Revenged

~1 in 3 people in the UK dies from cancer... so yes vertually everyone does get cancer but incidence increases with old age as you need multiple genetic defects in a cell to cause a maglignant cancerous cell... this is because the body has numerous controls on cell cycle activity... The best treatment for cancer is still surgery... Chemotherapy is quite cheap but it is often non-specific and simply targets all proliferating cells and so the toxicity is fairly high... The breakthrough chemotherapy drugs are monoclonal antibody treatments as these are partially selective for cancerous cells so the toxicity is a lot lower... but the national health service is refusing to pay for a lot of them as they are too expensive... As you can see, the difficulty with treating cancerous cells is they are often almost identical to normal cells...

The brain does control reflex activity... Whoever thought that it the brain doesn't have a control on reflexes is mistaken... There is a vitally important Golgi tendon reflex that was not mentioned... This neural pathway runs to the brain and inhibits reflexes to ensure that the tensions in tendons does not become extremely high so that the tendons would snap... With an upper motoneurone lesion, you lose this Golgi tendon reflex and it causes dramatically increased reflexes... Also, one small point... the sensory->interneurone->motoneurone story is not quite true as it only applies for the antagnoistic muscles in a reflex... The main muscle in the reflex only have a sensory->motoneurone pathway... The reason that doctors test reflexes is to see whether a patient had a lower or upper motoneurone lesion... Basically, a lower motoneurone lesion would affect the peripheral nervous system and would be shown by a weakness or loss of reflex functions in a certain part (e.g. loss of the knee jerk reflex on the left)... Whereas an upper motoneurone lesion is shown by a central nervous system damage... E.g. if you had cut the entire of your spinal cord, your brain has no control over your reflexes... If it were true that the brain had no control over reflexes you would expect no difference in reflexes... but the fact that you get dramatically increased reflexes and reversed reflexes (e.g. Babinski sign is a reversed reflexes) shows that the brain is very much in control of reflexes...

independent assortment and crossing over of DNA both increase variation...

no problem...

heroin (diacetylmorphine) is morphine with two acetyl groups attached... these acetyl groups make heroin a lot more lipid soluble, which means that heroin can pass quickly through the blood brain barrier... this is why heroin acts much more quickly than morphine and is why drug users get instant highs with the drug... In the brain, heroin (diacetylmorphine) is metabolised to morphine as the two acetyl groups are lost... and morphine works by binding to inhibitory opioid receptors in the central nervous system... I am not sure how heroin is carried in the blood...

Diamorphine (heroin) works by binding to mu opioid receptors that are found in the central nervous system... These receptors are inhibitory and work by inhibition of neurotransmitter release and hyperpolarisation of post synaptic neruones... And another point... You need to look at the binding BETWEEN heroin and the mu opioid receptor in order to work out it's function... Also absorption, metabolism, excretion are all important...etc...

heterogenity is the important point... for example if Mr X had was heterogenous and had Aa... you would either have 'A' or 'a' in a gamete cells... and so you wouldn't be able to tell traits from chromosomes of gamates... another small point joelle... height is a bad example when talking about genetics... growth rate is basically endocrinology... growth hormone is mainly under the control of GHRH and somatostatin production from the hypothalamus... It's levels changes rapidly changes throughout the day and just about everything effects it's rate of production... Other hormones such as oestrogen have very important roles as it prevents growth of bones after purberty... Hormones produce hundreds of intracellular changes to cells, e.g. production of IGF-1 by the liver in responce to GH, which have multiple effects that lead to cellular growth, which causes an increase in height over a period of ~18 years... And of course growth rate is largely effected by nutrition and multiple other factors... All in all, you shouldn't consider growth as genetically determined... There is far more to it than tall people tend to have tall children therefore must have inherited 'tall' genes...

YT damage to hair cells of the cochlea causing tinnitus is 99.9% of the time is a result of infection or listening to v loud music... i wasn't saying you were wrong... i just though your example was a bit crazy because it is not at all likely...

Some really bad diagnosis here!... 'Bits of bone in the cochlea' is an absolutely crazy suggestion... And nickt, ringing in the ear is what tinnitus is... it is a symptoms - not a diagnosis... the common causes of tinnitus are infection and hearing loss... if your specialist doesn't know what has caused it then you're unlikely to get an answer on a website... out of interest... what exactly was the 'botched mastoid operation'... did you have mastoiditis?!...

I see... Very different here... We have an option of taking one year extra to get a BSc... That is why it is a 5 or 6 year course as it depends if you want to do an intercalated BSc year...

