Given the frequency and ferocity of hurricanes last year the prediction for the number of alleged Global Warming induced Atlantic hurricanes this season was originally 9, then 7, then 5. What did we end up with, one or two which alternated between being tropical storms and hurricanes and did no damage to the USA except for some flooding? Seems to me this is a prime example of the futility of predicting natural phenomena and the questionable, if not downright erroneous, assignment of causative factors. It is not that the primitive mind can not link cause (Global Warming) and effect (hurricanes), but often does so where none exists.
The following is a summary of an 11 page speech about Global Warming given on the US Senate floor on September 25, 2006 by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) with some of my comments and news items added:
Quote from Newsweek magazine: “There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth.”
Quote from Time magazine: “As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.”
A New York Times headline: “Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output”
Sounds contemporary and parlous does it not? It does until one realizes these Brummagem opinions were made in 1974 & 75 by the fourth estate climate doom myrmidons and they were forecasting not global warming, but a coming ice age.
But wait, there is more:
Again a headline from the New York Times: “Geologists Think the World May be frozen Up Again” And when was this you may ask – why more than 100 years ago in 1895. The NYT has had myriad decades to practice their Chicken Little we-are-all-doomed philosophy.
A front page article in the 10/07/1912, yes again, New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor “Warns us of an encroaching ice age.”
The very same day in 1912 the Los Angles Times ran an article warning that the “Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.”
An 8/09/1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared: “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada.” The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be “wiped out” and Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated.”
On 8/10/1923 a Washington Post article declared: “Ice age coming here.”
By the 1930’s the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and changed 180 degrees to promote global warming.
Time magazine (1939): “[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…..weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”
Time magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.
In 1952 the New York Times noted that the “trump card” of global warming “has been the melting of glaciers.”
By the 1970’s the media had done another 180 degree turn to their previous we-are-all-going-to-freeze position. The news media have never been lacking in paralogism.
A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.” The article warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, “mass deaths by starvation and probably anarchy and violence would result.”
In 1975 the New York Times reported that “a major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable.” These past predictions of gloom and doom have a familiar ring do they not? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of Algore’s brand of climate alarmism.
Of course the current major media’s hysterical position on climate is back to the, we-are-all-going-to-burn-to-death syndrome. Their abrupt changes could induce whiplash for those foolish enough to follow them.
In April of this year, Time magazine devoted an issue to Global Warming alarmism titled: “Be Worried, Be Very Worried” This is the same magazine which first warned of a coming ice age in the 1920’s before switching to predicting dire consequences of Global Warming in the 1930’s before switching yet again to promoting the 1970’s coming ice age scare. Consistency has never been a hallmark of the left.
U.S. News & World Report carried a special report in their 4/10/2006 issue titled: “The Truth About Global Warming.” And no, it was not pitching the concept of Global Warming as a hoax. I read the article while waiting in a dentist’s office. Among other inanities it contained a graph connecting data labeled “Northern Hemisphere estimated average temperatures” 1000 A.D. – 1850 A.D. to “Actual recorded temperatures” 1850 -2000. What is wrong with that? First, correlating dubious estimated data with actual measurements is problematical enough, but even how correlative are measurements made 150 years ago with those of today? Second, many of the early data estimates cover the years of the Little Ice Age so those temperatures should by natural processes be lower than today. Third, the scale of the graph greatly exaggerates total temperature differences which are less than 1º C.
On 2/19/2006 CBS’s 60 Minutes produced a segment about the North Pole. This was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap.
It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water. 60 Minutes failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.
One of the experts featured by 60 Minutes was NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen. Hansen has partisan ties to the seemingly labile Al Gore and was the recipient of a $250,000 grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. When the egregious Scott Pelley was asked why he justified excluding scientists skeptical of Global Warming alarmism from his story he responded that he considers skeptics the equivalent “holocaust deniers.” There is what passes for an objective journalist in the news media.
It is interesting that Monday (9/25/2006) on the CBS evening news I watched a segment about vineyards in southern Britain being cultivating for wine production made possible by claimed man-induced ever increasing warmer weather. For people such as the “perky one” Kathy Curic, history began today (“Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes” – philosopher George Santayana). In the Medieval Warm Period (circa 1000A.D. – 1400 A.D.), British wine was produced in such quantity and quality that French wine producers wanted to impose tariffs to limit the import of British wines because they did not want the competition. Odd isn’t it that climate warming at that time can not reasonably be attributed to human folly?
I believe that in the past several years, perhaps since the 1990’s, global temperatures have increased a bit. What does this mean in the earth’s long climate trends of millennia – nothing; in the intermediate term of centuries – nothing; and in the short term of decades – not much. The contentious issue of whether this so far short warming trend is caused by man made pollution is simply not rationally solvable at this time. What is indisputably known is that the earth has gone through cycles of warming and cooling going back more than a million years as recorded in the geologic record. And whatever the causes, variable sun energy output, volcanic activity, or the Thermohaline Circulation effect it was not caused by human profligacy.
Just this week the top climate Cassandra, Al Gore (who wrote in his 1992 book Earth in the Lurch or was that Earth in the Balance? that the internal combustion engine was the greatest threat to mankind) said that cigarette smoke is a “significant contributor to Global Warming.” Also this week a report stated that it would cost $1,000,000,000,000, yes one trillion dollars, to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Yet another story said that Global Warming may drive the lemurs of Madagascar to extinction. My God, woe is us, we are all going to die before sundown! Steve Erwin turned out to be the lucky one.
The corybantic Global Warming fanatics fit the description of 1950’s & 60’s author Eric Hoffer’s “true believers” as much or more than any archetypes Hoffer actually wrote about.
