profescher

Tree: Something being an adage doesn't actually earn it any credibility.

Well you have to admit it's really good piece of wisdom.

Sure, global warming and super-bugs are fairly nasty,

That doesn't really cover it. They are man made problems and we knew it may happen and we did it anyway, the science behind Global warming has been there for decades and we knew about drug resisstance would happen when we made antibiotics. When it comes to designer babies, we know a lot is possible and we know that if you get it wrong there can be terrible side effects. We just do not have enough knowledge about the consequeces and how to avoid them.

on the whole the reduction of famine and illness has been a good thing

Yes but we haven't actually reduced famine a great deal, especially considering we have just had a ten year economic boom and now we're headed for recession it will only get worse. And illness is effected by the super bugs you mentioned, it's likely to get worse before it gets better. There are emerging infectious diseases, HIV is increasing worldwide and so on. We can do a lot, but just because we are able or have the technology, it doesn't mean we do do it and many patients cannot have life saving treatment because hospitals cannot afford it.

I can't think of any particularly drastic consequences to the invention of irrigation systems or vaccines. Of course some people still yearn for the smallpox ridden days of yor where a oxen dragging a plough without wheels was considered cutting edge, but most of us like to eat regularly.

Not really comparable to to modifying DNA. Cloning Dolly the sheep was an incredible piece of work, but there were many unviable clones who died during pregnance, resulted in still birth and sheep born deformed and unable to survive long etc. And it is becuse we don't know what harm we could cause to people, that it is unethical.

There aren't any negative effects of say, spot cream or eye surgery. So why would you be so sure that there would be negative effects of boosting our natural regenerative abilities?

Regenerative abilities are a far cry from designer babies.

Cheetah's are still pretty damn strong.

Compared to you or I. But they still have traded some strength and endurance for thier speed and it limits the size of prey they can sucessfully catch. If you were to successfully make a super strong human, how would it affect the rest of thier body. A change in body shape. Perhaps bones will need to be denser and stronger, leading to reduced flexibility, or the extra weight may put a strain on bones not equipt to deal with the job. How might growth hormone need to be affected?

We don't know all these things, thats why it's not safe and not ethical.

And that "false dichotomy" has done me proud for ten years. I don't need designer babies, i've brought mine up to be people I'm proud of.

Hmm this has gone on so long i wonder if we understand what each other is saying anymore.

To clarify, i am suggesting drugs in the rifamycin group such as rifampicin inhibit DNA synthesis by targeting DNA-dependant RNA-polymerase. Which not only has roles in making RNA but also effects DNA replication and thereofre DNA synthesis. I think you're saying Rifamycins don't inhibit DNA synthesis and DNA dependant RNA polymerases only make RNA.

So bearing that in mind. My last two articles and links and I'm done. If we can't agree on something, perhaps we should debate something else. But I would like to understand why you think i'm incorrect, cause maybe i'm missing it.

These findings indicate that a specific rifampicin-RNA polymerase interaction is responsible for blocking new DNA synthesis. It now seems plausible that RNA polymerase has some direct role in the initiation of DNA replication

Douglas Brutlag, Randy Schekman, and Arthur Kornberg

Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California 94305

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=389535

The other you will have to read, the abstract covers it.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=288679&pageindex=1#page

And as i previously said the Oxford Handbook of Medical Sciences, published by OXFORD University Press, (one of the top universities in the world) states on page 789 table 12.1 the cellular target of inhibition is DNA Synthesis and specific targets are DNA dependant RNA polymerase, the class of drug is rifamycin, example is rifampicin, active against Mycobacteria, S. aureus, Legionella, brucella and rhodococcus equi, always given in combinations and mechanisms of resistance are mutations in RNA polymerase.

What do you think?

Right I've gone away and cheked lots of stuff as i said i would. Not completly at the bottom of it as i am sure somewhere the things we are both saying marry up (though i'm starting to think it will be in a universe far far away) However i wanted to make sure i wasn't talking gobblygoosh (As my daughter says!)

Imidazoles have a wide variety of applications: Antibiotic use in the treatment of bacterial peritonitis, liver abcesses, pelvic abcesses, bacterial vaginosis, against anaerobic bacteria, in the treatment parasites, giardia lamblia, it is also used to treat infections caused by C. difficile and H. pylori. It is also used topically as spot cream. Incredibly there are still more uses, it is found in fungicides and anti-fungals, anti-protozaols and in anti-cancer drugs used to treat leukemia by interfering with DNA activities. According to the Journal of antibiotics:

Based on these observations and

considering the preferential inhibition of DNA

synthesis in vivo, we suspected that azomycin

possibly inhibits ribonucleotide reductase, the

enzyme catalyzing the step where the biosynthetic

route of deoxyribonucleotides branches

from that of ribonucleotides.

