Thursday, August 28, 2008

Two Diseases I wouldn't mind eliminating

Okay. I'm sure you're saying--wouldn't you want to eliminate ALL diseases? And I'd have to just sit and think about the current world population and what it would be like without any disease--if we could all live our lives as long as humanly possible, save natural disaster, accident or death by the hands of a human. So, I just think about that and I'm glad I'm not God or the universe or your omnipotent force of choice to make such decisions.

But, back to the two diseases I'd love to see eliminated as of this moment--Diabetes and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. According to an artiles by Karen Kaplan in today's edition of the LA times, researches have genetically transformed cells, that previously functioned to create gut enzymes to digest food, to create insulin. Awesome! This was of course an exepriment with rodents, but I love our intelligence (I think it's intelligence) to figure out the inner workings of a cell and solve problems. The same technique could be used to generate motor neurons for ALS patients, and healthy cardiac muscle cells for heart disease, etc. Pretty cool. Let's see where it goes!

Okay, off to the grind.

Noelle Aguayo

2 comments:

Trekking Left said...

I think I would eliminate conservatism :)

Chryss said...

I'd love to see diabetes disappear because Americans move back to eating fresh, local, unprocessed foods... but genetically transforming cells seems more likely!