The speech by Sen. Inhofe which was exhaustively researched and footnoted was not even mentioned in passing by the main stream print or electronic media. Why do suppose that is? Could it be that it does not fit the hard left, non-objective climate opinions of the New York Times, Los Angles Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC etc.? I was fortunate to have read it on the Drudge Report. For those who would like balance on the Global Warming opinions and propaganda, yes propaganda, of the news media and Hollywood elites I highly recommend reading the Inhofe speech.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
LINCOLN STORIES 4
Having just finished reading the book Herndon’s Lincoln by William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s friend for 20 years and law partner for 16 years, and a then young writer named Jesse W. Weik, I thought it time for me to weigh in with a short essay on Abraham Lincoln. Herndon’s book which was first published in 1888 and updated in 1892 (Herndon died in 1891) has a modern incarnation in 2006 being edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis.
The Herndon book is arguably, in my opinion undoubtedly, the best book on Lincoln excluding Lincoln’s presidential years. It is not only Herndon’s close association with Lincoln that makes his a stellar book, but also because Herndon got the idea to write the book within months of Lincoln’s assassination and immediately began to assemble letters and documents to and from and about Lincoln. Additionally Herndon interviewed many people who knew Lincoln before Herndon had met him as well as Herndon’s own contemporaries, in some cases traveling to places within and without the state of Illinois. Recounting of why it took decades for Herndon to write and get his book published is too long a tale to tell here.
It was Herndon, for example, who established beyond any doubt that Lincoln’s first love was a young woman named Ann Rutledge who tragically died of disease at the age of 19. Herndon knew Ann Rutledge as well as the Rutledge family and other people who knew her. It is because the Herndon book was out of print (it was never a popular seller) and forgotten for so long that the story of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge was doubted and even declared a myth (e.g., the 1979 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia called the story a myth). Herndon ‘s biography of Lincoln was criticized at the time because Herndon, even though he was an ardent admirer and greatly respected Lincoln, was determined to presented his subject in as complete and totally human light as possible - figuratively with warts and all. Herndon described Lincoln’s political ambition as, “a little engine that knew no rest” which did not sit well with Herndon’s critics. Yet it was demonstrably true. A couple of months after Lincoln lost the Illinois senatorial race to Stephen Douglas in 1858 Herndon asked Lincoln how he was doing. Lincoln replied that it reminding him of the overgrown boy who painfully stubbed his toe – it hurt too much to laugh and he was too big to cry. Not only does this reflect on Lincoln’s ambition, but it shows how long these types of expressions have been around.
There is some confusion about how many political elections Lincoln lost. I remember one historian saying Lincoln lost many elections. Lincoln himself said he was proud that he only lost one election that was put directly to the people. Lincoln was right. Here are the facts: Lincoln first ran for the state of Illinois legislature as a Whig in 1832 at the age of 23, two weeks after he was discharged from the militia in the Black Hawk War and where as he said he fought only mosquitoes. Of the eight unsuccessful candidates from his district he came third. In 1834 he ran again and was elected, receiving the second highest vote total from his district. Lincoln was reelected three more times to the legislature with the most votes of all the candidates from his district and in his third and fourth terms he was runner-up for Speaker of the legislature.
In 1846 Lincoln ran successfully for the U.S. congress again as a member of the Whig party. Even though he wanted to, he did not run for reelection in 1848 because of a somewhat vague understanding among members of the Whig party that various people would take turns. Owing to his vocal opposition to President Polk’s generally popular Mexican American War (1846-48) it is doubtful that Lincoln would have won reelection had he run in 1848.
Lincoln ran for the U.S. senate in 1854 and again in 1858 this time against incumbent senator Stephen Douglas losing both times. However until the XVII amendment to the U.S. constitutional was ratified on April 8, 1913 senators were elected by the state legislatures.
Lincoln was noted as a great story teller and there was always a point or as he said a “nub” to his stories. He used stories to gently put off suggestions from his friends he did not want to pursue; to deflect annoying questions from strangers; and to tell off his personal and political enemies when they became unbearable. The following of his stories are illustrative. I do not remember where I read, or possibly saw on television documentaries, these stories about Lincoln although I am sure there were several sources.
When Lincoln engaged Stephen Douglas in a series of seven debates for the position of U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1858 Douglas noticed that what Lincoln said when they were in the northern part of the state was not completely consistent with what Lincoln said in Southern Illinois. At the start of their next debate Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced. When it was Lincoln’s turn to speak he turned to the audience and said, “Now my opponent says I am two-faced, but I leave it to you, if I had two faces would I keep this one?” Douglas was right, but it was impossible to pursue a serious point when the crowd was convulsed with laughter. Getting the best of Lincoln was something few people managed.
A stranger asked Lincoln how many soldiers the South had in the field. Lincoln said he had it on good authority that the number was twelve hundred thousand. The man was appalled by the answer and said, “Good heavens, that many?” Lincoln responded, “Yes, after being whipped by the Confederates our generals tell me they were out numbered by three to one, and I must believe them. Now I know that we have four hundred thousand troops in the field so three times four is twelve. Don’t you see it?” After that what could one do but resolve to not ask the president any more impertinent and silly questions.
Senator Benjamin Wade (R-Ohio) who was chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War went to the White House to lobby Lincoln to remove Gen. Grant as commander of the army. Lincoln refused. Whereupon the vainglorious and overbearing Wade launching into an attack on Lincoln saying, “You have put this government on the road to Hell by your obstinacy and in fact you are only a mile away from Hell at this minute!” Lincoln quietly asked Wade a question: ‘The distance from here to the Capital building is about one mile is it not?” Wade grabbed up his hat and cane and stalked out of the White House. At least he was intelligent enough to realize he had been well and truly told off for his hubris and bad manners.