Azomycin being another imidazole. Imidazoles are a group of drugs that include antifungals and atibiotics, definitely worth a mention when giving an overview of how antibiotics work and why they are not specific to particular bacteria.

So if that's cleared up can we get back to the origonal question which still is not answered as fully as it could be?

I also checked on rifamycin (Too make sure i wasn't talking rubbish) and the following quotes with relavent links maybe useful.

From protective action of the template-primer and other data it might be suggested that the rifamycin derivatives act at an early step(s) in DNA synthesis catalyzed by reverse transcriptase. The obtained data are in agreement with the results for other derivatives of rifamycin SV described in literature

November 11, 1976.

http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/4/3/523

Rifampicin is a semi synthetic member of the rifamycins. It inhibits DNA dependent RNA polymerase, probably by interfering with the initiation of RNA synthesis, after the attachment of the polymerase but before nucleotide bond formation. The antibacterial action of rifampicin is due to the fact that it inhibits bacterial RNA synthesis without affecting RNA synthesis in the host.

http://www.microbiologyprocedure.com/bacterial-cheomotherapy/rifamycins.htm

New rifamycin derivatives have now been synthesized which are powerful inhibitors of

the RNA-dependent DNA polymerase of murine sarcoma virus (MSV) (Gurgo, Ray &

Green, I972). Especially active are the 3-oxime derivatives such as AF/o5 and AF/oI3

which also have been shown to inhibit DNA-dependent RNA polymerase by preventing

initiation of the RNA chains

http://vir.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/2/221.pdf

3-(4-Methylpiperazinyliminomethyl)rifamycin SV

Rifampin

3-(4-Methylpiperazinyliminomethyl)rifamycin SV

Rifampin

 

Brick red solid. Antibiotic that specifically inhibits DNA-dependent RNA polymerase in bacteria by forming an inactive complex. Does not affect mammalian RNA polymerase. Inhibits transcription by preventing the initial transcription complex from entering the elongation mode

http://www.merckbiosciences.co.uk/Products/ProductDisplay.asp?catno=557303&

rifamycin

<drug> Antibiotic produced by Streptomyces mediterranei that acts by inhibiting prokaryotic, but not eukaryotic DNA dependent RNA synthesis. Blocks initiation, but not elongation of transcripts.

http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?rifamycin

Or for the curious these links may be interesting.

http://www.antibioticresistance.org.uk/ARFAQs.nsf/2f87bc309e63df2d80256c8c004c707d/e424da333d67a98680256caa00393d78?OpenDocument

http://scienceaid.co.uk/biology/micro/antibiotics.html

I don't think over hormonal is a medical term. But there are many medical problems that relate teh the amounts of hormones we do or do not produce. Hypo and hyperthyroidism is one example, where too little or too much (respectively) thyroxin is produced. This tends to affect metabolic pathways and is completly unlikely to be the cause of "huge manboobs"

Probabbly lots have people have told you we are all different, some people have more sweat glands than others and produce more sweat as a result, other people seem to hardly sweat at all.

I suggest that you calculate your body mass index (As you haven't said you height and weight i can't do it for you.) if you're BMI is 25 to 29.9 or less, your not overweight.

The only way to know if your hormones are at higher than usual concentration is to have a blood test and for that you muct see your doctor, which is probabbly your best bet for the real answers.

Good luck lets us know what you find out

HIV has zoonotic origins, I'm not sure about the mosquito bite theory, but bushmeant has become a problem and in 2004 it was reported that:

Bush-meat trade breeds new HIV

07 August 2004 by Amitabh Avasthi, New York

Magazine issue 2459

THE HIV virus has jumped from primates to people on at least seven separate occasions in recent history, not twice as is commonly thought. And people in Cameroon are showing up with symptoms of HIV, but are testing negative for both the virus and its primate equivalent SIV, the virus from which HIV is thought to have evolved. That suggests that new strains of an HIV-like virus are circulating in wild animals and infecting people who eat them, sparking fears that such strains could fuel an already disastrous global HIV pandemic.

When doing research it is hard not to get very excited if your results suggest you have found a cure or treatment for one of man's many unpleasant afflictions. However, it is a far cry from there to the bedside.

An ethics committee must approve new treatments for clinical trials. These involve people not animals. There are usually three stages to determine: side effects, correct dosages, safety, if it is a new antibiotic its spectrum of activiy (How many different microrganisms it acts against.) would be measured, and it's efficacy would be compared to standard antibiotics. If it gets through all three, then there is a licensing process. The three stages of clinical trials can easily take 10 - 15 years in cancer treatments for example, and sometimes after a license has been granted a fourth clinical trail will take place to study any long term side effects. When this process concerns a treatment for a lifetime or killer disease it can take a huge amount of time to be sure someone is cured and that the disease does not redevelop.

