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Science

HIV Gene Offers Potential Cancer Cure 101

Posted by Roblimo from the immune-cells-on-the-run dept.
hajmola writes "according to this article, a study was carried out by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center using a particular HIV gene to fight cancerous tumors."
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HIV Gene Offers Potential Cancer Cure More

HIV Gene Offers Potential Cancer Cure

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  • Hear hear!

    I get tired of people using phrases like 'natural' in such contexts. 'Organic' is even worse for a buding Chemistry Geek such as myself. "Organic Soybeans"?! Do you know how much I would pay to see nonorganic soybeans?

    Thats why I cannot understand it when enviromental activists tamper with geneticaly modifyed crop tests. Come on people! GE food isn't bad. Badly made GE food may be bad, but the tests are trying to find out if the modification a)has gone to plan, and b)has any unwanted side effects. Those are both Good(tm) things! Destroying GE crops just for the sake of it is no better than the luddites destroying... whatever it was the luddites destroyed. Um... you know. Early industrial thingys.

    Ok. I feel better now. Thankyou.

  • Yeah, I know I'm going to take heat for this, but it's never been proven that HIV causes AIDS. Before you flame me, at least hear me out. When Robert Gallo made the announcement in 1983 that he had "discovered" the cause of the HIV virus, he was misleading everyone. In fact, his own research was shoddy, and many other experiments were being run to look elsewhere for the cause of AIDS. (The most promising being the Drug-AIDS hypothesis.) Of course, after Mr. Gallo (he doesn't deserve to be called a doctor) made the announce, he made millions by patenting the test to look for HIV antibodies in the blood. (If the lightbulb didn't go off over your head, stop reading now.) The HIV-AIDS theory doesn't hold water for a number of reasons, but the short answer is that it violates the Koch postulates. (The Koch postulates are three rules for proving that a microbe causes a disease.) But don't take my, or the media's word on it. Investigate it yourself. I'd suggest picking up "Inventing the AIDS Virus", but Dr. Peter Duesberg. Happy researching. (If you'd like to discuss this rationally, I'd welcome it.)
  • "Major breakthrough in research" can often be translated as "Give me more money". Generating publicity for your research won't help if you are going to the traditional funding bodies for your money, since they still rely on peer review, but if you want to attract venture capital for your biotechnology company then hype certainly helps.

    This explains why you read about the "magic bullet" that will cure cancer so often. Unfortunately the speculative nature of the research is not properly communicated to the reader, and this inevitably leads to disappointmnent when the promised results are not delivered.

    Of course we all want to read about the magic bullet too because we want easy answers. The reality is rather more complicated. Cancer is not a single disease but a collection of diseases which, despite common the common characteristic of uncontrolled cellular growth have widely differing causes, as well as different incidence and survival rates. Working on finding and removing these causes may be more effective than looking for the magic bullet.
  • I think blaming journalists for poor science reporting is a bit like blaming them for personality based issue-free politics. Its only half the story. The other actors in both fields - politicians and scientists must take their share of the blame.

    Politicians need (especially in the US) to raise funds and (most places) to win elections. You do that by trying to appeal to everyone and the best way to do that is convince them you're a nicer guy than your competitor. Raising the issues confuses the voters and runs the risk of alienating them.

    Scientists have a similar problem. Science is based on doubt. Sucessful ideas are those that are least in doubt, but nothing is ever cast in stone. However the public wants to here of giant breakthroughs, the next new gizmo and what horrible poisons are likely to turn up in their food. Scientists who push their work out into the mainstream media (or let it get pulled) have to pander to this by making it seem more sensational.


  • "Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
    - Susan Ertz

    I must say this is a fascinating bit of news. Hooray for science!

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • I can send you some sequence data from its "never isolated" genes if you like. It's not a problem.
  • In the story "Our Neural Chernobyl" (I think by Bruce Sterling), this very thing is predicted (except in the story, cancer is completely cured by an altered HIV strain). That was the basis for the story, it went on to show some potential consequences of having gene-splicing technology accessable to bright young hackers (not hax0rs). I won't give it away, but it is very good read.

    If you haven't read it already, I would highly recommend the anthology "Hackers" (I forget the editors). Its a collection of such stories, dealing with technology getting into the hands of hackers (again, in the good sense) and what are some potential consequences. A wonderful collection. In the same vein, "Mirrorshades" edited by Bruce Sterling (I think it may be out of print though) is another excellent anthology of such stories.

    --Nick

  • Please explain, then, why virtually everyone infected with the HIV virus develops AIDS. Those who don't either A) died from some other cause before AIDS developed or B) were some of the lucky few whose bodies can actually stop the HIV virus.

    AIDS is not a virus. AIDS is the collection of symptoms and such that are the result of a viral infection reaching a certain point.

  • I'll let others lecture about the pancreas et. al. but suffice to say that our bodies are designed to eat high-fat, high-protein foods about as well as the average lion's body is designed to eat grain.

  • I think it's a matter of we're being 'sensitised' to breakthoughs. Our knowledge is increasing at such a rapid rate, that yes, there will be breakthoughs ever year or so, some that completely change our outlook, at least for a year or two. They are surely not going to 'cure all things' in a given area, but surely they do lead to that eventuality.

    One also has to remember that it's alot of trial and error. Who'd have guessed that eating cat hair daily decreases your risk of (name something) by 1000%?? (NOT a real example, but hey, it could, you know..)

    I understand where you're coming from, but as I said, breakthoughs like this where a whole lot bigger 50 years ago.. Remember the headline:

    "Smoking Found to cause Lung Cancer"

    ;-P
  • Socrates died after drinking a natural tea.

    Nightshade and other poisonous plants are common agricultural weeds. Fortunately farmers get rid of them one way or the other.

  • These diseases are modern and the eating habits of the western world are modern. Refined sugar is a modern substance...

    How many times does this have to be restated? Correlation does not imply causality.

    Television is modern too. Does television cause AIDS?

    I wouldn't doubt that at one time, some cavedweller claimed that the "modern" invention of the wheel was the cause of a plague (or overall moral decline, or bad weather, or something). The wheel is new; this plague is new, therefore the wheel is the cause of this plague. They were wrong!