Before Lincoln issued the presidential directive called the Emaciation Proclamation on September 22, 1862 to be effective on January 1, 1863, he was pestered, not to say harassed, especially by three abolitionary members of congress: Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson of Massachusetts & Representative Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. One day Lincoln was speaking to a long time acquaintance from Illinois in the White House and as he was looking out of a window he saw the three men coming up the front door path. Lincoln sadly told his visitor that it reminded him of the boy in Sunday school reading aloud about the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. The boy stumbled badly when pronouncing their names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and as he continued reading in acute embarrassment his eyes, traveling ahead in the text, spotted their names again. “Look, look there”, he exclaimed with much agitation, “It’s those same damn three fellows again!”
Twice Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lincoln biographer, and Harvard history professor emeritus, David Herbert Donald (1920 - ) told the following story during a C-SPAN Book-TV interview: A few years ago he was getting his annual physical examination from a long time friend and world famous Harvard medical school internal medicine specialist when the doctor ask him what book he was working on. Donald replied that it was a biography of Abraham Lincoln except this time it was about Lincoln’s personal relationships.
Professor Donald explained that Aristotle described three types of friendships – enjoyable friendships; useful friendships; and close friendships. Lincoln had many enjoyable friendships as he enjoyed people’s company and being a very entertaining person they enjoyed being around him. And Lincoln certainly had many useful political friendships with the politicians in Washington D.C. and Illinois. But when it came to close, intimate friendships Lincoln had none. Professor Donald postulated that for an adult to form close friendships it was necessary for him to have close friendships as a child. Lincoln had a step-brother nearly his same age, but they had completely different personalities and therefore did not get along well. Being on the American frontier there were few other children of Lincoln’s age that he came in contact long enough to become firm friends or chums. As Donald was telling his doctor friend this he notice a tear coursing down this renowned and highly respected doctor’s cheek as he said, “I never had a chum when I was growing up.” Donald said “I didn’t know what to say, I still don’t know what to say.”
According to William Herndon or “Billy” as Lincoln called him and other lawyers in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln was adequately familiar with the law, but not exceptionally so. Rather it was in nisi prius (presenting a case before a judge and jury) where Lincoln excelled. Yet even here if he was not completely convinced of the rightness of the case he was less than overwhelming. There were more than a few cases which Lincoln refused to accept because he thought his prospective client was in the wrong. Given that his client was on firm legal and moral ground however, Lincoln was not excelled by any lawyer in the state and few if any in the country. Lincoln could and did argue points in favor of the opposing party better than his own lawyer could, yet Lincoln would give counter arguments that were more convincing so he almost always won those cases.
Abraham Lincoln’s virtues were myriad and substantial, his faults minor, yet like all mortals he did possess them. Between his heartbreaking loss of Ann Rutledge and marriage to Mary Todd he had a girl friend named Mary Owens. Like Mary Todd she tended to be a bit on the stocky side or pleasingly plump if you prefer (Ann Rutledge’s dimensions were given as 5ft. 4in. and 120 lbs., but she died still in her teens). Mary Owens later explained to William Herndon that she turned down Lincoln’s offer of marriage saying he was, “deficient in those little links which make up the chain of women’s happiness – at least it was so in my case.” There was an occasion when several men and lady friends were horseback riding and there was a stream to cross which was a bit difficult. The men who were riding a little ahead were solicitous of the ladies, but Lincoln who was accompanying Mary Owens did not look back to see how she was doing. After she caught up she upbraided him by saying, “You are a nice fellow! I suppose you did not care whether my neck was broken or not.” Mary Owens said that Lincoln laughingly replied (she supposed by way of compliment) that he knew that she was plenty smart to take care of herself. Mary Todd was born in to an upper class Kentucky family and might have had a happier life if she had been as perceptive as Mary Owens although had she not married Abraham Lincoln she would have never lived in the White House.
Historians widely agree that at most Lincoln had cumulatively one year of primary school education. This was not nothing as Lincoln was an avid student who was eager to learn, yet how could anyone with such a meager formal education write some of the greatest prose in the American language? The Gettysburg Address delivered on November 19, 1863 is world famous and is his most quoted oration, but consider also these excerpts from his 1st & 2nd presidential inaugural addresses.
At the end of his first inaugural speech he turned directly to the South and said: “In your hands my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mythic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
In his 2nd inaugural address on March 4, 1865 (his 1st was March 4, 1861) he concluded with: “Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war will speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so shall it be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who has borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is alleged to have said, “Now he belongs to the Ages.” Truly he does.
The Herndon book is arguably, in my opinion undoubtedly, the best book on Lincoln excluding Lincoln’s presidential years. It is not only Herndon’s close association with Lincoln that makes his a stellar book, but also because Herndon got the idea to write the book within months of Lincoln’s assassination and immediately began to assemble letters and documents to and from and about Lincoln. Additionally Herndon interviewed many people who knew Lincoln before Herndon had met him as well as Herndon’s own contemporaries, in some cases traveling to places within and without the state of Illinois. Recounting of why it took decades for Herndon to write and get his book published is too long a tale to tell here.
It was Herndon, for example, who established beyond any doubt that Lincoln’s first love was a young woman named Ann Rutledge who tragically died of disease at the age of 19. Herndon knew Ann Rutledge as well as the Rutledge family and other people who knew her. It is because the Herndon book was out of print (it was never a popular seller) and forgotten for so long that the story of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge was doubted and even declared a myth (e.g., the 1979 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia called the story a myth). Herndon ‘s biography of Lincoln was criticized at the time because Herndon, even though he was an ardent admirer and greatly respected Lincoln, was determined to presented his subject in as complete and totally human light as possible - figuratively with warts and all. Herndon described Lincoln’s political ambition as, “a little engine that knew no rest” which did not sit well with Herndon’s critics. Yet it was demonstrably true. A couple of months after Lincoln lost the Illinois senatorial race to Stephen Douglas in 1858 Herndon asked Lincoln how he was doing. Lincoln replied that it reminding him of the overgrown boy who painfully stubbed his toe – it hurt too much to laugh and he was too big to cry. Not only does this reflect on Lincoln’s ambition, but it shows how long these types of expressions have been around.
