages to conbat a full fledged infection in a patient, but only one harmful phage to start the cascade that is a harmful infection. And as far as "anyone" being able to cultivate phages. Have you ever done this? It is EXTREMELY hard to do with some of them. T4 phages, yes, are easy to cultivate, but do you think everyone could afford to constant live tissue cultures? They get pretty pricy. Can you show me where to get cheap live tissue cultures and phage samples? I'd really appreciate it.

Also, I don't see how I can be mind controlled by the powers you are suggesting since I don't even live in your country. Medical care is socialized in Italy, why would I care what drug companies are doing in your nation? Maybe you people should do something about it if you have all this evidence? Apparently Soficrow thinks that some people are receiving this life extending treatment, so the first step to solving this mystery would be to find the rich 200 year old people in America and figure out where they got the treatment. Wait, there are no 200 year old people in America? Oooh, that's right, that's because there IS no life extending treatment like he's been describing.

And yes, I realize that all antibiotics are are cultivated fungi and plants. But guess what? That tylenol you just took? Made in a laboratory because it is cheaper and easier to control concentrations of laboratory made chemicals than it is to distill it out of plants. My second year in undergraduate studies, my organic chemistry class performed a laboratory where we created refined aspirin out of common organic products. It took 20 minutes. Now, do you know how long it would take to get the same quantity out of a plant, especially since the plant probably contains less of the chemicals than we were using? This is what I'm saying. Even though we knew about stem cells in the 40s, it doesn't mean we could use them properly or at all. We knew about DNA in the late 30s, but had no idea and still have no idea how to completely harness it's power. We know that roughly 30% of the human genome codes for proteins, and the other 70%, we don't know what it does. We call it "junk DNA", look it up.

Just because someone or some culture successfully performs some task we see now as scientific does not mean they had scientific means in mind at all, or that it wasn't be complete chance or coincidence. We look back on Mendel's experiments with pea plants and can clearly see that he was testing the independent segregation of alleles and the dominant/recessive traits. However, if you read anything about him or his experiments, he had no concept fo chromosomes, genes, alleles, any of that. He just thought the traits were part of the plant's "being" and we being mixed with another plant's "being". This is directly comparable to the first DNA experiments in 1869 when Miescher found it was a weakly acid molecule. He knew the chemical nature of it, and he knew the rough pH of it. Now are you suggesting that he was able to take that knowledge and clone someone? Or maybe the first isolated embryonic stem cell in 1998. Are you suggesting that the DAY, or even the YEAR, that that first cell was isolated, a human was cloned? You and Soficrow don't seem to understand that applied science, not theoretical, takes many many years to develop, even today. Just because we know something about something, doesn't mean we immediately apply it as a treatment, drug, or scientific theory.

Ciao,
~MFP

Originally posted by bsl4doc

..

If we made phages specifically for killing, oh, let's say ..brucella, and then we just allowed them to self replicate in tissue cultures and continued to use them, they may eventually mutate into something extremely harmful. It would take a dosage of hundred of particles of phages to conbat a full fledged infection in a patient, but only one harmful phage to start the cascade that is a harmful infection. And as far as "anyone" being able to cultivate phages. Have you ever done this? It is EXTREMELY hard to do with some of them. T4 phages, yes, are easy to cultivate, but do you think everyone could afford to constant live tissue cultures? They get pretty pricy. Can you show me where to get cheap live tissue cultures and phage samples? I'd really appreciate it.
..

Trouble is the Russians didn't buy that and went ahead, looong ago, just like the name 'phage' (eater or something) implies, they didn't really know they were actually breeding viruses, but that didn't stop them at all.


www.abovetopsecret.com...

quote: Monday, October 31, 2005. Phages: A New Way to Fight Bad Germs

Back in June I was amazed at this story in Wired about phages, bacteria-eating viruses that could be the answer to antibiotic resistance. The first treatment to use the therapy could be available this year.

