7/31/10

"There seems to exist some hidden power, something that is playing tricks"

The will is there but its power… is deficient …there seems to exist some hidden power, something that is playing tricks… in a measure thwarting and perverting the wills designs… taking things into its own hands, and keeping the poor victim in a continual jigger. - 1872, George Huntington “On Chorea”(pictured)

Imagine going to a supermarket to get a flu vaccine – you awake 5 days later, you develop a stutter, you can no longer walk, your arms develop a flailing, the ingrained unconscious routine of swallowing becomes difficult, and you develop a british accent. You’ve never been to England.

This more or less what happened to an individual a few years ago.

What’s unique is she was a professional cheerleader for the largest grossing National Football team – the Washington Redskins. Her career was shattered and video of her odd gait has been ridiculed and made jokes on by the ignorant masses.


What’s so interesting about this case is it has happened before – on numerous occasions. The 1980s saw individuals develop Parkinson disease like symptoms from tainted LSD. The 1920s saw one of the most mysterious diseases to hit the human race – a pathogen whose cause was unknown, lead to its victims freezing in place – as if turning them into fictional statues. They also slept for days on end. The medical name is encephalitis lethargica – literally ‘the sleeping sickness’.

How is any of this possible?

When you woke up this morning to get out of bed, your legs didn’t receive a simple nerve impulse from nerve cells in the motor cortex. The common idea is that nerve fibers drop ‘acetylcholine’ on muscle fibers, this leads to the muscle shortening (‘what contraction is’) and it moves. Movement, instead, is counterintuitive.

What allows mammals and many other organisms to move is an ‘ever on’ pathway which works nonstop, a constant supply of dopamine in the Basal Ganglia (a horned like structure in the midbrain, its beautiful) is communicating with further down stream fibers, upstream, a constant inhibitory signal is stopping this excitatory signal from going thru. (oddly, your by default ‘always moving, without this constant inhibition). When you want to move, you excite cells which inhibit these inhibition cells. Loss of these dopa cells responsible ( a genetic disease) is why Michael J Fox and others have spontaneous flailings – this is what Huntington’s disease is - the nervous system is unable to generate ‘stop’ signals from the default network, allowing random excitatory movements to go thru.
(me – you can think of Huntington’s as how the brain actually works, our evolutionary ancestors probably developed some pathway/circuit that made the organism always move, only later did some inhibitory add on come along that allowed control).

Anyway, just knowing how the brain works with movement shows that enigmas like ‘the sleeping sickness’/ the case of the cheerleader/tainted LSD sufferer/Huntington’s disease patients are really characteristics symptoms from select deficits in the brain – totally explainable and interesting in themselves. Diseases and curiosities like this are interesting because t also shows how the brain normally works. (120 years ago Faraday mused on ‘How marvelously we stand upon this world.. it is here we are born bred and live.. and view this with an entire absence of wonder.. never questioning how it is we move from place to place. Well here’s part of the wonder). The cheerleaders development of a ‘british accent’ is probably not an accent but something going on with the region responsible for speech patterns, nevertheless how the ‘vaccine’ caused this is interesting.

People forget vaccines are misnomers – a flu shot is actually just giving the person the virus, it’s just the settlings are controlled and the strain is less malignant. The immune system will work to recognize the foreign invader (thanks supermarket), create a ‘recognition’ protein and begin making antibodies. The reason people don’t need to know the ‘shot idea’ is a misnomer is because when the virus is encountered again, the immune system already has developed a recognition sequence. (My intro biology professor was amazed and so interested in how encountering one virus when your 12 can be ‘remembered’ 60 years later, and how the encounter leads to the growth of immune cell workers with recognition sites for that pathogen.. forever patrolling your body until you die, just waiting to encounter the pathogen again in order to exchange blows.)