There is some confusion about how many political elections Lincoln lost. I remember one historian saying Lincoln lost many elections. Lincoln himself said he was proud that he only lost one election that was put directly to the people. Lincoln was right. Here are the facts: Lincoln first ran for the state of Illinois legislature as a Whig in 1832 at the age of 23, two weeks after he was discharged from the militia in the Black Hawk War and where as he said he fought only mosquitoes. Of the eight unsuccessful candidates from his district he came third. In 1834 he ran again and was elected, receiving the second highest vote total from his district. Lincoln was reelected three more times to the legislature with the most votes of all the candidates from his district and in his third and fourth terms he was runner-up for Speaker of the legislature.
In 1846 Lincoln ran successfully for the U.S. congress again as a member of the Whig party. Even though he wanted to, he did not run for reelection in 1848 because of a somewhat vague understanding among members of the Whig party that various people would take turns. Owing to his vocal opposition to President Polk’s generally popular Mexican American War (1846-48) it is doubtful that Lincoln would have won reelection had he run in 1848.
Lincoln ran for the U.S. senate in 1854 and again in 1858 this time against incumbent senator Stephen Douglas losing both times. However until the XVII amendment to the U.S. constitutional was ratified on April 8, 1913 senators were elected by the state legislatures.
Lincoln was noted as a great story teller and there was always a point or as he said a “nub” to his stories. He used stories to gently put off suggestions from his friends he did not want to pursue; to deflect annoying questions from strangers; and to tell off his personal and political enemies when they became unbearable. The following of his stories are illustrative. I do not remember where I read, or possibly saw on television documentaries, these stories about Lincoln although I am sure there were several sources.
When Lincoln engaged Stephen Douglas in a series of seven debates for the position of U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1858 Douglas noticed that what Lincoln said when they were in the northern part of the state was not completely consistent with what Lincoln said in Southern Illinois. At the start of their next debate Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced. When it was Lincoln’s turn to speak he turned to the audience and said, “Now my opponent says I am two-faced, but I leave it to you, if I had two faces would I keep this one?” Douglas was right, but it was impossible to pursue a serious point when the crowd was convulsed with laughter. Getting the best of Lincoln was something few people managed.
A stranger asked Lincoln how many soldiers the South had in the field. Lincoln said he had it on good authority that the number was twelve hundred thousand. The man was appalled by the answer and said, “Good heavens, that many?” Lincoln responded, “Yes, after being whipped by the Confederates our generals tell me they were out numbered by three to one, and I must believe them. Now I know that we have four hundred thousand troops in the field so three times four is twelve. Don’t you see it?” After that what could one do but resolve to not ask the president any more impertinent and silly questions.
Senator Benjamin Wade (R-Ohio) who was chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War went to the White House to lobby Lincoln to remove Gen. Grant as commander of the army. Lincoln refused. Whereupon the vainglorious and overbearing Wade launching into an attack on Lincoln saying, “You have put this government on the road to Hell by your obstinacy and in fact you are only a mile away from Hell at this minute!” Lincoln quietly asked Wade a question: ‘The distance from here to the Capital building is about one mile is it not?” Wade grabbed up his hat and cane and stalked out of the White House. At least he was intelligent enough to realize he had been well and truly told off for his hubris and bad manners.
Before Lincoln issued the presidential directive called the Emaciation Proclamation on September 22, 1862 to be effective on January 1, 1863, he was pestered, not to say harassed, especially by three abolitionary members of congress: Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson of Massachusetts & Representative Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. One day Lincoln was speaking to a long time acquaintance from Illinois in the White House and as he was looking out of a window he saw the three men coming up the front door path. Lincoln sadly told his visitor that it reminded him of the boy in Sunday school reading aloud about the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. The boy stumbled badly when pronouncing their names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and as he continued reading in acute embarrassment his eyes, traveling ahead in the text, spotted their names again. “Look, look there”, he exclaimed with much agitation, “It’s those same damn three fellows again!”
Twice Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lincoln biographer, and Harvard history professor emeritus, David Herbert Donald (1920 - ) told the following story during a C-SPAN Book-TV interview: A few years ago he was getting his annual physical examination from a long time friend and world famous Harvard medical school internal medicine specialist when the doctor ask him what book he was working on. Donald replied that it was a biography of Abraham Lincoln except this time it was about Lincoln’s personal relationships.
Professor Donald explained that Aristotle described three types of friendships – enjoyable friendships; useful friendships; and close friendships. Lincoln had many enjoyable friendships as he enjoyed people’s company and being a very entertaining person they enjoyed being around him. And Lincoln certainly had many useful political friendships with the politicians in Washington D.C. and Illinois. But when it came to close, intimate friendships Lincoln had none. Professor Donald postulated that for an adult to form close friendships it was necessary for him to have close friendships as a child. Lincoln had a step-brother nearly his same age, but they had completely different personalities and therefore did not get along well. Being on the American frontier there were few other children of Lincoln’s age that he came in contact long enough to become firm friends or chums. As Donald was telling his doctor friend this he notice a tear coursing down this renowned and highly respected doctor’s cheek as he said, “I never had a chum when I was growing up.” Donald said “I didn’t know what to say, I still don’t know what to say.”
According to William Herndon or “Billy” as Lincoln called him and other lawyers in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln was adequately familiar with the law, but not exceptionally so. Rather it was in nisi prius (presenting a case before a judge and jury) where Lincoln excelled. Yet even here if he was not completely convinced of the rightness of the case he was less than overwhelming. There were more than a few cases which Lincoln refused to accept because he thought his prospective client was in the wrong. Given that his client was on firm legal and moral ground however, Lincoln was not excelled by any lawyer in the state and few if any in the country. Lincoln could and did argue points in favor of the opposing party better than his own lawyer could, yet Lincoln would give counter arguments that were more convincing so he almost always won those cases.
Abraham Lincoln’s virtues were myriad and substantial, his faults minor, yet like all mortals he did possess them. Between his heartbreaking loss of Ann Rutledge and marriage to Mary Todd he had a girl friend named Mary Owens. Like Mary Todd she tended to be a bit on the stocky side or pleasingly plump if you prefer (Ann Rutledge’s dimensions were given as 5ft. 4in. and 120 lbs., but she died still in her teens). Mary Owens later explained to William Herndon that she turned down Lincoln’s offer of marriage saying he was, “deficient in those little links which make up the chain of women’s happiness – at least it was so in my case.” There was an occasion when several men and lady friends were horseback riding and there was a stream to cross which was a bit difficult. The men who were riding a little ahead were solicitous of the ladies, but Lincoln who was accompanying Mary Owens did not look back to see how she was doing. After she caught up she upbraided him by saying, “You are a nice fellow! I suppose you did not care whether my neck was broken or not.” Mary Owens said that Lincoln laughingly replied (she supposed by way of compliment) that he knew that she was plenty smart to take care of herself. Mary Todd was born in to an upper class Kentucky family and might have had a happier life if she had been as perceptive as Mary Owens although had she not married Abraham Lincoln she would have never lived in the White House.
Historians widely agree that at most Lincoln had cumulatively one year of primary school education. This was not nothing as Lincoln was an avid student who was eager to learn, yet how could anyone with such a meager formal education write some of the greatest prose in the American language? The Gettysburg Address delivered on November 19, 1863 is world famous and is his most quoted oration, but consider also these excerpts from his 1st & 2nd presidential inaugural addresses.
At the end of his first inaugural speech he turned directly to the South and said: “In your hands my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mythic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
In his 2nd inaugural address on March 4, 1865 (his 1st was March 4, 1861) he concluded with: “Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war will speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so shall it be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who has borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is alleged to have said, “Now he belongs to the Ages.” Truly he does.
Friday, February 2, 2007
HORMESIS AND OTHER MATTERS 3
Hormesis – what is it? First I will tell you what it is not. It has nothing to do with homeopathy which is a method of treating disease by giving highly diluted doses of drugs to patients such that the same drugs given to healthy people in much more concentrated form would cause the same symptoms as the disease. Sometimes these doses given to patients are less than one part in one billion. The idea is to theoretically simulate the symptoms of a disease rather than attacking the cause. Yet with such a diluted dose the patient would in effect be given a placebo. Not only is the idea nuts, but the method makes even less sense.
Hormesis also is not scientology which is a screwball philosophy/religion/cult based on the inane rants of a pulp and science fiction writer named L. (Lafayette) Ron Hubbard (1911-1976). Hubbard attended George Washington University where he received poor grades, was on academic probation, and dropped out after two years. He took a course called Atomic and Molecular Physics. Based on this he later claimed he was a nuclear physicist. He received an F in the course. His military record in WWII and domestic life is a sorry story which, if interested, I invite you to consult on the internet. Scientology does affect people though – it can cause a person to dementedly jump up and down on a couch in front of television cameras and to undertake a mission impossible by dispensing medical advice to women even if one does not know any more about medicine than a frog.
In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science Tom Bethell explains that hormesis is the theory that whereas large amounts of certain substances are toxic and even deadly, small amounts of these same substances are not only not harmful, but actually beneficial. This is not only true, but reasonable and demonstrable when you think about it. Consider alcohol. When taken in large amounts over years you would likely need to go shopping for a new liver, yet the public has been inundated in the past few years with reports from the news media that alcohol taken in small amounts daily, say a 12 oz. bottle of beer; a mixed drink; or a 5 or 6 oz. glass of wine will keep a person healthy, if not happy and wise.
Hormesis contradicts the widely held assumption in public health that large doses of toxic substances continue to be toxic in smaller and smaller doses - this is called the linear, no threshold theory. When plotted with “harm” and “dose” on the ordinate and abscissa, respectively, a straight line intersects the origin. Another theory is called the linear, threshold theory. In this case the straight line intersects the “dose” axis short of the origin and plots as a horizon line along the “dose” axis back to the origin. A third theory is hormesis which plots as a curved line again intersecting the “dose” axis short of the origin, but in this case goes below the “harm” line into what is labeled the “benefit” area, then plots back to the origin at the zero dose amount.
So frequently has hormesis been observed that, quod erat demonstrandum, it is not difficult to find substances that are beneficial at low doses. Consider vitamin and mineral supplements. The ingredients include boron, chromium, copper, iodine, magnesium, molybdenum, nickel, phosphorous, potassium, selenium, vanadium, and zinc – all toxic at high doses. The widespread use of multi-vitamins shows that people do not subscribe to the linear, no threshold theory when it comes to ingested substances. How about externally applied substances and processes? Is long time exposure to x-rays and radiation bad and short time exposure still detriment, only less so? Many people would say so, but what is the evidence?
The unfortunate people at the center of the nuclear bomb sites in Hiroshima and Nagasaki naturally were incinerated. In fact the blast was so powerful and bright that permanent shadows of objects were cast on concrete structures which were not completely destroyed. The people further away from the blast later died in great numbers of various cancers. As expected as the distance from the center of the blast increased fewer and fewer people died from cancer. However, then an unexpected phenomenon happened. At increasing distances from the central blast site, where people still received some radiation, but only small amounts, the later incidence of cancer was less that for people further away who had not been subjected to any radiation. Interesting to say the least, is it not?