"Half a century ago, antibiotics revolutionized medicine by turning many once-deadly infections like tuberculosis into minor impediments. But overuse is rapidly rendering antibiotics ineffective, and scientists know they need a replacement fast. One of the most promising options is one that's been used in Eastern Europe and Russia for decades: bacteriophage therapy

One potential drawback is that phage therapies might be too specific for widespread use against infection, according to Carl Merril, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health. For example, one phage might work for one strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae (the most common type of pneumonia) but not for the 27 others.

btw, thx Soficrow

Also, I don't see how I can be mind controlled by the powers you are suggesting since I don't even live in your country. Medical care is socialized in Italy, why would I care what drug companies are doing in your nation? Maybe you people should do something about it if you have all this evidence? Apparently Soficrow thinks that some people are receiving this life extending treatment, so the first step to solving this mystery would be to find the rich 200 year old people in America and figure out where they got the treatment. Wait, there are no 200 year old people in America? Oooh, that's right, that's because there IS no life extending treatment like he's been describing.
..

Two points: i am not American.. and i wouldn't dismiss 200 yr old people outright, i learned about so many things in the last year i would have laughed off as pure BS in my dumber days, i don't believe i have even the slightest clue what's really going on another continent, and although i find it unlikely that some 200 year old super rich elitist is actually walking around incognito, i can't outright prove the opposite, can i?

And yes, I realize that all antibiotics are are cultivated fungi and plants. But guess what? That tylenol you just took? Made in a laboratory because it is cheaper and easier to control concentrations of laboratory made chemicals than it is to distill it out of plants..

Good that you mention plants... they can be altered through creative cross-breeding, you know, a few tribes were rather good at that, otherwise we wouldn't have tomatos, potatoes, and so on. it's obvious that lab conditions result in higher fidelity, but is it really required to obtain the desired results? i doubt it and to top it off, many plants don't need refinement or destillation

cat's claw

..
Just because someone or some culture successfully performs some task we see now as scientific does not mean they had scientific means in mind at all, or that it wasn't be complete chance or coincidence.
..

Yes, see the comment on phages, you don't need to know the exact mechanism to use it, that's the whole point, you know, if you follow the first link, you'll see that all that was required for replicating phages was fermenting a bottle of nutritious solution with the desired target germ (available from patient) then adding a wide variety of life-form-rich compounds and solutions, in this case raw sewage... the effect is very visible.

from that point, replication is obviously child's play, just need to find out how long it can be safely stored without irrecoverable deterioration. hardly sophisticaed tech, is it?


Not do diss the scientific method, but people need to actually use it and stop pretending they know everything. unexplained phenomena need to be investigated, not ignored and denied. Unfortunately, there are far too many 'easy' explanation which keep people inside a close-minded world of their own without the faintest clue where to look. (and that includes myself - to an hopefully lesser extent, though)

Did you read the phage quote you cited?

One potential drawback is that phage therapies might be too specific for widespread use against infection, according to Carl Merril, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health. For example, one phage might work for one strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae (the most common type of pneumonia) but not for the 27 others.

Now, remind me why it would be more efficient and safe to pump someone full of viruses when it may not even work for that strain? Viruses can and do mutate into more harmful species, antibiotics don't. Antibiotics occur in nature, as do viruses. The coca plant has been used as a natural pain killer for hundreds of years, as have several other plants. We have just refined it. Also, as I mentioned before and you ignored, when you culture phages, they have to grow on live tissue or bacterial layers. That is more costly than making antibiotics. One antibiotic may knock out 15 out of 27 streptococcus strains, while one phage may only be specific for one, maybe two strains. How is that more effective?

i wouldn't dismiss 200 yr old people outright, i learned about so many things in the last year i would have laughed off as pure BS in my dumber days, i don't believe i have even the slightest clue what's really going on another continent, and although i find it unlikely that some 200 year old super rich elitist is actually walking around incognito, i can't outright prove the opposite, can i?

No, you apparently don't have any clue as to what's going on on my continent. And what do you mean you can't prove there aren't any super rich elitist 200 year olds? Unless he is living in a cave somewhere, which would defeat the purpose of a rich elitist wanting to live to be 200 years old, don't you think people may have noticed that the same man has been around for quite some time? His medical records, military records, social security records, tax records, income records, property records, purchase records, etc. might be a good hint. You would have to bribe/control SOOO many people to hide this, it wouldn't work. The more people you include in a conspiracy, the less likely it is to work. That's a simple fact. People talk eventually.