Most of the treatments that enter stage one clinical trials don't make it to stage three and sometimes this is due to a lack of people willing to be guinea pigs (I think some of the animal rights groups should volunteer!).

And once the drug is out there, you have to sell it to hospitals (lets face it you're never going to get it in the chemist.) Unfortunately hospitals really struggle for money, so for them to buy it it has to out perform current drugs, or it has to out perform and be cheaper.

With a disease like HIV which is chronic and requires longterm medication, a drug that could cure it should save hospitals money as they won't need to provide several drugs for the lifetime of each patient and would hopefully be marketable.

So i guess the answer is: Yes giant leaps are being made and that's exciting, but once they hit clinical trials we are waiting about a decade maybe more, to see if they come out the other side and then if it isn't too expensive, we should be in luck.

This is one wierd question to answer.

Of course our bodies point to how things should be in a sense. We evolved into a species that requires sexual rather than asexulal reproduction, this is the point of a penis and vagina, this is what they have evolved to do.

And before i say anything else, let me point out that you can figure figure this way too much and end up realms away from biology and anatomy.

Looking into the animal world there is occasionaly seen homosexual anal sex, i have seen it in monkeys and has benn described to me as being to do with dominance, but i cannot vouch for accuracy on that.

Humans can be considered to have evolved to a greater extent than animals, call it cognitive and psychological development. And it would firmly put anal sex in that camp and not to do with biology or reproduction.

Anal sex does have the following risks:

1. anyone who has had an enema or a camera up the bottom (sigmoidoscopy) will know you are advised to lie on your left side to avoid the risk of perforating the bowel, that is one hazard of anal sex if you don't lie on your left side.

2. The anus is the end of your gut and as such gut bacteria like E. coli and many others are likely to be present, so after anal penetration the vagina should not be re-entered (Unless you have a good wash!) as this could cause a urinary tract infection. And a good wash after for men and women is a good plan, even good bacteria can be harmful if they get in the wrong places and proliferate.

3. Women who participate in anal sex very regularly can suffer with holding thier toilets as the muscles holding the anus closed can become loose.

A common misconception is that faeces are stored in the anus and so it's just agrim idea all together. Faeces are actually stored in the colon and move into the anus just prior to excretion, though if your consti[ated you may want to wait. (oops awful pun). As far as i am aware you are at greater risk of catching diseases like HIV during anal sex. At this point there is little more biology has to say on the matter as far as I am aware.

I would list love and empathy with the limbic system too and more cognitive functions with the cerebral cortex.

I was pleased to hear from you again and thanks for not being offended, that s the last thing i wanted to do being new here! I am in fact tickled to have people to debate with. But I do not think it was misinformation and just cannot help myself i have to go over it again.

I will hit the books later, i have to get to the bottom of this, you obvioulsy know what you're talking about, i covered this in a research piece on drug resistance a while back and i set great store in my books and cannot imagine they are wrong either. I think the answer is along the lines of the following (But i will check later!) ... To synthesize DNA the cell must have an RNA copy and then synthesize the DNA using reverse transcriptase. If the production of RNA is inhibited so must the synthesis of DNA.

I will also get back to you on imidazoles (I'm just about to go out.) Technically yes it is good to have the different groupings for clarity and anti-virals are less often grouped under that heading than the others because they are generally not considered as living organisms, however i am sure that thier inclusion is due to some similar mechanisms in anti viral drugs, but i'm out of time have to finish this later

CharonY, I did not mean to offend you and apologize if i did. However it seemed to me there are a wealth of other targets that other antibiotics use, including new targets currently being investigated and that they merited mentioning.

Concerning rifamycin i am ever so pedantic for the details, so i checked the Oxford Handbook Of Medical Sciences (2006) p789 says its target of inhibition is DNA synthesis via DNA-dependant RNA polymerase. And I said "Antibiotics work by attacking or preventing key processes" and the transcription of DNA is a key process, perhaps then we are both right as I did not suggest it worked in DNA or DNA replication machinery but that "Quinolones, imidazoles and rifamycin inhibit or damages DNA" and rifamycin certaily inhibits DNA synthesis. Correct me if I am wrong.

According to the same source Imidazoles inhibit DNA synthesis by generating reactive intermediaries that damage DNA. According to the aac apart from thier antifungal properties they are active against gram positive bacteria and according to the Oxford Handbook Of Medical Sciences they are also active against anaerobes. However different imidazoles can act slightly differently, perhaps we are each more familiar with diiferent types.

Yes i mentioned an antiviral and yes we can label them all anti-fungal, antibiotic, anti-viral. But just as often they are grouped together under the single heading of antibiotics dictionaries would confirm this. My aim was to give a broad picture of the different actions of antibiotics and to get across in not too many words that they target not sprecific bacteria, but specific components of bacteria such as cell walls, or key processes that bacteria need for life such as DNA synthesis. But as i said i did not mean to offend you.

