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To: muir_redwoods
It’s only “weak” because it’s narrow. A 155mm Howitzer is weak compared to a nuclear device, but it is incredibly powerful in terms of what it is designed to do. And in this case, Duesberg, without meaning to stray into the debate over Darwin, has struck an unintentional blow against the neo-Darwinist fixation on gene mutation.p>
31 posted on 06/28/2007 2:45:56 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts; muir_redwoods
And in this case, Duesberg, without meaning to stray into the debate over Darwin, has struck an unintentional blow against the neo-Darwinist fixation on gene mutation.

No he hasn't, because the "neo-Darwinist fixation on gene mutation" you're babbling about does not exist. The modern synthesis of evolutionary biology has for many decades included far more mechanisms of genetic variation than just "gene mutation", including gene duplication, chromosome duplication, indels, transposable elements, and on and on.

Please, take the time to actually learn something about evolutionary biology before you attempt to critique it. You keep making ridiculously elementary mistakes in your various claims on these threads, borne of your almost complete ignorance of the topic you're so lamely struggling to attack.

The article does nothing to support "ID", nor support your goofy claim that "Darwinism hinders the War on Cancer". But hey, don't let reality get in the way of your wild-eyed rants...

If you actually knew anything about evolutionoary biology, beyond the twaddle that the creationist websites have been spewing as propaganda, you'd have been able to realize that a) the study of cancer development is already critically grounded in evolutionary biology, because pre-cancerous cells literally evolve into cancer via the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution (thus making your claim that "Darwinism hinders the war on cancer" not only false, but 180 degrees divorced from the true situation),and b) the article itself both reiterates what was *already* known about cancer (i.e., that it often involves chromosomal abnormalities), *and* overstates the case (because many oncogenes -- individual genes which when directly mutated in isolation are involved in many kinds of cancer -- have already been identified and studied, contradicting your source's overblown claim that cancer is "always" due to chromosomal abnormalities and not just gene mutation).

Care to try again when you actually have a clue what in the hell you're talking about?

Here, try to get the barest beginnings of an education on the topic -- the following are from Chapter 23 of Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th ed., by Alberts et al, published in 2002 (and already discuss the kinds of chromosomal abnormalities Duesberg is trying to make sound like a "new" idea):

Cancer
Cancer as a Microevolutionary Process
The Preventable Causes of Cancer
Finding the Cancer-Critical Genes
The Molecular Basis of Cancer-Cell Behavior
Cancer Treatment: Present and Future
References

Read that chapter, and you'll begin to understand that not only does "Darwinism" not "hinder" an understanding of cancer and its treatment, it is *critical* to that understanding. From the chapter's summary:

Cancer cells, by definition, proliferate in defiance of normal controls (that is, they are neoplastic) and are able to invade and colonize surrounding tissues (that is, they are malignant). By giving rise to secondary tumors, or metastases, they become difficult to eradicate surgically. Most cancers are thought to originate from a single cell that has experienced an initial mutation, but the progeny of this cell must undergo further changes, requiring numerous additional mutations, to become cancerous. This phenomenon of tumor progression, which usually takes many years, reflects the unfortunate operation of evolution by mutation and natural selection among somatic cells.

The rational treatment of cancer requires an understanding of the special properties that cancer cells acquire as they evolve, multiply, and spread. These special properties include alterations in cell signaling pathways, enabling the cells in a tumor to ignore the signals from their environment that normally keep cell proliferation under tight control. In this way, the cells are first able to proliferate abnormally in their original tissue and then to metastasize, surviving and proliferating in foreign tissues. As part of the evolutionary process of tumor progression, cancer cells also acquire an abnormal aversion to suicide, and they avoid or break free of programmed limitations to proliferation -- including replicative senescence and the normal pathways of differentiation that would otherwise hamper their ability to grow and divide.


36 posted on 06/28/2007 4:11:41 AM PDT by Ichneumon (Ignorance is curable, but the afflicted has to want to be cured.)
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