Good that you mention plants... they can be altered through creative cross-breeding, you know, a few tribes were rather good at that, otherwise we wouldn't have tomatos, potatoes, and so on. it's obvious that lab conditions result in higher fidelity, but is it really required to obtain the desired results? i doubt it and to top it off, many plants don't need refinement or destillation

You're right, many people ARE good at cross-breeding plants without knowledge of the botany and science behind it. Look at the Irish, they bred potatoes that would work in their rocky soil. Oooh, wait, that's right, and then the potato famine hit and their crops were destroyed, unlike the potatoes today that can be made to be highly disease resistant. Well, I guess science wins out again, huh? A knowledge of science will always produce higher quality, stronger, better foods. I'm not saying it's necessary to grow food, I'm saying a knowledge of science WILL produce better foods, however.

Yes, see the comment on phages, you don't need to know the exact mechanism to use it, that's the whole point, you know, if you follow the first link, you'll see that all that was required for replicating phages was fermenting a bottle of nutritious solution with the desired target germ (available from patient) then adding a wide variety of life-form-rich compounds and solutions, in this case raw sewage... the effect is very visible.

from that point, replication is obviously child's play, just need to find out how long it can be safely stored without irrecoverable deterioration. hardly sophisticaed tech, is it?

That's all you need, huh? Replicating phages is child's play? Okay, tell you what. I'm going to give you a 10 nl sample of T4 phage. Then, I will give you the jar of stuff you said is all you need. Now, you go ahead and culture it, and then I'll infect you with E. coli, the natural prey of T4 phages. Now, if you feel confident that those phages you're culturing haven't mutated at all, since it would only take one mutated phage to give you a nasty infection, you go ahead and chug that bottle of phages, k?

Not do diss the scientific method, but people need to actually use it and stop pretending they know everything. unexplained phenomena need to be investigated, not ignored and denied. Unfortunately, there are far too many 'easy' explanation which keep people inside a close-minded world of their own without the faintest clue where to look. (and that includes myself - to an hopefully lesser extent, though)

So now my knowledge from personal, actual factual lab assistant work, 4 years of undergrad biology, 3 years of medical school, and 3 years of laboratory research amounts to me ignoring and denying things which are full of holes? I'm not saying phages aren't useful, they really are. They just plain and simple are NOT a replacement for antibiotics. If they were, don't you think drug companies would jump on patents and research projects for what you call "cheaper and more effective" treatments? It would cost them less, and they could charge whatever they want if they were the only ones with a treatment available. Face it, you gave it the old college try, but game over.

Ciao,
~MFP

P.S. Long Lance, I don't know why you had to make some of your comments towards me to brash and rude. I have long admired your posts. You always seemed to temper them with good judgement, and I have even complimented and agreed with you on a few occasions. It really shocked me to see you act like a schoolboy and reply so crudely. Ah, c'est la vie, I suppose.

[edit on 1/16/2006 by bsl4doc]

bsl4doc
No, Long Lance, I have never heard of phages despite the fact that my father and now I have performed work in acadaemia on genetics. < /sarcasm >

Gee. I guess that makes you the big expert around here. We all better bow down, right?

bsl4doc
Apparently Soficrow thinks that some people are receiving this life extending treatment,

No. My concern is that effective treatments and cures exist for most modern diseases but are not covered by insurance - as I stated clearly.

Your arguments here reflect the primary concerns of the medical industry - effective treatments and cures involve personalized medicine - and so are "too" costly. Which is why insurance does not cover them.

bsl4doc
Even though we knew about stem cells in the 40s, it doesn't mean we could use them properly or at all. We knew about DNA in the late 30s, but had no idea and still have no idea how to completely harness it's power.

No one here is disputing that - just saying that the experimentation occurred improperly and without completely harnessing it's power. Thus resulting in one gawdawful unholy mess on the planet.

bsl4doc
Just because someone or some culture successfully performs some task we see now as scientific does not mean they had scientific means in mind at all, or that it wasn't be complete chance or coincidence. ...Just because we know something about something, doesn't mean we immediately apply it as a treatment, drug, or scientific theory.

Exactly! And now we're stuck with the consequences created by fools who played with things they did NOT understand.

bsl4doc
Now, remind me why it would be more efficient and safe to pump someone full of viruses when it may not even work for that strain?

Duh. You test before you treat - and do NOT use the patient as a walking guinea pig.

BTW - phage viruses target bacteria NOT people. Drug company representative often say phages are viruses to scare people, but it's pure manipulation - and terrorism, for that matter.

bsl4doc
when you culture phages, they have to grow on live tissue or bacterial layers. That is more costly than making antibiotics.