    Some people today claim that (modern) refined sugar causes (modern) AIDS. Others claim that (modern) television causes (modern) moral decline. They might be right, they might be wrong, but they had better have more to base their arguments on than mere correlation.
  • Thats why I cannot understand it when enviromental activists tamper with geneticaly modifyed crop tests.
    Perhaps because these tests are being carried out without safety precautions? Nothing keeps pollen from GE crops in the field where they're being grown; the pollen can contaminate the genome of neighboring fields, and can even be a hazzard unto itself (the toxic effects of BT corn pollen on butterflies, for instance).

    Until we have plenty of understanding and experience - say, a century's worth or so - of the technology, GE crops should be grown under biohazard protocols.

  • If you're big on darwin's idea of how we came about (you people in certain states may not know about this, but there's this guy named Darwin, and he figured that we were evolved, not created ;), the idea of natural selection should be plenty familiar to you.

    Now, as then, nature favored the individuals that could survive best _in the environment they inhabited_. Natural selection works best when there's a competition for resources (food, shelter, breeding parters, etc)... when those elements are all in abundance, the selection process goes into low gear until a growing population forces limited resource competition again (selection may still be active... for example, in an environment when there are no physical limits to growth, the species that reproduces the fastest would have the best advantage when resources become limited, as they have superior numbers).

    Basically, what we have today is a new variety of selection fostered by a far more forgiving environment. People who are poorly educated, stay at home, and breed like rabbits have certain advantages over the ones too busy fighting in the modern day economic survival wars to produce progeny in this environment... as you surmised.

    Where it breaks down is when it comes to the time of limited resource again... when food, clothing, shelter are NOT secured (ie: political or economic upheaval). Then those who are more intelligent, or better prepared to be self sufficient in that newly changed environment will be victorious, and will pass on thier characteristics to thier 'species'.

    We may indeed become totally reliant on medical technology if we haven't already. If/When the system collapses entirely, say due to a superbug, many will die. Those who don't will have either a physical attribute (resistances), or a more ephemeral attribute (just being damned lucky) that'll be tested in the new environment... at which point all our current criteria will be worth sweet dick all.

    Weeding out people based on our _current_ criteria would probably end up hurting us in the long run. When the environment changes, we're going to need as many variants of human as can be mustered to ensure our succesful survival as a species.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Another entity that kills cancer cells. There are alot of them already. The far more important step that needs to be solved is how to deliver the entity, whether its a gene or a toxin. Just like any toxin, indiscriminate delivery to all cells yields indiscriminate killing of all cells. If we can figure out how to safely deliver a toxin to only the cancer cells 100% of the time, then there are many powerful drugs we can use, some that we don't dare use today.

    The research on using monoclonal antibodies has been attempting to address this situation for years, and if they can finally create an antibody that targets only cancer cells and their antigens (of course, differing types of cancer have different target antigens), then the available spectrum of usable drugs gets much wider.

  • i wouldn't think of flaming someone who takes a similar viewpoint. in fact, i am moved to post (for the first time) to back you up.... it is true that no study was ever conducted to *prove* that HIV=AIDS (and you can ask any doctor you want, and they will not be able to point to a study and say, "here it is"). it seems to me like this "therapy" suffers from the same problem that the supposed AIDS therapy AZT suffered from: it can't tell what cells it should go after. that's what made AZT such a useless and deadly drug (it does more harm than good). why aren't people interested in finding and eradicating *causes* of disease and such instead of merely cures? after all, most of the damage has been done by the time you are cured.... and, btw, the url to look up some of this info is http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/news.htm
  • The

    Microsoft Advocating (that we're) Really-nice Team.

    Sorry, I know that's cynical, but the above was so well-written and combined with the blurb at the end about the Gates foundation, well, it just sounded like a Microserf PR release.
  • Good point about the AZT. In fact, it was actually developed as an anti-cancer drug. It lowers your immune system so that chemotherapy can have a "better" affect. Gee... Somebody has HIV so the doc loads them up on a drug that lowers the immune system? IS ANYONE thinking?
  • Infection with HIV is unrelated to diet, although a healthy diet may help delay the actual onset of AIDS. And the SAD (Standard American Diet) is linked to increased rates of cancer and heart disease.

    But diet doesn't cause the common cold or AIDS, and it's only one factor in cancer. And your recommndation of a high-fat, high-protein diet is completely bogus - that's what leads to increased cancer risk in the first place!

    Complex carbohydrates are your friends. Go eat yer veggies.

  • I would have to disagree with Rick's closing paragraph ... Rick uses the word "we," assumedly referring to society ... if we consider survival of the fittest on a societal, rather than individual, scale, I would assert that "weeding out" any individual who returns less to society than society provides for that individual (criminals, welfare recipients, etc.), would end up benefiting us in the long run.
  • ...in debunking this nonsense

    Humans should eat high protien[sic] high fat and unrefined foods...

    Except for the 'unrefined" part, that's what Americans - and much of the rest of the Western world - eats. To their detriment. Protein and fat are certainly necessary, and they taste good to us precisely because we need them in our diet, but humans have outsmarted nature, and many of them now eat far too much of those tasty foods. The cravings nature gave us to ensure that we eat enough of them have resulted in obesity, arteries clogged with fat deposits, and overall poor health. Sure it's possible to become obese as a result of overconsumption of carbohydrates too, but overconsumption of any food will do that. Carbs are not the villain - overconsumption is. And it's often overconsumption of fats and proteins.

    Americans should demand that the soil where their crops are grown be replenished.

    Yes they should. But this has little or nothing to do with AIDS, HIV, or even nutrition.

    The common cold is caused by the same thing that causes AIDS...

    That's true in part, only because they're both caused by viruses. But they're very different viruses. HIV is a retrovirus, while the common cold can result from a number of different viruses, including but not limited to picornaviruses.

    Our pancreas has three functions, one of which everybody knows insulin production.

    I usually dismiss out of hand any post that claims "everybody knows" something. Trust me - they don't. But that's beside the point.

    Most people don't know about it's[sic] most important role, and that's the production of T-cells "Tropoblast" cells fight all infection cancer and AIDS included. If your pancreas is too busy cranking out insulin your T-cell count drops, not good.