You can catch the segment of the woman if you search ‘20/20 Desiree Jennings’ on google.
Interesting thoughts, but knowledge for its own sake may not lead to celebrity or beautiful women, but it shines light on the curious affair we call ‘human existence’ and at worst, keeps us away from the thoughts of the vulgar who characterize Jennings misfortune as a ‘fake’ or ‘the work of the devil’. People forget the best treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is through brain electrocution, which is really just creating brain forest fires, their just induced seizures. The miracle is the symptoms go away, but the nerve cell universe is forever altered and shattered. Also consider 30% of the people we see on a day to day basis today would probably be deemed a) crazy b) put into a mental institution of c) dead 300 years ago - that’s probably the % of people who are on some type of oral medication for mental illness. (I could write pages on this.) One last gold piece for you – the Hippocratic oath is the medical gospel for doctors and people of medicine (part of it is etched on one of the buildings on campus). It’s contents are more like a rant, in which Hippocrates is mainly arguing against dissenters, suggesting that seizures are not the mark of the devil of curse by god, but physical mishaps in the brain. (how interesting to see the same ideas replayed on 20/20 over 2,000 years later, instead of on seizures its thru motor deficits from a cheerleader).
-------------------------------------
update: Pictured: I took the quote from Huntington because he appreciates the enigma of the situation. Someone can just say 'oh, ok, it's just Huntington's disease'. No it's not. The mystery as to how you and I move, how people can be held in place like statues, how people can lose the ability to move or control their arms, even how most organisms move is revealed through this mechanism.

On 20/20: There was 'some Doctor' consulted on 20/20 for the woman, and he used hodgpodge pseudoscience and said it was 'psychogenic' as the problem. This is the 'real doctor' who is making up for the 'fake doctors'. First of all, he has to know how the pathogen (somehow from the vaccine) altered specifics at the cell level in the brain, specifically what's causing what. Huntington's disease is a clumpy protein which gets in the way of microtubules in dopaminergic cells in the dorsal striatum - it's actually a protein. It's 'clumpy' because of a nucleotide error, which affects the structure of the protein, leading to the messing up (somehow) of the cell highways (microtubules) in the cell universe (nerve cells).. leading to the nerve cell's collapse (it's believed), leading to loss of basal activity in at the circuit level in the primary motor pathway, leading to spontaneous action potentials going thru the whatever the destination is. Try that level of explanation (molecular, intracellular, to circuit, to systems) to the explaination this doctor gave - he says 'psychogenic' - is what explains her curious symptoms.

Also this knowledge makes it more interesting - how could an odd working protein mess up a whole cell - and why does some 'tubes' running across it mess it up? What does that say about the cell highway, how does it work? What's going on it there? So many more questions that add to the mystery of how 1 cell works, just based on knowing about the Huntington protein. The asshole doctor basically said nothing about Nature. The 20/20 producers should've just given him a check, allowed him to maintain his public apperance and 'honors' and then wait for him to die because he will not be remembered.

7/28/10

Things I learned from my teacher -

How a type of element combination in the universe mates
(mustard gas working this way)


It was not until the battle of Mesines in July, 1917, that the Germans introduced their blue cross and yellow cross shells containing... dichloroethyl sulphide (mustard gas) with variants as incapacitating and deadly... in 1918 the British had a mustard gas of their own make. - MR. CHURCHILL ON POISON GAS. New York Times 10 Oct. 1923
This is pretty interesting and yet scary.

Basically some molecules in the world have a bromine, iodine, or chlorine on them – and this 'class' have particular ways they can react (mustard gas among them). Their secret ways of mating is to either have a) part of the molecule just ‘jump off’ (mustard gas does this way – called Sn2) or have part just get bumped off after a fight (called Sn1) . The class are haloalkanes, and this are 'addiction' mechanisms.

Well mustard gas – get this – reacts with water – (the water from the person’s eye) and do all sorts of crap. The chlorine on the molecule will jump ship and the water will have it’s way with the sulfur center to the horror of the person the reaction is performed upon.

What a disaster.
(Edit: so I found this later.. a New York Times article suggesting that 'only 1 or 2%' of mustard gas victims died.. whereas 24% die when 'hit by bullets' ... "bullets are responsible for 25 times as many blinded as gas. Out of over 70,000 gas casualties, there were just twenty-nine men blinded in one or both eyes" - I don't know how realistic that is. When you think about a cloud of gas and 1 bullet, you would assume a cloud hits a wider volume?- GAS WARFARE IS CALLED HUMANE :Puts More Men Out of Action With Less Hurt Than Any Other Method. New York Times Mar. 1924

7/27/10

Things my teacher says - Humans have presevatives? Vitamines are preservatives? Radical traps?

Linus Pauling - who lived until age 93 - recommended 'high doses' of vitamine c to fight off the radical crusader in the air - o2.