No, they aren't... Hayfever is caused by pollen causing degranulation of histamine from mast cells... Thus you prevent the symptoms of hayfever by blockade of histamine receptors... e.g. ceterizine blocks histamine H1 receptors... Anti-inflammatory agents such as ibuprofen work by a completely different mechanism by inhibition of the enzyme COX... this would be a lot less effective with hayfever because it doesn't stop the allergic reaction... In more severe forms of allergy, anti-inflammatory agents are used... but in such a case long-acting steroids are used.,.. these are a lot more effective anti-inflammatory agents than NSAIDs... just to make it clear, i'm talking about glucocorticoids - not anabolic steroids... for example, in asthma people regularly take beclomethazone, which is an anti-inflammatory steroid to prevent inflammatation of the bronchioles... they also have salbutamol (b2 adrenoreceptor agonist) that causes bronchodilation if they have an asthma attack... in very severe allergy... i'm talking about anaphylaxis (i.e. peanut allergy)... people are given adrenaline... also injectable anti-histamines and steroids can be given - e.g. diphenhydramine / hydrocortisol...

In any case, there is no such thing as 'nautropaths' in the UK... And there is definitely no such thing as medically trained complimentary health professions here... I don't know what happens in other countries... The only thing that you can get is homeopathetic medicine, which is only a placebo... And considering I know of someone who was told by an 'alternative practioner' to stop taking his angina medication and to take some of then ineffective, unproven 'medicine' instead... he then died a week later of a heart attack... so it doesn't take einstein to realise that these people are after your money and little more...

but calcitonin would decrease calcium levels so you wouldn't have continual high calcitonin levels to inhibit GH significantly...

Naturopathy is based on six tenets or principles [1][2]: "The healing power of nature" "Identify and treat the cause" "First do no harm" "Treat the whole person" "The physician as teacher" "Prevention" This is nonsense... These people just talk to you and don't actually do anything...

Am I right in thinking that in america you have to do an undergraduate course before you can do a medical degree? So it must take ages to qualify... It isn't like that in the UK... but it is a long course - 5/6 years...

i'm was talking specifically about allergy... e.g. there is no useful function in having an acute inflammatory responce against harmless things such as pollen in hayfever...

excessive inflammatory responce can be dangerous in allergy as well e.g. anaphylaxic shock and asthma attack... and of course in allergy, e.g. in hayfever, the inflammatory process has no useful function...

you really don't need to know anything about computers...

One point that might help you... Quadracept contraction is caused by a monosynaptic reflex but the antagonistic relaxation of hamstrings is caused by a 3 neural pathway... The extra neurone is an interneurone ('relay') neurone in the CNS...

Vioxx (selective COX-2 inhibitor) was banned from use because of it's adverse reactions... I've added a link because I don't know that much about it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx The COX inhibitors that are more commonly used are more selective for COX-1 (so doesn't have the same adverse reactions as Vioxx)... The main problem with aspirin and ibuprofen is gastric ulceration, which is caused by COX inhibiting production of prostaglandin E2, which leads to increased gastric acid production... Paracetamol (centrally acting COX inhibitor but not a NSAID) is dangerous because it is metabolised to the liver to form a free radical... Normally glutathione in the liver removes the free radical but supplies of glutathione are limited and in overdose this free radical can cause potentially lethal liver and kidney failure...

I've never heard of NSAIDs for cancer but yes they do exist... but remember that cancers are caused by mutations of tumour suppressor genes and oncogenes - so i'm not entirely sure if greater expression of tumour supressor genes is necessarily helpful... The standard chemotherapy is a combination treatment e.g. bleomycin, cisplatin, etoposide, methotrexate and fluorouracil... Each treatment works by inhibition of DNA replication in some way... Bleomycin breaks phosphate bonds in the DNA backbone generating free radicals, cisplatin forms bonds between the two double strands of DNA preventing replication, etoposide is a DNA topoisomerase inhibitor, methotrexate and fluorouracil are inhibitors of folate metabolism... But the clear problem with these drugs is that they target ALL proliferating cells and so they are very toxic...

Interesting area of research... But remember monoclonal antibiodies were thought to be perfectly safe treatment for cancer... but one study using monoclonal antibodies had horrifying results... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4808090.stm

COX inhibition causes reduced thromboxane-A2 and reduce prostaglandins production both of which are involved in healing after inflammation... If you look into the effects of the products reduced by COX inhibitors then you should find out more information... NB. COX inhibitiors don't cause cancer...