    AIDS causes T-cells to self-destruct. I wouldn't matter if the body is producing them fast and furious, it won't help if they all self-destruct before they can do any good.

    Cancer does not typically produce an immune response, as the cancerous cells are the body's own cells, multiplying out of control. So here again, having lots of T-cells wouldn't help.

    What did Andy Warhol say? "I'll buy a huge piece of meat, cook it up for dinner, and then right before it's done, I'll break down and have what I wanted for dinner in the first place--bread and jam....all I ever really want is sugar." Andy Warhol, New York Magazine, March 31, 1975. Didn't Andy die of AIDS? Hmmmmm.

    Now that's just silly. So Andy Warhol is dead. Correlation does not imply causality. For another, look at all the people in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe who have AIDS. Did they get it from eating too much refined sugar? Not hardly. The Masai of Africa depend on cattle for most of their food, and eat a very high-protein diet (meat and milk) a few grains, and little or no refined sugar or flour. They get AIDS a lot. From a sexually-transmitted virus. NOT from their food.

  • All other threatening diseases seem to have been either cured, or controlled. Now that we might see cancer being ``cured'', it makes me wonder what the next great disease will be.

    Ok, there's still HIV. Although we don't have a cure for it, we know how we can be reasonably safe not to get it (become a geek, don't have sex - (just kidding) ;)

    Will it be a virus or bacteria ? Or do we really have to start a nuclear war to finally put an end to it all ?

    New diseases has always come up. Another one has to, once cancer is out of the picture.
  • But last I checked, Cancer isnt a Sentient form of life, so I think wiping it out instead of living in peace with it is a better idea.

    And after reading all the postings on the HIV != AIDS thread, I just thought I'd mention this in relation to cancer.

    What Causes cancer?
    Well it's been suggested it was technology, Electromagnetics from our every day devices. Others say the exagerated expectations of Chrenoble and Nagaski, etc, werent that far off after all.
    Either way, It's obvious we're all killing ourselves. Does this mean stop using technology? Dear Lord no. It just means no more nuclear war, and fewer microved pizzas.
    As one of the many Computer Users who has found a hightened sensitivity to Electormagnetics, I think It's obvious that we're using too damn much of this stuff.
    So let's all minimize our technology, Bring out those 1CM^2 15GHZ processors and we'll all be fine

    The above may seem like a rambling of random thoughts.
    I'm pretty sure it was.
    But embeded deep within the rambling is a point.
    No, deeper than that, keep looking.
    I'm almost entirely sure that it's in there
  • In the story "Our Neural Chernobyl" (I think by Bruce Sterling), this very thing is predicted (except in the story, cancer is completely cured by an altered HIV strain). That was the basis for the story, it went on to show some potential consequences of having gene-splicing technology accessable to bright young hackers (not hax0rs). I won't give it away, but it is very good read.

    Yeah, it is a good read. That story is part of Sterling's "Globalhead," a collection of short stories. highly recommended for those who like Sci-Fi.

  • Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

    The city with the dubious distinction of being having the largest number of Junkies, and apparently the highest per-capita rate of HIV infection of all cities in developed nations.

    When I went down Hastings street up towards Main the first day I came to Vancouver, there was a guy out on the sidewalk with his rig literally hanging out of his arm as he staggered about. The paramedics were waiting over by the ambulance for the guy to collapse... he was delusional and refusing medical attention (judging by the things he was trying to shout), so they just waited until he passed out before going to work. We periodically see news reports featuring kids shooting up in alleyways while the cops just look on, saying "Problem's too big, we have no power, no real support mechanism, Ottawa ignores us, what can we do?" Whereupon we all shake our heads and thank whatever Gods we hold dear that it isn't US.

    When Neil Young came here on concert tour, he made a version of "The Needle and the Damage Done" specifically for Vancouverites. =/

    We're not the only place with it, but we're definately among the worst. A shame really, as Vancouver is a beautiful city and a great place to live.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • This is definitely not to say that we shouldn't be working on a "cure," but isn't "curing" cancer a little like trying to "cure" old age? We can probably stave it off for years and decades with technological advances, and make treatments less and less painful, and increase the quality of life of people who have it, but we probably won't be able to ever eliminate it like we have with, say, polio, or smallpox.

    Isn't cancer just one of the three ultimate fates of a cell--either to die by apoptosis, die by necrosis, or to go on dividing indefinitely? It's built into our biological make-up.

  • Wow, I really walked all over that one.

    Maybe I should change my tagline to "If I quote someone, it's usually paraphrased, and BADLY. Let the reader beware." ;)

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • This is definitely not to say that we shouldn't be working on a "cure," but isn't "curing" cancer a little like trying to "cure" old age? We can probably stave it off for years and decades with technological advances, and make treatments less and less painful, and increase the quality of life of people who have it, but we probably won't be able to ever eliminate it like we have with, say, polio, or smallpox.

    Isn't cancer just one of the three ultimate fates of a cell--either to die by apoptosis, die by necrosis, or to go on dividing indefinitely? Isn't it built into our biological make-up?

  • c'mon. You are kidding right?
    Go and look at drugs and where they come from. What you will find is that probably 90+ percent of all drugs have been derived from nature. Most notably antibiotics and asprin
  • I think you do not quite understand HIV. Yes HIV does mutate and yes it does mutate quickly but the immune system has no problem seeing it. The blood of peaple that are infected with AIDS has plenty and I mean plenty of antiobodies that recognize HIV particles. The problem is that all that the antobodies do is tag the virus particle to be picked up by a macrophage which then gets infected. AIDS is so hard to fight because the cells that it goes after are the cells that are supposed to do the fighting. Some evidence exists that seems to imply that posssilbly CD8 T cells are needed to wage the war in the body. There are a few reported cases of prosstitutes in Africa that have been repeatly exposed to HIV yet have never been infected. Further more, there is a resivior of AIDs particles that lie inside cells that are not replicating, these guys completely escape immune survelence

  • Hmm. 'Scuse me if I'm missing something, but from this article (having not read the whole paper), how does this help fight cancerous cells whilst leaving healthly cells intact? Sounds like vpr just kills more or less everything in its way.

    Which would leave patients without cancer, yes, but also possibly without vital organs, brains, hearts, you know, that kind of thing.