Profit being more important than the patient's well-being. tsk tsk

bsl4doc
So now my knowledge from personal, actual factual lab assistant work, 4 years of undergrad biology, 3 years of medical school, and 3 years of laboratory research amounts to me ignoring and denying things which are full of holes?

GODAM! You are SO well qualified. You are the BEST. The GREATEST. The MOST knowledgeable. [bow] [curtsy] [kneel] [cheers]

bsl4doc
Face it, you gave it the old college try, but game over.

All heil the self-proclaimed winner.

bsl4doc
Long Lance, I don't know why you had to make some of your comments towards me to brash and rude.

I suspect it may be because your posts are condescending, arrogant, belittling, and rude, and because you misrepresent what others say - and things like that.

curiosity:

"Living forever ?

Sorry, forgot to include my reasoning for the previous posting to be done on this subject board:

Is it possible that the recipients of medical payments, doctors, hospitals, etc, are among those who have kept this knowledge from being taught in churches? If there is any truth to that, how is it possible that they have been able to so effect the teaching of the church?

One passage the pastor has said demonstrates the "living forever" thesis is John 11:25-26 which states "Jesus said unto her, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?'"

Well what your talking about is immortality. Medical research can not promise that only religion can. Because anyone on any day could be sleeping in bed when an airplane hits it, or some such. There's no guarantee with meds.

What medical advance could give is eternal health, that would be enough for me.

Originally posted by bsl4doc
Did you read the phage quote you cited?

..


Now, remind me why it would be more efficient and safe to pump someone full of viruses when it may not even work for that strain? Viruses can and do mutate into more harmful species, antibiotics don't. Antibiotics occur in nature, as do viruses. The coca plant has been used as a natural pain killer for hundreds of years, as have several other plants. We have just refined it. Also, as I mentioned before and you ignored, when you culture phages, they have to grow on live tissue or bacterial layers. That is more costly than making antibiotics. One antibiotic may knock out 15 out of 27 streptococcus strains, while one phage may only be specific for one, maybe two strains. How is that more effective?

Look, i'm usually rather picky wrt things i put in my sig, so yes, i did read it.

Strange how you are suddenly demanding one-size-fits-all solutions, that's not how medicine works, obviously, and it's one of the more convincing arguments against most quack cures.

The problem is, and you are seemingly unaware of it, is that your broad spectrum antibiotic may kill 100 germs except the one you are infected with. (catch phrase: resistant strains..) specific targetting is always safer, more efficient and therefore less prone to develop side effects. Finally, i'd like to remind you that more options are always better, and i never said (chemical) antibiotics were obsolete, they're just limited in their effect, just like any other tool.

The issue of using live tissue and cost: well, let's just say that i don't care wether it's more effecient in an absolute sense as long as the patient doesn't get to reap the benefit (the corporation with 105883 patent lawyers reaps the rewards, in the shape of insane margins). Furthermore, i doubt that re-growing phages is such a hassle, all you need is a seeding solution and new growth medium, both replicate on their own, and new variants are available everywhere, just got to find them.

btw: do you know yeast? how do you think yesterday's people handled it?

No, you apparently don't have any clue as to what's going on on my continent. And what do you mean you can't prove there aren't any super rich elitist 200 year olds? Unless he is living in a cave somewhere, which would defeat the purpose of a rich elitist wanting to live to be 200 years old, don't you think people may have noticed that the same man has been around for quite some time? His medical records, military records, social security records, tax records, income records, property records, purchase records, etc. might be a good hint. You would have to bribe/control SOOO many people to hide this, it wouldn't work. The more people you include in a conspiracy, the less likely it is to work. That's a simple fact. People talk eventually.

Noone would believe them, of course, and IF state powers cought on, what you think they would do? a) keep it secret and abduct the person in question for experimental purposes or b) openly tell everyone about it.

look, i doubt they exist and if they do they probably aren't elitists, but i don't have proof of the contrary, so i won't limit my thought process by statig categorically 'they don't exist' because how would i know?

You're right, many people ARE good at cross-breeding plants without knowledge of the botany and science behind it. Look at the Irish, they bred potatoes that would work in their rocky soil. Oooh, wait, that's right, and then the potato famine hit and their crops were destroyed, unlike the potatoes today that can be made to be highly disease resistant. Well, I guess science wins out again, huh? A knowledge of science will always produce higher quality, stronger, better foods. I'm not saying it's necessary to grow food, I'm saying a knowledge of science WILL produce better foods, however.