Anti-nuclear zealots assert, ipse dixit, or seemingly deliberately misstate the dangers of long half-life radioactive materials from nuclear power plants citing that these sites will be rendered uninhabitable for thousands of years. This is completely backwards. It is the radioactive materials with short half-lives that are dangerous. Author Tom Bethell quotes a former acting Secretary of Energy posing the question: “Would you rather sit on a box of firecrackers if half will go off in the next week or a box in which half will go off in the next 24,000 years?”
Plutonium is deadly because it can be used to make atomic bombs. It is not injurious to handle because its half-life is 24,000 years. Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh once offered to eat some plutonium if Ralph Nader would eat a like amount of caffeine. Nader refused. Plutonium is not to be confused with Polonium – 210 which was discovered in 1898 by double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her husband, single Nobel Prize winner, Pierre Curie. Polonium - 210 has a half-life of 138 days and is so rare that only about 100 grams/yr. are made, mostly as a byproduct of nuclear reactions in power plants. It is thought to be the substance that was used to poison ex-KGB and vehement critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, in London recently. Milligrams or even micrograms of the stuff, if ingested, would be enough to fatally destroy internal organs.
A congressional resolution declared in 1970 that,”The conquest of cancer is a national crusade to be accomplished by 1976.” In 1971 when the National Cancer Act became law, 330,000 American died of cancer. In 2004 about 560,000 Americans died of cancer. Even when adjusted for an aging population, the percentage of Americans dying of cancer is about the same as in 1970 and in 1950 as well. In contrast age-adjusted deaths for heart disease have declined by 59% and by 69% for stroke.
A decline in lung cancer in recent years is attributable to a decline in cigarette smoking for men. Lung cancer for women has increase as a proportion of total lung cancers for both men and women. When the stigma of cigarette smoking for women abated many years ago little did they realize what a pyrrhic victory it would become - another unintended consequence of an otherwise admirable equality goal. Cures for some types of leukemia (the four main types are acute lymphocytic leukemia [most common for children], acute myclogenous leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and chronic myclogenous leukemia) and testicular cancer have met with striking success. Improvement in five year cancer survival rates are a function of better surveillance and earlier diagnosis, when surgery and chemotherapy have a better chance of success. Survival gains for the most common forms of cancer are measured in additional months of life, not years. Compared to cure rates of infectious diseases, especially through most of the 20th century, the record of cancer has been woefully lagging.
In part, the answer to the slow progress in curing and successfully treating cancer may be linked to its cause. What does cause cancer? In the 1920’s researchers bombarded fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster (the black-bodied dew-lover) with x-rays, resulting in mutant flies. Humans exposed to large doses of x-rays proved to be at high risk for skin cancer and leukemia. Therefore it was clearly shown that x-rays produced both mutations and cancers.
In the 1960’s researchers at the National Institutes of Health used fast growing bacteria to detect the mutagenic properties of various substances. Some carcinogens proved to be mutagenic, advancing the gene-mutation theory of cancer. In the 1970’s Dr. Robert Weinberg at an MIT cancer research lab concluded that carcinogens act by damaging DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), thereby creating mutations in genes of the targeted cells. Radiation is an example of a carcinogen which is a mutagen, others are not. Tar found in cigarettes and asbestos are carcinogens, but are not mutagenic – that is they do not affect DNA.
Viruses were once thought to play an important role in causing cancer, however since only a couple types of cancer are definitely connected to viruses it is now thought that viruses play a minor role in cancer. In 1970 two researchers at the NIH, Robert Heubner and George Todaro put forth the “oncogene hypothesis” which attributed all cancer to the activation of certain genes that are intrinsic to cells – not transported there by viruses. These hypothetical cancer genes, called proto-oncogenes, are activated by being mutated.
The oncogene theory at the outset posited that a single gene mutation was enough to turn a normal cell into a cancer cell. Although a few types of cancer are now considered to be caused by a single gene mutation these are the exceptions. It was always unlikely that a single gene mutation was a major factor because mutations occur at a predictable rate in the body and as the number of cells in the body number in the tens, if not hundreds, of trillions, we would all have cancer if a single hit was sufficient to transform a cell in many cancers. In time it was proposed that two genes, then six or seven genes would have to mutate in the same cell during its lifetime to make it cancerous. That was just guesswork based on gene mutation theory. Researchers have never been able to show that any gene, whether or not mutated, except in a few isolated cases, could transform a normal cell into a cancer cell, nor could it start a tumor in any animal. Further, they have never been able to show that any combination of genes taken from a cancer cell can transform normal cells, whether tested in vitro or in the lab. The theory has not been confirmed by any functional test. These mutated genes can be transported into test cells, but when these genes are integrated into the cell’s DNA the recipient cells do not turn into cancer cells, and if injected into experimental animals, they do not cause tumors. Genetically engineered mice have mutated oncogenes in every cell of their bodies so one would think they would die immediately of cancer. In fact offspring grow up and live long enough to pass on their supposedly deadly genes to the next generation.
Cells divide in the course of life, sometimes frequently as in the gut or skin, and sometimes infrequently, as in bone or muscle. This cell division is called mitosis (from Greek mitos, meaning thread). The chromosomes (from Greek chrōma color plus sōma body) double up, and then separate, and after mitosis a full compliment of chromosomes ends up in both of the resultant cells. Normal cells in the body divide only a certain number of times called the Hayflick limit which is roughly 50, before expiring. It is thought to be a cause or concomitant of aging.
Normal mouse cells have 40 chromosomes, humans have 46 – 23 from each parent. Such cells are called diploid because they have two of each chromosome. Genes are segments of DNA strung along these chromosomes. The largest chromosomes incorporate several thousand genes each. It may not be flattering to the male ego, but by far the “Y” chromosome, which defines a male, is the smallest of all the human chromosomes.