Antibiotics work by attacking or preventing key processes: Penicillins and vancomycin act on cell walls, without which bacteria die. Macrolides, erythromycin, tetracyclines and aminoglycosides, prevent the organism synthesizing essential protiens. Sulphonamides inhibit folic acid synthesis which bacteria have to make in order to make DNA, we get it from our diets and so get few side effects from the drug. Quinolones, imidazoles and rifamycin inhibit or damages DNA. Polymixins disrupt or damage cell membranes and drugs like amantadine prevent reverse transcriptase.

All antibiotics have initially been derived from natural sources, plant rotten vegetable matter, or other bacteria that have evolved to secrete them as a survival mechanism, when competing with other bacteria. As such it is not fully understood how all of them work, just that they do. Some like the penicillin family have later been tinkered with in response to drug resistance.

I can explain this better send me a message if you need clarification or if i did not fully answer your question, like why they do not target such and such specifically, but right now i have to do dinner.

PS charonY i think you are quite incorrect on that note, i can quote my sources all of which are reliable, what are your sources so i can compare them with my own?

Some of the above replies are excellent and i will there fore not explain but tell you of an excellent text book thath covers this: Immunology by Male, Brostoff and Roitt. It should have everything you need in it.

Major histocompatability molecules have large roles in immunology and are inherited from parents, the greater difference in the two parents MHC molecules, the greater protection conferred to the offspring. I am just mentioing this as recently a report stated that MHC molecules can affect our choice of partner, isn't that interesting?

There is a saying, do not walk before you can run. over many decades scientists have learned it is often better not to interfere in nature, when we have there have often been consequences we did not like and were not prepared for.

In addition we cannot simply become a race of super people, or hand out talents and abilities or beauty, everything comes at a cost, a trade off. for example the cheetah has evolved to be super fast, but at the cost of strength. Morals, hard work a good example and lots of love, will take our children further than genetics ever will.

The problem with the placebo effect as treatment, is that for it to work, the patient can't know it's a placebo effect. So effectively they're being tricked into believing the treatment disguised as the placebo effect works. This is where it becomes unethical,

 

I would say placebo treatment is unethical, a patient needs to have total trust and confidence in thier doctor and your quote above really captures it for me, the patient has to be tricked and that is wrong, no grey area's.

May i offer a calm unbiased opinion?

Animal testing is not nice, but sometimes it is necessary, mainly in the medical arena but sometimes others.

You cannot treat a person not knowing the full effects of of the medicine, especially where it relates to children, pregnant women and vulnerable people. Nor can one compare the mental effects and physical pain an untested drug can cause a patient and thier family, with the suffering of an animal drugs have been tested on and say it is okay to do it to a human and not an animal. Very often animals do not suffer pain during drug testing. And where animals are used stringent conditions must be met before licenses are granted and said license is a legal agreement to minimise unnecessary suffering.

Did you know all animal medicine is derived from human medicine? So the testing benefits many animals as well as humans.

None of this excuses unnecessary animal testing, I personally disagree with cosmetic testing and do what i can by ensuring i purchase items not tested on animals, consumer demand is a powerful tool.

Canary's used to be used in coal mines as an early waring sign of toxic gas that could kill or even explode, it saved many miners lives and thier families, poor people who struggled to put food on the table. It cost the canary it's life, but saved the miner and in those days if the miner had died his family would usually starve to death. It was animal testing, can you say it was wrong??

I think the other replies sum it up quite well.

Your initial reaction will almost certainly be due to a toxin and in warmer european countries there are many insects that leave parts of thier body behind when they bite and then the insect dies. This can facilitate the spread of germs and occasionally larva are transferred, but without identifying the insect there is no hope of an answer there.

Other possibilities include viral infection, i see lysogenic viruses have been mentioned and can i just clarify this... Herpes infects NERVE cells not skin cells, it does this because the body will not mount an immune attack on the nervous system and the herpes virus has dormant stages, it is unlikely it is herpes but perhaps a virus with a similar modus operandi. Another possibility is an immune hypersensitivity reaction to a part of the insect left behind.

In any case science is about facts and knowledge obtained through vigorous tests, the best thing to do (As you cannot be sure that this and the immune disorder are or arenot linked.) is to wait until it flares up, then go to the doctor, request he/she takes a sample and sends it to both microbiology and biochemistry, the former will look for infectious agents and the latter may be able to determine what sort of immune molecules are present and this could give clues as to the cause. Lastly if it were a hypersensitivity reaction allergy tables should effect it such as piriton (Discuss this with the doctor before rushing off to the chemist!) Good luck and let us know if you find anything out.

Remember science does not claim to hold all the answers, it is about finding them out accurately.

Hi i'm profescher

I am a trainee biomedical scientist

I work in a hopsital Lab and everytime i try to post a message it has not worked, hope it does this time!!