So, Just because they specialised too much the crop is useless...? are you aware of the fact that native cultures of the Americas were breeding the ancestors of these crops for countless years, forming the base of our present day agriculture?

www.nature.com...

more knowledge is always better than less, too bad that current practices are more concerned with pesticide tolerance than anything else (creating more dependency, of course). furthermore, i hope you know that shortsighted breeding goals will result in genetic impoverishment, something that can easily be diagonsed when cross-breeding with older variants results in better characteristics...

That's all you need, huh? Replicating phages is child's play? Okay, tell you what. I'm going to give you a 10 nl sample of T4 phage. Then, I will give you the jar of stuff you said is all you need. Now, you go ahead and culture it, and then I'll infect you with E. coli, the natural prey of T4 phages. Now, if you feel confident that those phages you're culturing haven't mutated at all, since it would only take one mutated phage to give you a nasty infection, you go ahead and chug that bottle of phages, k?

dunno where to start...why are you suggesting an overdose? since they're self-replicating, minimal amounts would be enough, used locally, of course, or they'd get quelched by the immune system. next issue: if they mutate, which mutations will prevail in an environment full of e.coli ? those working against bacteria or human cells? mmh?

can't you see that your point wrt mutation is a double edged sword? might as well foil development of resistant bacterial strains, no?

..
I'm not saying phages aren't useful, they really are. They just plain and simple are NOT a replacement for antibiotics. If they were, don't you think drug companies would jump on patents and research projects for what you call "cheaper and more effective" treatments? It would cost them less, and they could charge whatever they want if they were the only ones with a treatment available. Face it, you gave it the old college try, but game over.
..

i never claimed they were a cure-all, they are an additional tool, as for widespread use, the Russians, you know...

Dunno if it would cost them less, i really don't know, as i implied in one of my posts, many decisions were/are of political nature, so reason won't work.



PS: rude? because i said 'mind-controlled' ? well, k, if you want to view it that way, i don't have much to add, except that i mentioned in the same post that i don't consider myself free of such influence either...

edit: cosmetic

[edit on 17-1-2006 by Long Lance]

You proved in the following quote that you obviously do not understand viral evolution, or organismal evoltuion, thus there is no real purpose for me to continue debating you on the phage topic:

if they mutate, which mutations will prevail in an environment full of e.coli ? those working against bacteria or human cells? mmh?

No, no, no. Shame on you. That is not a sound view of evoution. Yes, it is directed by the environment to an extent, but the addition of a genetics trait does NO always, or often ever, mean the deletion of an old one. Many viruses can infect multiple species of hosts. Avian flu can infect both birds AND humans. Swine flu works the same way for pigs and humans. So, logically, just because a T4 phage mutates and is able to infect humans does not mean it's bacteriophage attributes would be hindered whatsoever. This would make it extremely deadly when given in a treatment since, as you said, only a small dose is needed to be effective as they can replicate themselves via host cells.

Ciao,
~MFP

Originally posted by bsl4doc
You proved in the following quote that you obviously do not understand viral evolution, or organismal evoltuion, thus there is no real purpose for me to continue debating you on the phage topic:

if they mutate, which mutations will prevail in an environment full of e.coli ? those working against bacteria or human cells? mmh?

No, no, no. Shame on you. That is not a sound view of evoution. Yes, it is directed by the environment to an extent, but the addition of a genetics trait does NO always, or often ever, mean the deletion of an old one. Many viruses can infect multiple species of hosts. Avian flu can infect both birds AND humans. Swine flu works the same way for pigs and humans.
..

Fine with me, phages aren't what this thread is about anyway, but don't you think that comparing the similarities of pigs and humans or birds and humans (well, that difference is admittely greater) to the relationship between bacteria and humans is a bit off base here?

btw, the interpretation of evolution in this case depends on survival value (infecting humans is of no survival value among e.coli..) and the convenient fact that viruses can't just gather genes, for reasons of transportablity. so i'd wager addition of a new gene (note that i did't say trait) would necessarily result in the deletion of another. fancy anti-mammalian genes would probably constitute an unaffordable luxury under these conditions, wouldn't they?

correct me if i'm wrong.

btw, the interpretation of evolution in this case depends on survival value (infecting humans is of no survival value among e.coli..) and the convenient fact that viruses can't just gather genes, for reasons of transportablity. so i'd wager addition of a new gene (note that i did't say trait) would necessarily result in the deletion of another. fancy anti-mammalian genes would probably constitute an unaffordable luxury under these conditions, wouldn't they?

correct me if i'm wrong.

Well, you invited me to correct you if you were wrong, so here we go....

You are seriously saying the infection of e. coli is not dependant on infecting humans? Where exactly did you learn about bacteria? The human body is the absolute perfect conditions for the survival of bacteria. The ideal conditions for standard bacterial growth are 37C (oddly, nearly exactly 98.6 F), moist, dark, and full of nutrients. Sounds like the human body to me. The only reason the infection causes humans to become ill and die is because these bacteria are surviving so WELL. They produce wastes as they divide and metabolize sugars, and that is the cause of illness. Once the person dies, the bacteria continue to live in the corpse, and eventually pass into the environment or die. Also, viruses CAN gather genes, it's called transduction. Viruses do mutate over short periods of time, this is easily proven, and it does not take the addition or subtraction of a gene to make a bacteriophage a viable human pathogen. It can be something as small as a one base deletion or point mutation. See, human somatic cells have these molecules on them called MHC-I and MHC-II (MHC is major histocompatability complex). Bacteria also have a rudimentary form of this. These proteins are what allow certain bacteria and viruses to attack certains cells in the body. When a virus or bacteria goes through a single base pair mutation, this could radically change the type of cell it is genetically geared to infect.

Happy now?

Ciao,
~MFP

Mod Edit: Fixed Quote Tag.

[edit on 17/1/2006 by Mirthful Me]

Originally posted by bsl4doc

btw, the interpretation of evolution in this case depends on survival value (infecting humans is of no survival value among e.coli..) and the convenient fact that viruses can't just gather genes, for reasons of transportablity. so i'd wager addition of a new gene (note that i did't say trait) would necessarily result in the deletion of another. fancy anti-mammalian genes would probably constitute an unaffordable luxury under these conditions, wouldn't they?

correct me if i'm wrong.

Well, you invited me to correct you if you were wrong, so here we go....

..

ooohhh kayyyye

i did not intend to change the subject, really, i was talking about the genes of the phage, which has only limited space available, in an environment full of e.coli ie. phages among e. coli. ... if you're no longer willing to discuss the subject i'll understand...

i did not intend to change the subject, really, i was talking about the genes of the phage, which has only limited space available, in an environment full of e.coli ie. phages among e. coli. ... if you're no longer willing to discuss the subject i'll understand...

You're not getting it. The genes' size in the phage has nothing to do with a mutation. Mutations, most of the time, involve a DELETION, not an ADDITION of genetics material. This deletion changes the nature of a functional protein and alters the functionality and viciousnes of the virus.

Ciao,
~MFP

Originally posted by soficrow
curiousity -

IMO, this thread is more about getting insurance coverage for existent medical technologies to cure disease than it is about immortality. But hey, if that's what interests you, go at it.

Vive la diversite.

What the intent was is to point out that there is a large group of scientists who think reasonable gain(100 yrs or a lifespan of 180) is impossible or if not impossible undesiable, because it is UNNATURAL.

This leads to the withdrawal of funds away from research that would make you young and active at 120 years old. It is sad to say the least. If this research were fully funded, the laws of exponential effect of compounding knowledge would make natural death obsolete.

picoscience.8m.com...

(the effects of compounding knowledge I wrote many, many years ago)












[edit on 1/18/2006 by bodebliss]

Oh, because of the effects of compounding knowledge, we are at or near the event horizon called: The Singularity. Because of this so called singularity(especially w/ the advent of AI), you will most likely live till 2300 than not. We as a species are at the bottom of a huge upturn that will take place in the next 30 years. It will be the diff betwix the yr 3000 BC and now if not radically more. It will be a tidal wave advance. If AI is included in this (and I think it will be) by 2200 we could be living in VY(Virtual Year) 9,000,000 AD.

Keep your eyes open!

The Singularity is Near!

Also: Gooooooooogle: The Singularity











[edit on 1/18/2006 by bodebliss]