Sometimes there is an error in the anaphase or telophase stages of cell division such that the chromosomes do not divide properly, but end up unequally in the daughter cells. One cell could come up a chromosome short while another cell would have an extra one. Such pathological cells will usually die and then there would not be a problem. But sometimes the error persists, more likely in the cell with an extra chromosome. The cell just keeps on dividing, ignoring the Hayflick limit with its control mechanisms. This is dangerous because a tumor forms in that part of the body and that is cancer.
This abnormality of the number of chromosomes in the cells is called aneuploidy. Some human cancer cells may have as many as 80 chromosomes instead of the normal 46 which could give them double the right number of genes. It is not just that a cell has two or three genes that malfunction. It is far worst than that. And the more aneuploid they become, the more likely they are to metastasize.
A leading cancer researcher, Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins, a few years ago accepted that “at least 90% of human cancer cells are aneuploid.” More recently his laboratory reported aneuploidy “is consistently shown in virtually all cancers.” More and more researches accept that cancer cells are aneuploid. Some insist that this is a consequence, not a cause of cancer, but others are beginning to say that perhaps both gene mutation and aneuploidy play a role in cancer. Christoph Lengauer, a researcher in the famed Vogelstein/Kinzler lab at Johns Hopkins University, said that “with our experiments, we found that aneuploidy is a very early event in tumorigenesis.”
What is the answer then? Does aneuploidy have no connection with cancer; is it the main cause of cancer; or is it a cause in addition to gene mutation? At this point the last possibility seems to be the most likely.
Hormesis also is not scientology which is a screwball philosophy/religion/cult based on the inane rants of a pulp and science fiction writer named L. (Lafayette) Ron Hubbard (1911-1976). Hubbard attended George Washington University where he received poor grades, was on academic probation, and dropped out after two years. He took a course called Atomic and Molecular Physics. Based on this he later claimed he was a nuclear physicist. He received an F in the course. His military record in WWII and domestic life is a sorry story which, if interested, I invite you to consult on the internet. Scientology does affect people though – it can cause a person to dementedly jump up and down on a couch in front of television cameras and to undertake a mission impossible by dispensing medical advice to women even if one does not know any more about medicine than a frog.
In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science Tom Bethell explains that hormesis is the theory that whereas large amounts of certain substances are toxic and even deadly, small amounts of these same substances are not only not harmful, but actually beneficial. This is not only true, but reasonable and demonstrable when you think about it. Consider alcohol. When taken in large amounts over years you would likely need to go shopping for a new liver, yet the public has been inundated in the past few years with reports from the news media that alcohol taken in small amounts daily, say a 12 oz. bottle of beer; a mixed drink; or a 5 or 6 oz. glass of wine will keep a person healthy, if not happy and wise.
Hormesis contradicts the widely held assumption in public health that large doses of toxic substances continue to be toxic in smaller and smaller doses - this is called the linear, no threshold theory. When plotted with “harm” and “dose” on the ordinate and abscissa, respectively, a straight line intersects the origin. Another theory is called the linear, threshold theory. In this case the straight line intersects the “dose” axis short of the origin and plots as a horizon line along the “dose” axis back to the origin. A third theory is hormesis which plots as a curved line again intersecting the “dose” axis short of the origin, but in this case goes below the “harm” line into what is labeled the “benefit” area, then plots back to the origin at the zero dose amount.
So frequently has hormesis been observed that, quod erat demonstrandum, it is not difficult to find substances that are beneficial at low doses. Consider vitamin and mineral supplements. The ingredients include boron, chromium, copper, iodine, magnesium, molybdenum, nickel, phosphorous, potassium, selenium, vanadium, and zinc – all toxic at high doses. The widespread use of multi-vitamins shows that people do not subscribe to the linear, no threshold theory when it comes to ingested substances. How about externally applied substances and processes? Is long time exposure to x-rays and radiation bad and short time exposure still detriment, only less so? Many people would say so, but what is the evidence?
The unfortunate people at the center of the nuclear bomb sites in Hiroshima and Nagasaki naturally were incinerated. In fact the blast was so powerful and bright that permanent shadows of objects were cast on concrete structures which were not completely destroyed. The people further away from the blast later died in great numbers of various cancers. As expected as the distance from the center of the blast increased fewer and fewer people died from cancer. However, then an unexpected phenomenon happened. At increasing distances from the central blast site, where people still received some radiation, but only small amounts, the later incidence of cancer was less that for people further away who had not been subjected to any radiation. Interesting to say the least, is it not?
Anti-nuclear zealots assert, ipse dixit, or seemingly deliberately misstate the dangers of long half-life radioactive materials from nuclear power plants citing that these sites will be rendered uninhabitable for thousands of years. This is completely backwards. It is the radioactive materials with short half-lives that are dangerous. Author Tom Bethell quotes a former acting Secretary of Energy posing the question: “Would you rather sit on a box of firecrackers if half will go off in the next week or a box in which half will go off in the next 24,000 years?”
Plutonium is deadly because it can be used to make atomic bombs. It is not injurious to handle because its half-life is 24,000 years. Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh once offered to eat some plutonium if Ralph Nader would eat a like amount of caffeine. Nader refused. Plutonium is not to be confused with Polonium – 210 which was discovered in 1898 by double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her husband, single Nobel Prize winner, Pierre Curie. Polonium - 210 has a half-life of 138 days and is so rare that only about 100 grams/yr. are made, mostly as a byproduct of nuclear reactions in power plants. It is thought to be the substance that was used to poison ex-KGB and vehement critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, in London recently. Milligrams or even micrograms of the stuff, if ingested, would be enough to fatally destroy internal organs.
A congressional resolution declared in 1970 that,”The conquest of cancer is a national crusade to be accomplished by 1976.” In 1971 when the National Cancer Act became law, 330,000 American died of cancer. In 2004 about 560,000 Americans died of cancer. Even when adjusted for an aging population, the percentage of Americans dying of cancer is about the same as in 1970 and in 1950 as well. In contrast age-adjusted deaths for heart disease have declined by 59% and by 69% for stroke.
