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Cancer, the key to immortality.
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Original Message
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What if cancer research was not about curing cancer but to figure out how to use cancer to become immortal?
So how were scientists able to make cells immortal? The secret to producing cell immortality lay in their realizing that all cells possess a gene, known as the telomerase gene, which can add DNA back to the tip of telomeres, restoring them to their original youthful length. In almost all cells this gene is turned off early in development, rendered permanently inactive in an event that commits that cell to eventual sure death. This sad decision is a very necessary one, as it protects the adult human body from developing tumors whenever a cell's division controls are disabled. Only when this added protection against runaway growth is also lost, the switch stopping production of telomerase turned back "ON," can a cell proceed beyond a few divisions and become a cancer cell. Cancer cells are immortal because they produce telomerase.
In the human body, only two kinds of body cells are immortal, able to divide without limit. Cancer cells are one. The other kind of immortal cell is the embryonic stem cell.
[link to txtwriter.com]
"Embryonic stem cells, as their name suggests, are derived from embryos. Most embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro—in an in vitro fertilization clinic—and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are not derived from eggs fertilized in a woman's body."
[link to stemcells.nih.gov]
There's something fascinating and yet disgusting about these immortal cells scientists have been using for decades now from the famous HeLa cells;
A HeLa cell (also Hela or hela cell) is a cell type in an immortal cell line used in scientific research. It is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line.[1] The line was derived from cervical cancer cells taken on February 8, 1951[2] from Henrietta Lacks, a patient who eventually died of her cancer on October 4, 1951. The cell line was found to be remarkably durable and prolific as illustrated by its contamination of many other cell lines used in research.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]
to being able to order frozen immortal cancer cells online;
[link to www.atcc.org]
In society cancer, like nuclear radiation, is seen to be scary, frightening and something people never should discuss out of fear of getting it or something ridiculous and there isn't much out there in the way of public information as to the nature of cancer itself.
There's a lot of money going into cancer research and no one has managed "cure" it but maybe that is not the goal.
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