    This might be considered a Bad Thing. From the patient's point of view. If the patient still had eyes, anyway.

    I suppose it would cut down the cost of caring for cancer patients, though, eh readers?


    --
    This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
  • I love to hear stories like this. This is what medical science should be doing instead of creating synthetic substances and chemical agents to 'heal' us. Nature has already created the most potent medicines and diseases, we just have to learn to control them.
  • I seem to remember when the AIDS epidemic first reached the US there was a very sick joke going around. It went something like:

    "They've found a cure for cancer. It's called AIDS."

    Before anyone complains about poor taste, I must remind you that I said it was a sick joke. It's also not a very funny one. I never really understood it when I first heard it, but it offended adults, and therefore was very popular at my junior high school.

    The point that I'm getting at is that nobody could have predicted that the joke, sick as it was, could possibly ever have any truth to it. But now it does. It's wierd the way life sometimes works out.
  • "So, Mr Tompkins.. do you want the GOOD news, or the BAD news?" :-)
  • I've been hearing about the opportunity represented by HIV for a long time. A number of doctors have pointed out that it's a potential key to the human immune system. The first time I heard this was in the mid 1980s.

    Second... there are at least *three* unrelated cancer cures in various stages of testing. Not treatments. Cures. I've seen photos of mice with massive tumors in "before" pictures, and no tumors in the "after" shots.

    The next four or five years will be incredibly interesting on most health fronts.
  • I love genetic engineering. Take the recent Prostate Cancer Vaccine [cnn.com] developments (worth checking out, particularly if you're a guy ;)

    Some damn cool things coming down the medical pike. Best time in history to be sick, I guess. ;)

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Not paying attention I see, trollboy.

    Take a look a little Electron Microscopy [cmsp.com] of the never-isolated virus magically captured.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • VPR doesn't detect cells, it just kills em once it gets inside 'em (as you pointed out).

    Then gene therapy techniques come into play. Retrovirii are cool little gene delivery devices (check out genetic geektalk here at the NCI Gene Therapy FAQ [nih.gov]). Basically, choose a virii strain that normally attacks the cell of choice, insert your custom gene, and stuff it into your patient. Of course, there's potential problems with the idea (if the gene is malengineered, it could lead to a different cancer for example, or attack the wrong cells)... hence the reason why it's still in the experimental stages in a lot of cases.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Cancer research is much misunderstood by the general public. The general aim is to understand how cancer occurs and then to stop it before it starts. This not only saves lives, but removes an enormous burden of morbidity from the population. New high-tech treatments for cancer are, of course, welcome but are only one part of a general cancer control strategy. Unfortunately, they receive undue publicity from the mainstream media.

    For example, consider the role of Human Papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted virus which is mentioned in the article. HPV has now been established as a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of cervical cancer. In other words, eliminate the virus and you eliminate cervical cancer, preventing about 500,000 cancers worldwide every year. HPV vaccines are currently under development and will bring enormous benefit to future generations.

    In the mean time, some other approaches are necessary in order to prevent cervical cancer, particularly in developing countries which won't have access to new expensive treatments. The Gates Foundation recently provided funding for a trial of low cost screening programs [www.iarc.fr]. This research will have a much higher impact on public health than the speculative ideas mentioned in the article.
  • Fight nature with nature.

    Viruses evolves(there are several - /several/ - thousands of different HIV viruses, they increase every day) much faster than modern medicine ever will, so it's good to use them as they are never ending resource(or plague if you like).

    The reason the body has such a hard time fighting HIV is because of the rate the viruses evolve, the immunesystem can't keep up.
    (
    Kind of like having a PC...
    )

  • Mabye I'm just being overly paranoid, but this really seems like something which shouldn't be messed with. I've heard people say that Cancer and AIDS/HIV are nature's way of dealing with overpopulation. To me, these things seem like highly uncontrolable viruses. With technology racing forward like it is today, I can't help but look at various science fiction stories about mankind destroying itself somehow, and wonder if that's what we're about to do. Especially with the year 2000 comming up soon, and all the various predictions that the world is going to end, and whatnot. I'm not a medical expert by far, but this still scares me.

    Anyone care to ease my fears?

  • More info (Score:3)

    by The CrapHead! ( 5146 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @01:34AM (#1570492) Homepage
    For a bit more technical info (although a bit old), see http://www.rochester.edu/College/McNair-Program/19 96Journal/BiologyAbstracts96.html [rochester.edu]. Vicente Planelles seems to have two patents, US05639619 [ibm.com] and US05721104 [ibm.com], for testing anti-HIV drugs using VPR, but I couldn't find any for using VPR against cancer..

  • Best time in history to be sick, I guess.

    Maybe... There's a little issue of evolution though. Natural selection means that viruses etc become more resistant to our cures - something that might give one man a longer life will in the long run give us less chance of survival against other relatives of this illness. we're gradually weakening our gene pool against things like this. AIDs would have never survived years and years ago, because all the people that got it would die out, so the AIDs virus would have disappeared. This particular cure might mean that the vpr gene resistant cells (if there aren't any now, mutations will provide one in the future) will become more prevalent and perhaps become the next big problem. (cue Twilight Zone music...)

    --

  • You're assuming this guy believes God created AIDS. That's not the belief. Check this article [foxnews.com] .

    A quote:
    NEW YORK -- In a recent survey of African Americans, more than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was caused by a man-made virus developed by the federal government to kill black people.
  • Viruses can only be used once maybe two times before the immune system gets wise to its presence. As a Liver researcher, I can say that viral vecters are not good for cancer therapy but may be useful in correcting genetic defects such as hemophilia.
    Cancer cells have many defects that allow them to increase in number in an uncontrolled manner. Trying to find a magic bullet may be impossible.

    What makes HIV particularly nasty is that it attacks the cells that are supposed to fight it as well as HIV has the ability to "hide" in dorment immune cells. It is the specific mechanism of recognition of the CD4+ cells and macrophages that make HIV a very interesting virus and what makes it so leathal.
  • Actually, a reliable 'suicide gene' is vitally important to survival. An integral part of the mammalian immune defense system against viruses is programmed cell death. Certain aspects of viral invasion of a cell can cause the cell to kill itself -- taking the virus along with it.

    Of course, in the fascinating world of viral evolution, many viruses have managed to evolve mechanisms that trick out or bypass this particular defense system, but nevertheless, it's still a pretty slick defensive mechanism.

    cheers,
  • Maybe I'm just being overly paranoid, but this really seems like something which shouldn't be messed with. I've heard people say that Cancer and AIDS/HIV are nature's way of dealing with overpopulation.

    Sure, but if you or a loved one had either disease would you refuse treatment? The same thing could be said about polio, small pox, and any other disease. The human race got to where it's at now by overcoming these obstacles...we grow by defeating that which wants to kill us.

    You take antibiotics for granted. In 10-20 years your kids will take gene therapy for granted...

    Besides, I think that the human race itself will probably be its own population control--wars, famine, etc. I hope not, but...

    james
  • For those following this thread, some of the Vpr structure is available for 3D visualization at the Protein Data Bank [rcsb.org]

    Note that the structure they have is only about half of what is already a small (96 amino acids) protein, so the 3D models are not too impressive. Pretty amazing how something so simple can be so deadly, though.

    The site has JPEG graphics that anyone can visualize, plus, if your browser supports Java, there is a simple interactive viewer applet, too.

  • This sounds a lot like what Orson Scott Card did with the descolada in the Ender series. I wonder if we will need to figure out how to go Outside of our universe in order to create a new cancer-fighting virus?
  • Get real.
    The entire genome of the HIV virus has been elucidated.
    Would you not crack up laughing if someone told you the it is just an urban legend that computers really exist????
  • Yes, people are thinking ... people who seem to know a lot more about immunology than you do ...

    One of the major causes of actual symptoms of viral disease is your own immune system... Your body attacks and kills virally infected cells, and some non-infected cells, and releases a mess of chemicals called cytokines into your system. You ever notice that many viral illnesses feel like what we call 'the flu'?

    That's because that feeling, the nausea, achy muscles, headache, fever, and fatigue are caused by your body's own response. Viral infection causes your immune system to secrete, among other things, TNF (tumor necrosis factor) and interferon. Well, guess what ... when you inject a perfectly healthy person with those two cytokines, he feels classic flu symptoms. Lesson -- it's not the virus that's making you feel like shit, it's your immune system.

    Please note that I'm not saying no viruses hurt you directly. But in many cases, it's your body that does the real damage to you -- the so-called 'bull in a china shop' response.

    This is one reason why drugs that down-regulate the immune response are given to people who have HIV ... it's not so much that HIV kills your immune system, it's that your own immune system attacks and kills itself! If you dampen the response, you slow the rate at which your body kills off your own T-cells ...

    The point is, there are actually a lot of incredibly smart people working on this problem ... and it would be helpful if people who don't appear to actually know much about the subject would try to learn some of the facts before making rash judgements.

    (/sermon)

  • Natural selection works best when there's a competition for resources (food, shelter, breeding parters, etc).

    No it doesn't. It works all the time, equally well. It tends to work fastest when there's severe shortages of resources (or when there's severe crises like hurricanes, comets striking the Earth, etc.), but fastest isn't necessarily best. K-selected species (look it up) like humans are most viable when conditions are stable. If another mass extinction occurs, humans will be ant food.

    People who are poorly educated, stay at home, and breed like rabbits have certain advantages over the ones too busy fighting in the modern day economic survival wars to produce progeny in this environment.

    That may be true, or it may not. And keep in mind that correlation does not imply causality. Even if there is a causal relationship, it might be reversed. Maybe poor education doesn't cause people to "breed like rabbits" (a notoriously r-selected species), so much as quality education causes people to "breed like pandas". Spending lots of time and money on schooling and "getting ahead" might well result in less time and money left for dating, marriage, and procreation.

    If there are "certain advantages" to humans who breed like rabbits, there are even more disadvantages. Look around you - most of the economically successful educated folk do manage to procreate. They have one or two kids instead of five or six. And they take better care of them, send them to quality schools, live in less dangerous places... Their children, though there are fewer of them, are more successful. It's a good bet that they'll have more great great grandchildren than their impoverished neighbors. Long-term survival is the key.

    Weeding out people based on our _current_ criteria would probably end up hurting us in the long run. When the environment changes, we're going to need as many variants of human as can be mustered to ensure our succesful survival as a species.

    Darn tootin'!
  • drox is right about the problem(s) with your argument. But I think there is a more fundemtntal one. For evolution by natural selection to occur, you need: (its eductation time boys and girls!)

    1) Individual variation.
    2) A genetic basis for that variation
    3) More offspring produced than can survive
    4) Non-random survival: the ability to survive and reproduce is effected by those heritable variations.

    In this case, you have no evidence that the variation you are speaking of has a genetic basis. And until you can show that it does, I have a hard time believing any of your evolutionary scenarios.
  • This sort of eugenics nonsense is definitely [sniff] way 20th Century

    As any biologist will tell you what medicine essentially does is mess up the evolution of the human species. Every premature baby/cancer victim/whatever we save from death remains in the gene pool, when otherwise they would have been removed by death. If someone, for whatever reason, would have been unable to survive without medical intervention, then they are unfit, in one way or another, and would normally be dealt with by nature. Its how evolution works (assuming you are not reading this from certain middle-American states :-) ). The most fit are those that survive to succesfully breed, the least fit die out.

    The usual big mistake you're making here is that evolution doesn't make things globally more fit, it makes things locally more fit. (In fact, folks who produce lots of kids in the presence of medical technology are very fit in an evolutionary sense.)

    In other words, don't mix up evolutionary fitness (local) with whatever you think of as excellence (which presumably applies more globally.)

    Besides, if we really want to change humans, evolution is far too slow. In a generation or two, we'll be able to directly manage our genome. Then all heck is going to break loose.
    (Maybe that's what MS means by I-Generation - uhoh.... :-)



  • Most drugs currently in use are derived from "natural" sources; most new drugs -- including ones which can fight resistant strains of bacteria and viruses which can eat the older, "natural" drugs for lunch -- are coming straight out of the lab rather than being refined from naturally-occurring molds and the like. Neither of facts should surprise anyone. It used to be easier to go looking at plants for new drugs; now that the mechanisms of disease are better understood, it's often -- but not always -- easier to create them in the lab. But once they're created, it's often more economical to use (usually bioengineered) organisms such as yeast and mold to grow them.