A decline in lung cancer in recent years is attributable to a decline in cigarette smoking for men. Lung cancer for women has increase as a proportion of total lung cancers for both men and women. When the stigma of cigarette smoking for women abated many years ago little did they realize what a pyrrhic victory it would become - another unintended consequence of an otherwise admirable equality goal. Cures for some types of leukemia (the four main types are acute lymphocytic leukemia [most common for children], acute myclogenous leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and chronic myclogenous leukemia) and testicular cancer have met with striking success. Improvement in five year cancer survival rates are a function of better surveillance and earlier diagnosis, when surgery and chemotherapy have a better chance of success. Survival gains for the most common forms of cancer are measured in additional months of life, not years. Compared to cure rates of infectious diseases, especially through most of the 20th century, the record of cancer has been woefully lagging.
In part, the answer to the slow progress in curing and successfully treating cancer may be linked to its cause. What does cause cancer? In the 1920’s researchers bombarded fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster (the black-bodied dew-lover) with x-rays, resulting in mutant flies. Humans exposed to large doses of x-rays proved to be at high risk for skin cancer and leukemia. Therefore it was clearly shown that x-rays produced both mutations and cancers.
In the 1960’s researchers at the National Institutes of Health used fast growing bacteria to detect the mutagenic properties of various substances. Some carcinogens proved to be mutagenic, advancing the gene-mutation theory of cancer. In the 1970’s Dr. Robert Weinberg at an MIT cancer research lab concluded that carcinogens act by damaging DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), thereby creating mutations in genes of the targeted cells. Radiation is an example of a carcinogen which is a mutagen, others are not. Tar found in cigarettes and asbestos are carcinogens, but are not mutagenic – that is they do not affect DNA.
Viruses were once thought to play an important role in causing cancer, however since only a couple types of cancer are definitely connected to viruses it is now thought that viruses play a minor role in cancer. In 1970 two researchers at the NIH, Robert Heubner and George Todaro put forth the “oncogene hypothesis” which attributed all cancer to the activation of certain genes that are intrinsic to cells – not transported there by viruses. These hypothetical cancer genes, called proto-oncogenes, are activated by being mutated.
The oncogene theory at the outset posited that a single gene mutation was enough to turn a normal cell into a cancer cell. Although a few types of cancer are now considered to be caused by a single gene mutation these are the exceptions. It was always unlikely that a single gene mutation was a major factor because mutations occur at a predictable rate in the body and as the number of cells in the body number in the tens, if not hundreds, of trillions, we would all have cancer if a single hit was sufficient to transform a cell in many cancers. In time it was proposed that two genes, then six or seven genes would have to mutate in the same cell during its lifetime to make it cancerous. That was just guesswork based on gene mutation theory. Researchers have never been able to show that any gene, whether or not mutated, except in a few isolated cases, could transform a normal cell into a cancer cell, nor could it start a tumor in any animal. Further, they have never been able to show that any combination of genes taken from a cancer cell can transform normal cells, whether tested in vitro or in the lab. The theory has not been confirmed by any functional test. These mutated genes can be transported into test cells, but when these genes are integrated into the cell’s DNA the recipient cells do not turn into cancer cells, and if injected into experimental animals, they do not cause tumors. Genetically engineered mice have mutated oncogenes in every cell of their bodies so one would think they would die immediately of cancer. In fact offspring grow up and live long enough to pass on their supposedly deadly genes to the next generation.
Cells divide in the course of life, sometimes frequently as in the gut or skin, and sometimes infrequently, as in bone or muscle. This cell division is called mitosis (from Greek mitos, meaning thread). The chromosomes (from Greek chrōma color plus sōma body) double up, and then separate, and after mitosis a full compliment of chromosomes ends up in both of the resultant cells. Normal cells in the body divide only a certain number of times called the Hayflick limit which is roughly 50, before expiring. It is thought to be a cause or concomitant of aging.
Normal mouse cells have 40 chromosomes, humans have 46 – 23 from each parent. Such cells are called diploid because they have two of each chromosome. Genes are segments of DNA strung along these chromosomes. The largest chromosomes incorporate several thousand genes each. It may not be flattering to the male ego, but by far the “Y” chromosome, which defines a male, is the smallest of all the human chromosomes.
Sometimes there is an error in the anaphase or telophase stages of cell division such that the chromosomes do not divide properly, but end up unequally in the daughter cells. One cell could come up a chromosome short while another cell would have an extra one. Such pathological cells will usually die and then there would not be a problem. But sometimes the error persists, more likely in the cell with an extra chromosome. The cell just keeps on dividing, ignoring the Hayflick limit with its control mechanisms. This is dangerous because a tumor forms in that part of the body and that is cancer.
This abnormality of the number of chromosomes in the cells is called aneuploidy. Some human cancer cells may have as many as 80 chromosomes instead of the normal 46 which could give them double the right number of genes. It is not just that a cell has two or three genes that malfunction. It is far worst than that. And the more aneuploid they become, the more likely they are to metastasize.
A leading cancer researcher, Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins, a few years ago accepted that “at least 90% of human cancer cells are aneuploid.” More recently his laboratory reported aneuploidy “is consistently shown in virtually all cancers.” More and more researches accept that cancer cells are aneuploid. Some insist that this is a consequence, not a cause of cancer, but others are beginning to say that perhaps both gene mutation and aneuploidy play a role in cancer. Christoph Lengauer, a researcher in the famed Vogelstein/Kinzler lab at Johns Hopkins University, said that “with our experiments, we found that aneuploidy is a very early event in tumorigenesis.”
What is the answer then? Does aneuploidy have no connection with cancer; is it the main cause of cancer; or is it a cause in addition to gene mutation? At this point the last possibility seems to be the most likely.
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