It’s Gonna Get Messy

But I’m just beginning to get a grip on WHY it’s so messy. 


Let’s start here. I’ve never understood the psychology of pregnancy. I can assure you that the instant my conscious mind realized there was a separate, discrete (discreet? I’m never sure…), parasitic, wholly “other” individual growing inside me I would FREAK THE HELL OUT. Neither of us would be likely to survive the next 9 minutes, not to say 9 months. 


Of course, evolution provides a nice soothing sequence of hormonal sedatives and love potions that suppress that “holy hell there’s a thing inside me” panic in (many) human females. [I’m reminded here of that scene in…I think maybe it’s the fourth Aliens movie, the one with Winona Ryder, where the guy who they know is carrying an alien starts to cough and they all train their weapons on his chest and he says “No, it’s ok. Really.”]


Anyway. Mammalian pregnancy also requires elaborate physiological mechanisms to prevent the elaborately evolved immune system from simply rejecting the entire operation every time. That physiological complexity is needed because, of course, the embryo is only halfway genetically equivalent to the mother. 


The problem with cancer, and the reason that even the awesome forces of human immunology are generally ineffective in control, is that the cancer is way more than HALF “you”. It basically IS “you”.  The cellular delta between tumor vs. non-tumor tissue isn’t enough for the immune system to get a grip on. 


Check out this photo. 

This is a diagnostic fluorescence photo of a single leukemia cell. Cytoplasm is stained red. See those 3 green spots in the (large non-stained black) nucleus area? Those are marked with a DNA probe that targets human chromosome number 8. Normal cell would have 2 copies of number 8, this one’s got 3. That’s the basic structural delta between normalcy and cancer.


So what the hell do you do you “treat” the cancer? Paste together some kind of chemical stew to specifically attack chromosome #8? Wait, that’s not gonna work, we need a couple of those per cell. It’s apparently not even really clear what the pathological meaning of the third copy of chrome 8 is. It may not have anything to do mechanistically with the physiological devastation of the disease. 


So we’re slogging. Presently, treatments focus on the higher per-capita metabolism of cancer cells, finding ways to target cells with higher rates of function. That’s where the radiation comes in, BTW. 


Which reminds me. Treatment starts tomorrow. I expect to have the rad sources strapped to my throat by late morning. I’ll try to remember to get some good photos to post for you. 


Hang in there, everybody. Remember I love you all, and thanks for reading these posts. Pass ‘em along with my greetings to anyone you think might be interested. I’m a little slower on updating associated blogs, but visit:


http://docviper.livejournal.com/
http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/
http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/


when you can. I’ll keep ‘em spinning as best I can.


Notes


Photo is from "Cancer: The Evolutionary Legacy” by Mel Greaves, 2000, Oxford University Press. Excellent and readable introduction to the history of cancer itself, along with cancer research and response.