Debate Over
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, September 1, 2006 00:38
VIEWED: 4120
PAGE 4 of 8
Signy,
Enter the Pub Med ID of the one abstract I sent you, and you'll find "related links" on your right by other authors doing work along the same lines. Becker was at the forefront of regeneration research. It wasn't only starfish. He painstakingly studied mechanisms for triggering regeneration in salamanders, frogs, and finally with rats. In all cases, regeneration takes place after triggering dedifferentiation in already differentiated cells.
Try Google Scholar.
http://scholar.google.com.pe/scholar?q=Robert+O.+Becker&hl=en&lr=&star
t=10&sa=N
Quote:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v235/n5333/abs/235109a0.html
Stimulation of Partial Limb Regeneration in Rats
ROBERT O. BECKER
Veterans Administration Hospital, and Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse, New York
INJURY1,2, nerves3 and hormones4 have been identified as essential for limb regeneration in amphibia. There seem to be differences in the "current of injury" between regenerating and non-regenerating types of amphibians5; partial limb regeneration can be induced in the latter type by simulating the "current of injury" of the regenerating form6. The cellular process of fracture healing in the amphibian is directly related to the electrical phenomena produced by the fractured bone7 and maximally effective ranges for current density can be determined at the cellular level. This led to the concept of a control system the key element of which was the induction of blastema formation in response to appropriate electrical factors8. The absence of regeneration in the mammal may therefore be due to the absence of adequate electrical factors. We report here the consequences of restoring factors which seem to be of practical as well as theoretical interest.
If you want a one stop summary of the history of his work, his book "The Body Electric" (now on sale at Amazon.com as Rue pointed out) describes his experiments in detail.
Much of his work has been duplicated, some hasn't. That's why I'm bitchin' about others not picking up the slack. They haven't even tried and failed. I'm NOT touting Becker as some miracle man. I am saying if billions of dollars had been poured in this direction with competitive research by hundreds of researchers instead of a handful, if his lab hadn't been shut down, the body of Becker's work is promising enough that I am pretty confident we wouldn't have the stem cell debate we have today. He showed that dedifferentiation CAN be artifically triggered and the general direction of how. It remains to work out the details in mammals and humans, and a lot of progress COULD have been made in the last 25 years instead of near zilch.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Quote:No, we're not talking about colloidal silver. People who sell colloidal silver often misappropriate Becker's work with silver ions to market their product.
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I didn't know we were taking this colloidal silver seriously.
Becker did a lot of work with silver. But silver was only a fraction of his entire body of research. His work was on regeneration. If you cut off a salamander's leg, it will grow a new one. The way it does this is to turn already mature cells into stem cells, which then grow back into new bone, nerve, blood, muscle, skin cells. This is called DEdifferentiation and REdifferentiation.
Becker found that tiny electric currents could trigger regeneration in non-regenerating animals. He was able to trigger regeneration (dedifferentiation and redifferentiation) in frogs, rats, and to a limited extent in humans. In a fraction of this research, he used silver ions in addition to the tiny current.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Quote:Try "Becker RO". He authored under that name. I just did this in PubMed and pulled up more than 2.
Originally posted by SignyM:
I did search PubMed.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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I expect that the spinmeisters for the Religious Right will take the tidbit about one cell of the embryo being removed for screening during the IVF process, and blow it into a whole other controversy. After all, the stem cell issue isn't about ethics; it's about politics.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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CTS- I didnt' claim that Neurorehabilitation was out of the mainstream. In fact, if you read my reply I cited it as the one peer-reviewed article.
So I scrolled through Becker's bibliography. He seems to have a wide variety of topics under his belt; his main area of interest seems to be the effect of electromagnetic fields but ranges from using silver to disinfect bones to tracing acupuncture conduction paths.
I think that prolly his research on regeneration was before its time. Electrical currents have been used to regenerate bone for a long time so its practical use was in place, but the understanding of genes- what turns them on and off- was not "there" yet.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:No, you said I was believing things out of the mainstream. I used that Neurorehabilitation as an example that Becker's work (as a whole) was not out of the mainstream, so I am not sure where that accusation came from in this thread.
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS- I didnt' claim that Neurorehabilitation was out of the mainstream.
Yes, Becker's work was way ahead of its time. It doesn't bother me so much (ok relatively speaking) that his peers didn't jump on the bandwagon right away as Becker's claim (and I have no reason to doubt him) that the powers that be suddenly cut off his funding and shut down his lab ON THE CONDITION HE STOPS WORKING ON REGENERATION. He acquiesced, just to save the jobs of his lab staff. But it didn't last long. They shut down his lab anyway.
THAT pisses me off. Makes me all conspiracy-minded about the power of the pharmaceutical industry. I mourn the lost years of research and the potential for getting that much closer to curing the suffering of countless people. Every time I hear stem cell controversy, I get peeved. That's all.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Quote:Put a space in the middle of the link so that it can wrap.
Originally posted by DreamTrove:
First, can some tell me how to make the forum not be 2000 pixels wide?
Quote:We're on the same page here, and I'm not defending anyone, I just think credit where credit is due. Auraptor seems to believe GWB is god and all dissent should be silenced. I don't see why I should Chill and let him get away with his borderline troll post made toward me.
Next, Citizen. Chill. Clinton sucks, Bush sucks, neither one of them are worth a minute of your time defending.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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DT,
Quote:
Allopaths can almost never tell you why a particular pharmaceutical works
Naturopaths and homeopaths also don't know 'why' their stuff works, and if one is telling you otherwise - - - RUN !! Or hobble, limp, crawl, or whatever you can manage.
I agree that taking good care of yourself is vital, in every sense. But even if you were to take perfect care of yourself the human body fails in all sorts of ways. And at this point you can't escape man-made chemicals, human-induced super-germs etc. So at some point medical intervention will be inevitably necessary.
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Rue,
That's not a direct parallel. An herbalist is a merchant, parallel to the pharmacist. The scientists who promote treatments on the web are the doctor parallel, and if they want to sell the product, they explain the underlying science. I don't buy anything that doesn't. And they understand it. This is because PhD's are actually much better educated than MD's. It's a harder science course. The scientists who tell you to take 5-htp or l-carnatine, and the people who make the supplements, know exactly why you should take it. The doctors and drug companies that promote and make paxil etc., have no idea why it works, relatively speaking.
I don't buy flakey stuff which says "take wandaweed, it makes you relax" I want to hear "Rj29 blocks the alpha K+ channel on the gaba neuron stimulating a gaba release."
Herbals also have the plus side that people have usually been taking them for centuries, (and studying them for decades, which is why we know these details) and if there were serious side effects, we're know them already. If the new drug Gwatoximine has ill effects, no one knows but the people in the lab with the dead rats, but that information was supressed.
A look at how allopathy work is enlightening. There is almost no biological science in that science. They try to make unique hard to reverse engineer chemicals, get their patent, and test them on rats to see what happens. If the parkinsons rats show even a 5% improvement, then it's "Hey! we have a new parkinsons drug" regardless of the fact that 6 months later the rats livers turned to tapioca.
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Quote:How DARE anyone not let a potential human live, so that they cannot die in a war-to-come!?!?!?
Originally posted by rue:
So ChrisIsAll - I may have your gottcha. That single cell COULD be the nucleus (so to speak) of a whole 'nother individual ! And then they go and perversely keep it alive but KILL its person-hood, damn them ! Turning it into just another mass of tissue. :croccodiletears:
HOW WASTEFUL!!!!
We need every grunt for the meatgrinder.
Now I'm scared Chrisisall
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