Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Bacteria!
That last post - from Rumi, via Kaleidescope has haunted me.
Keeping your eyes and your wanting still...for fifty years...
to begin to cross over from confusion...Hmmmmmm
In an effort to cross over from confusion, I am going to attempt
to revive this blog, to use it for a peaceful purpose. I will blog here
as frequently as possible, any and all information that seems to be
worthwhile to chickenlil's list ... health, nutrition and positive advice.
Personal, political and spiritual posts will remain on C. Little, no less -
and anything which is questionable (?) or experimental I will post
further on down the road....
So let's get started! Next...The Bacteria!
...cancer and the Origin of Life:
Part One
By Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.
Is new life merely just the beginning of eventual death, as scientists
believe? Or is death the beginning of "eternal life," as religions teach? Or
could life be a never-ending cycle of life/death/life/death reincarnations?
Can new life develop from non-living things? Or was all life and the
universe created eons ago by the Creator, or through some freak accident of
the cosmos? Where did I come from? What will happen to me after death? These
are questions human beings have attempted to answer for centuries.
Nanobacteria, NASA and Astrobiology
Robert Folk is a geologist who specialises in microscopic examinations
of limestone. Working in Italy in the 1980s with a new scanning electron
microscope (SEM) with magnifications up to 100,000X, he repeatedly came
across "hordes of tiny bumps and balls" entombed within the rock that he
initially passed off as artefacts or laboratory contamination, as had every
other geologist using the SEM.
However, after a year of doubts and some reading in microbiology, Folk
learned that exceedingly small cells called 'ultramicrobacteria' did in fact
exist. With further microscopic work, he realised the enormous numbers of
tiny grape-like and chain-like clusters were indeed bacteria. Most amazing
was these "nanobacteria" could be easily cultured as common forms of
bacteria, known as cocci, bacilli, staphylococci and streptococci.
His first scientific presentation of these astounding findings was met
with "stony silence" and "howls of disbelief" from many microbiologists. To
this day, some scientists contend these so-called nanobacteria are simply
too small to contain the necessary genetic material for life.
In microbiology, the ultramicroscopic bacteria are regarded as stressed
or resting forms of big bacteria, and are thought to be both rare and
dormant. Geologists prefer the spelling "nannobacteria" to conform with the
spelling of extremely tiny "nannofossils", a common term in geology dating
back to the nineteenth century.
But Folk claims nanobacteria are enormously abundant in minerals and
rocks and they form most of the world's bio-mass. If so, how could they have
been missed for so long? Folk says microbiologists have little or no
interest in bacteria found in soils or rocks; and for fifty years it has
been standard microbiological dogma that bacteria smaller than 0.2
micrometers cannot exist.
Size does matter, even when discussing the tiniest forms of life. The
term "ultramicroscopic" is applied to bacterial cells smaller than 0.3
micrometers. At this size, bacteria are still barely visible as the tiniest
of dots discernable with the light microscope. The ordinary light microscope
can magnify objects up to 1000X and objects smaller than 0.25 micrometers
cannot be seen. The electron microscope is able to photograph objects at
magnifications of 300,000X, or higher.
Nanobacteria are the smallest of living creatures, measuring in the
0.05 to 0.2 micrometer range (a micrometer is 1/1000 of a millimeter). This
puts nanobacteria as an intermediate life-form between normal bacteria and
viruses. Viruses are around 0.01 to 0.02 micrometers in size and cannot be
seen with the ordinary light optical microscope.
The size of bacteria, nanobacteria and viruses is exceedingly important
to bear in mind because it is connected to more than a century of
microscopic study into the germ origin of infectious disease. Furthermore,
the "dividing line" between bacteriology and virology has been the customary
"filter pore size" of 0.2 micrometers. Microbiologists have always assumed
such a filter pore will catch all bacteria, and fluid running through a 0.2
micrometer filter pore would be bacteria-free.
When geologists photographed 0.1 micrometer "bumps" they passed them
off as contamination, never believing they could be living bacteria. Folk
says, "You see what you are looking for and what you have faith in!"
By the early 1990s these nanobacteria were investigated by a team of
biologists in Finland, headed by Olavi Kajander. Since that time
nanobacteria have been found in kidney stones, dental plaque, the gall
bladder, in calcified arteries and heart valves, and in certain skin
diseases. Kajander's team also reported nanobacterial forms as small as 0.05
microns in human blood, and have retrieved DNA on particles as small as 0.2
microns. Most disturbing are reports showing nanobacterial contamination of
fetal bovine serum used in the production of many viral vaccines. This adds
concern to the controversial problem of "vaccine-induced illness" and the
fear some people have of contaminated vaccines.