    So what? "Natural" vs. "artifical" is a silly distinction here; penicillium mold may be perfectly "natural," but refining penicillin from it is not -- unless you take the rational view that _it is human nature_ to make useful items from available materials.

    Honestly, I don't care where new drugs come from, as long as they're effective and safe. In my 9+ years in the medical field (8 as an Air Force medic, 1 and some months as a civilian med tech) I lost patient after patient to diseases with perfectly well understood _mechanisms_ for which we simply didn't have a cure yet. It was horrible. If we can create new drugs to cure those diseases, the source _does not matter_. What matters is the lives those drugs save.
  • I'm glad somebody reads this stuff. The debate will go on, and despite what you all think are the "facts" there is much more we don't know about AIDS and Cancer then what we do know. These diseases are modern and the eating habits of the western world are modern. Refined sugar is a modern substance, a slow poison akin to acid. White sugar, white flour, white rice, all devoid of nutrients robbed of the life-force that can power us and sustain our life-force. No drug, no pill, and no engineered, patented, and packaged remedy can replace good nutrition. What are the statisics on the people in Africa dieing from AIDS? BTW sorry about the Warhol quote it was superfluous.
  • Good post but I would like to add a few points.
    TNF-alpha is one mediator and the other major mediator is IL-1 (with regard to flus and inflamation).
    Downregulation of the immune system is a "slipery" statement. If the cd8+ T cells could recognize the HIV then they would kill the cell and the infection would be over. It seems that HIV is better recognized by the CD4+ T cells. Furthermore, HIV can remain dormant in cells for quite a while and while dormant, the immune system respnse is not triggered. This explains the data that peaple being treated with AZT and protease inhibitors show a marked reduction of viral load but later develop AIDs none the less. In order for AZT to work well, the virus must be in the replication phase. With this in mind, new studies are being done that stimulate the living crap out of the immune system (massive IL-2 injections) that cause all the resting immune cells to become activated. The early data seems to show that this method with "cocktail drugs" can reduce the viral load to undetectable levels.
  • I have to agree with your assertion that Cancer is a result of long lived organisms, but I disagree with your conclusion. I do believe that cancer, or at least some cancers are curable. Cancer plain and simple is the manifistation of genetic mutations that occur over many years. Necrosis is a outcome that is a direct result of an accute injury so it should not be looked at with regard to cancer. With that said, Cancer comes in two flavors. The first is the don't die, don't die type. Cancers involving this mechnism, evade the death signals (apoptosis) and continue to live. Leukemias are a good example. The other flavor is the grow, grow type. These cancers are due to mutations that regulate cell growth and differentiation. What is common to all cancers is that they are a result of many genetic hits. If if a cell becomes disregulated in its growth genes does not mean that you will have a cancer that will kill. Primary cancers rarely if ever kill the organism(exception to the leukemias). In order for the cancer to kill, it must learn to go elsewhere in the body and it must learn to survive in the blood. These are all controlled and all must be genetically hit to have metastasis.
  • Someone (I forget who) made a pithy quote on the topic, along the lines of:

    "Why is it that the people who most desire immortality are the people who can't find something to do on a rainy tuesday afternoon?"
    Or, if you want an even pithier quote:

    "Who wants to live forever?" - Queen
    Well, I, for one... I'd love to know that barring getting whacked by a bus or getting a cap in the ass, that I could continue on indefinately. Problem is, the world has only so much capacity for life, and if we had no natural limits we'd rapidly all starve, or freeze, or have a superbug wipe us out in some malthusian nightmare.

    I've got no doubt that such toys will become available for the uber-reche (think BillG will fear death if these come to pass? doubtful...) but if/when they're created, the general populace WILL NOT KNOW ABOUT IT... cuz if we did, it'd cause an upheaval on our world's society that'd rival that of an asteroid collision.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • vpr-method of destruction (Score:3)

    by dondelelcaro ( 81997 ) <don@donarmstrong.com> on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @01:45AM (#1570516) Homepage Journal

    As I was piqued by the article on the use of vpr as an anti cancer drug, and the fact that it maintained that vpr did not have a "known" method of killing cells, I did a little search on melvyl [cdlib.org] to educate myself, and found that there actually is some extensive research on the "method" of vpr mediated cell apostasis.

    It seems that vpr does indeed kill cells (indiscriminatly... a vesicle bound delivery mechanism is needed to deliver vpr on contact) in a manner quite different from that of p53. vpr induces caspases [1] which in turn causes the "cleavage of critical cellular substrates, including poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase and lamins, so precipitating the dramatic morphological changes of apoptosis[,]" [2] resulting in cell death. (Of course, the article was absolutely correct, p53 is a totally separate mechanism[1])

    Notably, the key with using such a drug against cancer, as with all cancer drugs, is a finely targeted delivery system. I suspect that if vpr sees clinical usage, it will either be in a vesical bound delivery system (antibody mediated vesical fusion) or a one time viral borne delivery system (such as HIV minus the ability to manufacture protein coats with the appropriate antibody mounted on the protein.)

    1: Shostak LD; Ludlow J; Fisk J; Pursell S; Rimel BJ; Nguyen D; Rosenblatt JD; Planelles V. Roles of p53 and caspases in the induction of cell cycle arrest and apoptosis by HIV-1 vpr. Experimental Cell Research, 1999 Aug 25, 251(1):156-65.

    2: Cohen GM. Caspases: the executioners of apoptosis. Biochemical Journal, 1997 Aug 15, 326 ( Pt 1):1-16.

    Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"

  • another final solution, not (Score:3)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @01:52AM (#1570517) Homepage
    Every few weeks news like this seems to pop up:
    "major breaktrhrough in research". While often the research is relevant, it usually represents an incremental improvement. When I read a headline like this, I wonder: what type of cancer; what percentage of the cases of this specific type of cancer can be cured (100% is rare); has there been any case studies yet or is this another laboratory experiment.

