Nip it, nip it, nip it!
Posted on 07/11/2008 10:54:41 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Our understanding of life is exploding. It’s unbelievable to me the potentials we are on the verge of.
Alright! Immortality is just around the corner! Better start building colonist spaceships to clear some space...
A BTT for some exciting news. This is just about the scariest virus out there and I do not except HIV.
Ebola is a serious virus but epidemics can be contained with reasonable measures of quarantine and appropriate protective gear and sanitation. Fortunately, Ebola has not invaded the homosexual community, or like HIV, we would have several million cases spread around the US in order to avoid violating the civil rights of sexual deviants.
Antibodies are formed by randomly shuffling the “highly variable” regions of the antibody DNA to make about every conceivable combination. This makes a “lock” that can fit around a very specific “key”. When in utero those antibodies circulate and any that recognize their specific “key” are destroyed because they recognized “self”. The rest are on alert looking for anything that might fit so it can trigger an immune response and massive proliferation of that particular antibody.
By isolating this “spike” that they wish to raise an immune response to, infecting a rabbit with it, then harvesting the resulting antibodies that can then be linked to medicine or may have a medicinal effect just by binding to and blocking the “spike” that the virus needs to enter the cell.
Antibody based medicines have amazing potential.
A minor point, but this sentence bothered me:
“The so-called Ebola virus glycoprotein, or ‘spike protein’ ....”
In the scientific world, “glyco” means “sugar,” and it comes from the greek word “glyco,” which means “sweet.” It’s just a bit remarkable to me that a SciAm writer and editor decided that “glycoprotein” meant “spike protein,” when it really means “sugar / protein [molecule].”
If they already know this about HIV, where is the good news?
As I interpret the article, the good news is the discovery of the spike protein on the virus and figuring out the protein’s structure, not the fact that the virus tries to cloak itself in carbs.
The only saving grace of Ebola is that it kills relatively quickly after infection. HIV is a different kind of danger because a carrier can have it for years without knowing. Can you imagine an Ebola with a year-long carrier stage before it kills 2/3 of the hosts?
Oh, thanks! I missed a step.
Indeed. It's always puzzled me why a virus would kill off it's host so quickly. It's never computed for me from a survival standpoint.
Yep. I posted on that thread about how a plant deals with disease (by cutting off food and water to the effected area and growing around it). ;)
Yea, I want back and found that. Here’s what I believe ( layman’s faith only) - for every unique life form there is a key that will kill it.
Imagine how different our culture would be if HIV killed as fast as Ebola.
Nip it, nip it, nip it!
Imagine how different our culture would be if HIV killed as fast as Ebola.
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It’d be 1978 in San Francisco everywhere ,,, HIV never would have made it from Africa==>Haiti==>USA the infected people would have died (in the 1950’s??) and we would have gay rights groups marching to get organ selling/purchasing legalized (plenty of sellers in China and India) to combat Hepatitis.
Keep in mind AIDS has killed millions while Ebola has killed less than a 1000. WE also have at least a million more cases of HIV in this country with many infected hosts continuing to spread it in largely, unfettered fashion. We have zero Ebola cases. We have spent more money prolonging the lives of HIV infected patients on a per capita patient basis than on cancer, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and Alzheimers combined fighting a disease easily prevented by altering behavior. Go figure.
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