Re: Anthrax and germs

["Young For Life Products, Ltd" contact@xxxxxxxx]

I think your term "nonsense" is too harsh. The science of medicine is still
very much an art, and I am constantly amazed, the longer I study it and
practice it, at how all of our knowledge barely skims the surface of a very
deep sea. I would advise those who think Morris' message a crock to keep in
mind that nothing crumbles more readily with better scientific understanding
than the most entrenched dogmata. I am not ready to throw the germ theory
out, by any means, but, by the same token, there are plenty of unexplained
mysteries in the realm of medicine to leave the door wide open
for other explanations in many areas.

For example, when I was avidly reading my way through the archives at the
med school library, dusting off books that probably hadn't been off the
shelves in fifty years, going back through the years to the 1890's in cancer
research, I came
across studies such as the following, which have NEVER been explained
(because the authors could not get continued funding to extend the research,
since it didn't lead in a direction likely to help a drug company make a new
chemotherapy drug):

If you take a salamander and promote a cancerous tumor on its tail, wait
until it develops distal metastases, and don't do anything else, it will
eventually die of the metastases. If you cut the tail off distal or proximal
to the tumor, it will still eventually die of the metastases. If you cut the
tail off through the tumor, the tail will regrow, the tumor will disappear,
the mets will disappear, and the salamander will live. If you cut off an arm
or a leg through a metastatic tumor, the salamander will die. This has never
been explained. Probably never will.

Charles

----- Original Message -----
From: WooF 
To: 
Cc: 
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: Anthrax and germs


> This nonsense has no place in a XyWrite writing group.
>
> I take it that "morninglive" has never heard of the Broad Street
> pump.
>
> George Scithers of owlswick@xxxxxxxx