    To be short I'm highly sceptical.
  • I think far more likely the cause is the incubation period of HIV, being anywhere from 6 months to years without any symptoms, the entire time being contagious... and the particularly FUN way that it gets transferred makes it a bitch to contain. If it was ONLY transferred by direct blood contact (IV users were the original suffers in substantial numbers) then it would have remained some obscure rare disease that people in 3rd world countries would just simply die of.

    Sure, mutations contribute by reason of making it more difficult to generate useful therapies (to cure or vaccinate against it), but the primary means of infection remain the dominant reason for its continued existance. Kids (and some foolish adults) still figure they can fuck and forget... all too often that's proven tragically wrong. Not to mention the heroin addicts and part-time hookers who turn the odd trick to subsidize thier affliction. Living in Vancouver gives you a whole new perspective on that sort of thing. =(

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Our products are now using new revolutionary techniques of cleansing your computer from viruses and dangerous trojans.

    We insert our modified viruses into your companys system which will then seek out any enemy viruses and erase them.
    Your network will be clean in seconds and you can now vitness the shootout between ExploreZIP and Melissa live through our super VisualVirus tool availible for only $199.50.

  • Useful link. Thanks!

    I hadn't really thought that killing a cell would be terrifically difficult since we can already do it by so many non-genetic means, but with hindsight a reliable "suicide-gene" probably isn't that easy to isolate since normally it would not be terribly conducive to survival, and that.

    ...it could attack the wrong cells...

    Yes... this problem still seems to be, er, left as an exercise to the reader, alas.

    Anyway. Hooray for Science!


    --
    This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
  • I think it's more an issue of the primary means of infection being the dominant reason that the virus exists and is so prevalent right now. However, I was addressing the issue that living in our times is good because of all the medical developments we are making - in the view of the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection, we are weakingening our gene pool against viruses and the like.

    It's like spraying crops with insecticides - it's irrelevant what particular insects are attacking the crops at the time or how prevalent they are if you suddenly find that all your Super Duper UltraMega DieDieDie Insecticides stop working. Every time that happens, another insecticide gets developed that works, but it gets harder and harder to kill the little buggers.

    --

  • "it may open the door to a type of chemotherapy against which tumors cannot build a resistance" ... "may be able to find a way of engineering a vpr-like treatment that takes aim specifically at cancer cells."

    OK, so the cancer can't adapt to the vpr-like treatment, but surely it can evolve so as not to be recognised as cancer, which AIUI is the major problem with immune systems and vaccines - the goalposts keep moving.
  • you're basically looking at liquifaction of your organs, connecting tissue, bones, skin...
    ...more due to various excretions from living cells involved in the histamine reaction than rotting cell corpse juice. ;)

    Ah! I knew /. moderation was missing a few terms.

    Score this (+1 Revolting).


    --
    This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
  • One of the crucial questions in cancer research is how to recognize the cancerous tissue - on the molecular level. vpr gene might be useful only if there is a way of introducing it specifically into cancer cells. Currently, cancer therapies rely on the fact that tumor cells multiplicate much faster than any other human cell: so if you stop all of the cells multiplying, you will do more harm to the tumor than to other tissues, except for tissue with cells that multiply (that's why you loose your hair if you take chemotherapy).

    There is an interesting review article [bioscience.org] on vpr, gene therapy and such. I got a little confused as I read it: it seems that vpr helps invading non proliferating cells - there are many cancer cells which stop proliferating for a while, and therefore are of course they are not affected by traditional therapy.

    From what I read in literature it seems that Planelles is planning to use modified HIV both as a trigger of cell death and as carrier. Still, even conventional, well - researched gene therapy is just getting of to field trials - sometimes with not much luck (two months ago I think I read an article in Nature on deaths due to gene therapy - those were first clinical tests on volunteers of some novel gene therapy).

    In summary - there has been many "breakthroughs" like that one, but before we open the champagne bottles a lot of work has still to be done. Note for slashdot moderators: most of the journals get the biological stuff even worse than the computer stuff. So watch out - there are many "sensations" like that. If you look for something really new, then bookmark the Nature Science Update [nature.com] homepage. It is easy to read and very competent.

    Regards,

    January

  • Oh please. I actually work for the World Health Organization, and the reason I give no email address or homepage is because my employer does not allow me to use my work address to express private opinions. I don't like the way Bill Gates amassed his fortune either, but I can't criticize him for spending it on good causes.

    Do I lose karma for being mistaken for a Microsoft PR?
  • If I've ever seen a case of the blind leading the blind, then cancer and AIDS research ties. AIDS and cancer are caused by the same thing, poor nutrition. A diet high in refined sugar, refined flour, refined anything is an immune system killer. Humans should eat high protien high fat and unrefined foods, Americans should demand that the soil where their crops are grown be replenished. The soil our crops used to grow in had over 60 different nutrients in it, now the FDA only requires 6. The reason we as a culture haven't found the cure for the common cold is because the cure is not a pill. The common cold is caused by the same thing that causes AIDS, and cancer, a bad diet full of sweets and junkfood, white sugar, and white flour. Our pancreas has three functions, one of which everybody knows insulin production. Most people don't know about it's most important role, and that's the production of T-cells "Tropoblast" cells fight all infection cancer and AIDS included. If your pancreas is too busy cranking out insulin your T-cell count drops, not good. The third function of our pancreas is to produce digestive enzymes. Now if the pancreas is conditioned over a period of years to produce more and more insulin then it's ablity to make T-cells or provide the proper digestive juices then you're in trouble. The immune system is already weakened from sugar abuse, which goes hand-in-hand with drug and alchohol abuse. Why isn't this widely known? Because the the sugar companies would be out of business, and the drug companies can't make any money on you being a healthy person. Remember C12H22O11 sucrose is poison, the immune system killer in a candy wrapper. What did Andy Warhol say? "I'll buy a huge piece of meat, cook it up for dinner, and then right before it's done, I'll break down and have what I wanted for dinner in the first place--bread and jam....all I ever really want is sugar." Andy Warhol, New York Magazine, March 31, 1975. Didn't Andy die of AIDS? Hmmmmm.
  • Actually, I have spent quite a lot of time researching it, and the only thing my researching convinced me of was that it IS possible the HIV isn't the cause the AIDS.

    And yes, I'm quite sure that there are a number of very intelligent people working on this issue, but it's always possible that they're looking in the wrong place.

    The only judgement I've made is that I'm not sure what causes the syndrome. And because I choose to swim against the tide, I must be insulting everyone, right?

    As I said earlier, take a look at Duesburg's book. He raises some good issues.
  • I don't want to castigate the two above who are declaiming against the common concept of the progression of hiv to aids, personally I haven't done enough research to decide for myself but I certainly enjoy a good unpopular opinion myself now and again. You have to be pretty ballsy to say something that you know
    will be unpopular in a forum filled with so many smart oppinionated people...
    anyway two comments:
    to paraphrase chris rock..
    Do you really think that they are going to cure aids? where's the money in that? They're just going to make it so aids won't kill you...

    I know there are a lot of heroic people out there trying to eradicate diseases like this, but the drug companies money is very clearly on some therapy that is chemically complex and will allow you to live with aids/hiv for a more or less normal lifespan whilst paying out a good amount of money for the drugs. This is a self perpetuating process as the disease can have a much longer time to incubate and or spread. I can, with a little help from science fiction, imagine a world where we are symbiotic with the aids virus, it attacking other virii and us hosting it... brrr.


    also,
    as a warning to the hiv!=aids conspiracists, I just saw this on tv the other day (so I might be misremembering) the san francisco branch of actup (the gay actavists) split off from the national org. a few years ago and have been preaching a similar kind of theory, stating that aids was eliminated in the 80's and what is around now is merely the reaction to the hiv surpressive drugs. They post large signs and hold rallies proclaiming that "aids is over".

    The result?
    aids is on the rise amoungst gay men in sf, one of the only major cities where this is the case. (this is not a fact, something I saw on tv, there is no way for me to prove a relation between what I am saying and what is going on in the real world, please don't tell me that I am speculating, I know I'm speculating)

    food for thought certainly.
  • Heh... well, here's a place to start...

    Lets say the virii attack a whole bunch of different types of cells. It injects the gene, kills the cell... the cell necrotizes, disperses its contents into the body. If the dose is large enough, or the virus manages to reproduce inside the affected cell, you're basically looking at liquifaction of your organs, connecting tissue, bones, skin... custom engineered Ebola, and then some.

    This happens in small scale whenever you get a cold or flu, although most of the nasty fluids coming out of your body are more due to various excretions from living cells involved in the histamine reaction than rotting cell corpse juice. ;)

    (Well, maybe not rotting, as rot requires bacteria, but you know what I mean)

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • I've heard people say that Cancer and AIDS/HIV are nature's way of dealing with overpopulation.

    Such people are merely ignorant twerps trying to press their moral agenda on you. I think you can safely ignore such simplistic approaches.
    Ask one at random to prove that it's because of overpopulation that AIDS/HIV got started, and whether they wouldn't mind dropping down dead in order to obviate the overpopulation "problem" themselves. That might at least cause an interesting reaction ;)

    Don't even think about y2k problems, get a beach house and a towel :)
  • Ah...

    "Oops. It's late. Kindly disregard." ;)



    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • "Nature" has created nothing: it has no will with which to do so.
    There is NO difference between a cancer-curing compound I make at my bench and one that is part of the biochemical complement of another organism. The only reason that we look to "natural" sources is that the organic chemistry that occurs in a living organism is often an order of magnitude more complex than what we can do in the test tube.. we're just looking for anything that, in addition to the role it has evolved to fill, can also cure us from our diseases.
    It's very disingenous to speak of "nature" creating things.. there does NOT have to be a cure for cancer or AIDS or Parkinson's hidden deep in the mists of the Amazon Basin. If there's not, then there's not. We haven't been sold short by nature. However, there MAY be, among the thousands of species there, one who contains a chemical that could cure us of some of our ills.
  • Yes. AIDS is as natural as a baby's butt on a spring day. The merciless elegance of the HIV virus in the way it spreads and lies dormant and refuses to be purged is a PERFECT example of natural selection and adaptation.
    Just because it seems "mean" to you does not mean some guy with a white beard and a god complex whipped it up to punish you for sleeping around.
  • At the risk of loosing my Karma to being marked down as Flamebait....

    Every medical advance can be taken as messing with things we shouldn't be, and I don't mean from a religious standpoint.

    As any biologist will tell you what medicine essentially does is mess up the evolution of the human species. Every premature baby/cancer victim/whatever we save from death remains in the gene pool, when otherwise they would have been removed by death. If someone, for whatever reason, would have been unable to survive without medical intervention, then they are unfit, in one way or another, and would normally be dealt with by nature. Its how evolution works (assuming you are not reading this from certain middle-American states :-) ). The most fit are those that survive to succesfully breed, the least fit die out.

    There is a viewpoint that says be damned with the human rights issues and make people prove their fitness to procreate before they do it. You will see this in one or two Sci-Fi books I have read, where couples have to get permission from "Fitness-Panels" to have a baby. It makes a good deal of sense from an evolutionary standpoint, because only those "fit to breed" get to do so. Think about it, who, typically, has the most children in Western society? The answer tends to be the "lower classes", those who haven't done well in the education system, haven't got any real prospects in life and just stay at home on the dole. Successful people seldom have more than two children and many successful couples have none. Now this is a gross generalisation I know, but shows the right trend AFAIK. So what are we selecting for here? Unsuccessful people.

    I would love for somebody to point out a major flaw in my argument because from what I can see the human race is doomed. We will become totally reliant on medical technology, assuming there are enough people left bright enough to understand it, and even that assumes that we haven't blown ourselves up by then.

    I don't necessarily believe that we should actually implement such a system, however I think that it should at least be discussed unemotionally as a scientific concept.

  • This is not a problem with the research - this is an extremly annoying problem with the journalists, which leads to a huge decrease of the popularity of science. You see, in a mean journal article about computers a computer specialists will find a dozen of errors: well, let me tell you - this is a professionaly written research article compared to what you read about biology / biotech / molecular biology. This guys just don't get it. Every time I read another "sensation" I have the impression of reading a boulevard magazine.


    That's why I constantly try to push some news from Nature or Science to /. - they are competent and easy to read for everyone. Well, obviously much less interesting - they don't sound like a sensation. Even if, compared with the usual stuff, they are really a sensation.


    Regards,


    January

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