I love science fiction, this is a great piece! I enjoyed reading it.

Of A Splendid New Book and Teratoma Tumors...

Well, today being Christmas, first off - Merry Christmas to you all. And, being that it is Christmas, I got quite a few presents that I really love, but at the moment, I am enthralled with my new book, which is now the subject of this post.

The book is called "The Outer Limits of Life" by John Medina, a molecular biologist at University of Washington's School of Medicine. It is an EXCELLENT book, well written, and easy to follow. This book is about life and death, the beginning and ending of human existence, and covers cloning, abortion, genetic engineering and euthanasia from a Christian molecular biologist point of view. Whether or not you agree with his beliefs on life and death, it is the best book I have read so far on these topics, and it would be a great reference for anyone in the field or anyone interested in these topics. Even for those not in the scientific field, it is explained well enough where you don't need your PhD in genetics to understand what he is saying. I would also say that if you are even curious to know what it means when it comes up on the news, or such, then this is an excellent way to understand genetic engineering, medical/laboratory research, and cloning, while also giving a good argument for Intelligent Design vs Evolution debate from a scientist point of view instead of a theologians point of view. This is something that I have been looking for since I went into the scientific fields 5 years ago. I have looked for someone who could explain completely, in detail, and from a scientific mindset one side or the other of this debate of the origin of life. Most scientist will not actually touch it in the detail and understanding that I have been looking for, but Dr. Medina actually was able to do it. If you are interested in the book, or his other work, here is his website .... http://www.johnmedina.com/ ... genius name for a website, huh?

Well, moving on, in the first chapter of the book (2009), he opens with giving a brief description of Teratoma Tumors.

"You can surgically remove certain tumors from the sides of people, dissect those tumors, and find fully formed fingers deep inside them. And  teeth. And bits of bone. You can find cells that makeup the lens of the human eye, skin that has real hair on it, and cells that are trying to beat likea heart. You can find virtually the entire range of human tissues represented in some form with this kind of cancer.... These cancers (are) Teratoma Tumors...."

Wow!!!! Yep, I had to research it. With the first paragraph in his book, he ruined my Christmas... But moving on, it means 'monster cancer,' and don't look it up unless you want to be grossed out by the pictures, it is just weird. It is a cancer of the germ cells (or stem cells), so it can occur in males or females, but it does have a higher incidence rate in females. One of the few other places it can be found is bone marrow, where there are adult stem cells used to replenish blood and bone cells. Basically, stem cells are pluripotent cells, meaning they have not yet decided which type of cells they will become. However, when something goes wrong, and they become tumorous, they can actually create a different tissue type within an already present tissue. (Koh, Park and Kang 2009). On a side note, these cells are the ones that are considered the best for gene/stem cell therapy, however, the chance of teraoma tumor formation is the main obstacle in the actually clinical application of this therapy (Su, et al. 2011). If you have any questions about why that is, go ahead and look up those pictures. And, yes, I looked at enough pictures to agree with the name of them being monster cancer.

~ The Brain

References: 

Koh, Park and Kang (2009). "A Primary Extragonadal Teratoma of the Proximal Humerus." PubMed Central:Journal of Korean Medical Science 24(5): 989–991. Retrieved 25 Dec 2011 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2752793/?tool=pmcentrez. 

Medina, John (1991). The Outer Limits Of Life. Thomas Nelson Publishing: Nashville, TN, USA.

Su, et al. (2011). "Bioluminescence Reporter Gene Imaging Characterize Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Teratoma Formation." Journal of Cell and Biochemistry 112(3): 840–848. Retrieved 25 Dec 2011 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138474/?tool=pmcentrez. 




Quote - 
"Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly."
Linus Pauling

To begin....

A few months ago I decided to see if I could find the oldest article published concerning the type of cancers I was working with (head and neck cancers), and, to my great shock, there was an article published in 1917. This article explained the changes in neck tissues which confirmed that the patient had cancer. They knew that the changes were deeper than just the physical morphology that they could see. Interestingly enough, an article published in the early part of this year also had the exact same diagnostic pictures and explanations concerning neck cancers,except that the recent article also was able to show the micro-morphology that the earlier article could not explain, because they did not have the microscope available.
This got me to thinking that maybe we need to do more rear-view mirror research, to return to what was originally known about cancer and attempt to find the cure by not asking the same questions that have been asked for the last 100 years.
I will be reading and citing scientific research articles, but I hope to explain them in 'plain English,' so that you can understand what is being said. So here we go...
The Brain

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought”