>> > The "distant future" may be closer than you think. Dr. J.Shay et.al.
>> > published a report in SCIENCE Jan 16;279(5349):349-352 showing that by
>> > extending the telomeric length at the ends of human chromosomes that
those
>> > cells would survive beyond their normal senescence and death.
>>> > Dr. C. Greider
>> > in current biology Vol. 8, No. 5, Feb. 1998 showed that the precursor to
the
>> > enzyme telomerase, hTERT, can, by acting on the telomeres, cause human
cells
>> > to live beyond their normal senescence and death.
>>>>>Excelife has cited the Current Biology paper in support of the
reproducibility of
>Shay's work. It certainly looks like good corroboration at first glance.
But what
>is really going on here?
First, Lifeline Labs, user name Excelife, did not cite the referenced
replication paper by Vaziri,H & Benchimol,S, (Reconstitution of Telemerase
Activity...Current Biology 1998 Feb.26) That post was by Abrey de Grey of
Concord University and we thank her for providing us that appropriate
citation.
The citation we did make was for DR.Carol Greider (Current Biology 1998,
8:R178-R181) wherin she dicusses the role of hTERT, a subunit of human
telomerase and its effectiveness in allowing cells to live beyond their
normal senescence. Dr Greider a lead researcher at Cold Springs Harbor
Laboratory. A Laboratory, I might say, with an impeccable reputation. Dr.
Greider herself has been appointed by Presdident Clinton to the National
Bio-ethics Board. Hardly a likely candidate for the conspiracy theories
you've concocted.
>>1) These experiments take months to years to perform, and then take months
to get
>published. The Current Biology paper came out one month after the SCIENCE
paper.
>Which means that there is no way that the people from the Current Biology
paper
>were attempting to reproduce the work done in SCIENCE, since the two groups
had to
>have been working on the problem simultaneously for quite some time. So how
did it
>come to pass that these papers come out one month apart?
>
Referring to the Virazi-Benchimol study nowehere does it say it is a
"follow-up" study. Instead, they and several other laboratories are in a
race, quite similar to the race to find the doule helix, but in this case the
goal is the key to aging.
>2) There are a couple possible explanations for the back-to-back
publication of
>these papers. One is coincidence (which strikes me as unlikely - see #3).
The
>other is that the two groups were working together and planned to publish
the
>papers in this fashion , so that both could refer to the other for support.
Is
>this really what happened? I have no idea, but it is certainly possible.
>
Unsupported inuendo is unlike you James. As a scientist you usually base
your opinions on facts not conjecture.
>3) ... why didn't the Canadian group submit their paper
>to a more respected journal? No offense to Current Biology, but it is not a
>prestigious journal - and this paper would have been HUGE news. People
always try
>to get their paper in the most prestigious journal that will accept it. It
makes
>you look better.
As in any scientific competition, those that finish first get published in
SCIENCE or THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, second place takes what they
can get and the remainder don't get published at all.
>>Don't forget that, because the review and publishing process takes months,
at the
>time the Canadian group submitted their paper to Current Biology the SCIENCE
paper
>was not yet out - so it's not like they were relegated to publishing in a
>second-tier journal because the subject was old news.
Your information is incorrect! In talking with representatives of the
principals of the experiment, I found out that the Canadian study was
completed *after* the research by Dr. Shay et.al.
>They should have been
>submitting this paper to SCIENCE, Nature, Cell, or PNAS. Or maybe they did
and it
>was rejected. Something is suspicious here. They had some reason for
submitting
>to Current Biology. Either the experiments were poorly done and other
journals
>would not accept the work, or something was going on behind the scenes.
If a Scientific Journal receives two perfectly valid research papers on the
same subject the one submitted first is published, as it should be. Nothing
suspicious and no conspiracy.
>>4) No one in my lab has ever even HEARD of the Current Biology paper. Does
that
>prove anything? No. But it is additional reason to be suspicious.
Generally when
>a paper is out that should be news, but no one pays attention to it, that is
>because people have decided that the work is junk.
>
Why would anyone be talking about this paper when the SCIENCE article had
just received more attention than most other research papers combined?
>>>> In plain english they have found the cause and the cure for aging.
>>He makes this statment, but then goes on to provide a huge list of caveats
that
>totally invalidate it.
Delineating lines of research that can compliment or impede the investigation
of aging via telomeric length merely shows why the research is going to take
5 to 10 years insted of six months. It in no way invalidates my conclusion.
>Even if you assume that the SCIENCE paper is true, which is
>a big assummption at this point, no, they haven't found the cause or cure
for
>aging.
Are we to see some scientific reasoning behind this opinion or are we to take
it on faith?
>At best that have found some interesting ways to help burn victims and
>maybe regrow other organs in the future by increasing the ability of cells
to
>replicate. Aging is much more than this.
Actually burn victims are currently being helped by the growth of their own
epidermal tissues (beyond the "Hayflick Limit"), via the use of tranforming
growth factor beta2 but that's for another post.
So as you see it the ability to restore the somatic celled organs of the
body, including the skin and the vascular systems, back to the capacity they
had when the body was say 20 years old is all this research has demonstrated
so far.
Fair enough!
Thomas Mahoney, Pres.
Lifeline Laboratories, Inc.
http://home.earthlink.net/~excelife/index.html