  • The oxygen around us is a radical that is reactive.. thru mechanisms it will destroy chains chains called 'polyunsatured' fats - or butter. It will take the hydrogen away -and this reaction is the basis for dairy products going rancid - this is how 'rancid' dairy products works.
  • Napolean wanted a way to have butter sent to his troops to keep it from going rancid, so 'his men' applied hydrogen and platinum.. which will take away one of the double bonds from the polyunsaturated chain, this makes it hard for the oxygen to steal the middle hydrogen to make the food go rancid. "thus this is what partially hydrogenated means when you look at the ingredients section"
  • Preservatives in food are now the child of those first experiments.. they 'preserve' food by putting in chemicals that prevent the chains from become radicals - 'a type of radical trap' - they are molecules that when oxygen attacks become super stable
  • Humans have preservatives in them, also to help against the reactive oxygen in the air - they are called 'Vitamine A, E and C' they are radical traps
  • Anytime you breath pure air at the hospital for a long time it is actually causing damage to the patients lungs, the current atmospheric mixture 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen is ideal
Humans have preservatives? Vitamins are preservatives? Radical traps?
(Vitamin E is the picture)
This blog's doctrine:

" But waving all common utility, all vulgar applications, there is something in knowing and understanding the operation of nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order and harmony of the arrangements belonging to the terrestial system of things. There is no absolute utility in poetry; but it gives pleasure, refines and exalts the mind. Philosophic pursuits have likewise a noble and independent use of this kind; and there is a double reason for pursuing them, for, whilst in their sublime speculations they reach to the heavens, in their application they belong to the earth; whilst they exalt the intellect, they provide food for our common wants and likewise minister to the noblest appetites and most exalted views belonging to our nature. .. It is surely a pure delight to know, how and by what processes, this earth is clothed with verdue and life, how the clouds, mist and rain are formed, what causes all the changes of this terrestial system of things, and by what divine laws order is preserved amidst apparent confusion. It is a sublime occupation to bring the lightning from the clouds and make it subservient to our experiments.. and to measure and weigh those invisible atoms, which, by their motions and changes according to laws impressed upon them by the Divine Intelligence, constitute the universe of things. Whilst he investigates the operations of infinite power guided by infinite wisdom, all low prejudies, all mean superstituions disappear from his mind. " - Sir Humphry

7/26/10

Interesting things my teacher said

"a destroyer of worlds molecule"

Never has death looked so odd. Once used in refridgerators, the molecule above was used to preserve food "One of the most important molecules in the history of man." Its also inert and won't react with much. So why is that bad? Well it won't react until it floats to the top of the atmosphere - but then it gets hit by a photon - a radical reaction occurs - it'll then react with o3 until 10,000 have been broken down into 02, depleting our ozone molecules
(plethora of 03 molecules up above = the ozone layer)

Interesting things my teacher said

  • If you mix some propane with lots of dibromine.. u can just expose the bromine to light and that's enough energy for them to become radicals.. and then u can put the container someplace dark.. and slowly and slowly the bromine's will start a chain reaction until it's completely finished.. and they've attached to the propane (sorta like the CFC attacker in the pic)
  • CFC's .. a carbon/clorine/2 florines is a chemical used to refrigerate things and has 'saved many lives'.. "an extremely important molecule that saved the world".. but it's inert.. and won't react with anything until it gets to the top of the atmosphere.. then light will hit it.. it will break the carbon florine bond.. then it'll resonate and react with ozone and make o2... so 1 cfc molecule will bust 10,000 o^3 molecules (ozone).. and is the reason why the ozone layer gets depleted from 'bad refrigerants'
  • Reason people talk about 'rate limiting' steps in a reaction is because there's usually two steps.. and the first one requires energy and only a few will get to it in a bucket load.. and the molecule can go back to the starting materials or go forward.. the idea is it chooses forward because the step is so small (smaller than backward).. hence the idea that the whole reaction depends on this initial hump ('transition state')
  • It's not always the case 'the most stable' molecule is always formed.. some hammond guy observed this and put it in terms of 'how the molecule looks midway' (transition state) - basically noticing if a reaction gives off energy.. the transition stage (first one).. will look like the starting materials .. which is obvious because that means the biggest obstacle was the first hump.. and that's presumably the rate limitor.. if it's endo and requires energy.. it means there's a big ass hump.. takes longer to get to it.. and that transition state will look like the product (more obvious)
  • Bromine and propane is a weird one.. there are 6 hydrogens in propane that are at the ends (those carbons only stick to 1 other one.. the middle carbon sticks to 2 carbons and has only 2 hydrogens) - u would think odds are bromine would replace one of the hydrogens at the end (6 out of 8 hydrogens so 75% chance).. but instead it's 8% likely to take those.. and it's 92% likely to take the 2 out of 8 in the middle.. picky SOB... main idea is it takes less energy to attach a bromine to a 2ndary carbon.... (2ndary has lower activation energy)

This is a very superficial understanding of the above topics