Are nanobacteria connected with the origin of life on Earth?
Nanobacteria-like "fossils" have been observed in several meteors, such as
the Martian meteorite found on the Antarctic ice shelf in 1984. This
meteorite is believed to be 4.5 billion years old, and is thought to have
left Mars 16 million years ago. Supporters of nanobacteria research insist
these bacteria have implications for how life began on Earth and other
planets like Mars.
NASA, the US space agency, has an Astrobiology Roadmap program, which
consists of more than 200 scientists and technologists. Astrobiology
addresses three basic questions: How does life begin and evolve? Does life
exist elsewhere in the universe? What is the future of life on Earth and
beyond?
According to Roadmap, there are revolutionary changes going on in the
world of microbiology.
"Our ongoing exploration has led to continued discoveries of life in
environments that have been previously considered uninhabitable. For
example, we find thriving communities (of microbes) in the boiling hot
springs of Yellowstone, the frozen deserts of Antarctica, the concentrated
sulfuric acid in acid-mine drainages, and the ionizing radiation fields in
nuclear reactors. We find some microbes that grow in the deepest parts of
the ocean and require 5000 to 1000 bars of hydrostatic pressure. Life has
evolved strategies that allow it to survive even beyond the daunting
physical and chemical limits to which it has adapted to grow. To survive,
organisms can assume forms that enable them to withstand freezing, complete
desiccation, starvation, high levels of radiation exposure, and other
physical and chemical challenges."
In addition, astrobiologists tell us that huge amounts of bacteria and
possibly viruses are contained in Earth's upper atmosphere. It is estimated
a ton of these organisms arrive on Earth every day!
Quorum Sensing and Communication Between Bacteria In an amazing discovery, scientists have learned that bacteria can
communicate with each other. When enough microbes gather to form a "quorum",
they release a hormone (a pheromone) which allows them to "talk" to one
another and plan strategies, and even make some genetic changes to allow
survival. Not only do similar bacteria talk to each other, they also talk
between species.
Barbara Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University, is a
leading pioneer in quorum sensing. Writing about her work for Wired magazine
(April 2003), Steve Silberman says that communicating microbes are able to
collectively track changes in their environment, conspire with other
species, build mutually beneficial alliances with other types of bacteria,
gain advantages over competitors, and communicate with their hosts - the
sort of collective strategizing typically ascribed to bees, ants, and
people, not to bacteria."
Quorum sensing has profound implications in the war against
disease, particularly now that so many bacteria are becoming resistant to
antibiotics. According to Silberman, "Bassler's research points to new ways
of fighting disease that will aim not to kill but to scramble data in the
bacterial network. One approach would be to block the receptors that receive
the molecular signals so that cells never become virulent; another would
target the DNA-replication mechanisms set in motion inside cells when the
signals are received."
Not everyone in microbiology is convinced bacteria can communicate. But
if some clairvoyants can talk to dead people, why can't bacterial cells talk
to one another? And don't all the cells in our body "talk" to each other in
some way?
Viruses, Bacteria, and the Beginnings of Life
Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species was published in 1859 and is the
seminal book giving rise to biology, as well as to the scientific and
religious controversies that continue to this day. People were incensed to
think humans could have arisen from monkeys and apes. Now some scientists
think we developed side-by-side along with bacteria.
Every human, plant and animal cell has genetic material inside a
nucleus. Surrounding the nucleus is a jelly-like cytoplasm which contains
the "mitochondria", which are considered to be tiny chemical factories that
process the nutrients which provide energy to the cell.
Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts
believes the ancestors of all life are the bacteria, which fused into higher
forms of life. Margulis follows in the footsteps of American biologist Ivan
Wallin, who in 1927 first claimed mitochondria originated as free-living
bacteria. Wallin thought ancient bacteria and their host cells evolved
together to establish an inseparable symbiotic partnership. He even claimed
to have removed mitochondria from cells and to grow them. Needless to say,
Wallin's ideas were ridiculed and almost universally rejected.
But Margulis also theorises the origin of the mitochondria in our cells
is derived from separate organisms that long-ago moved into other cells and
entered a symbiotic (sort of a co-dependant) relationship with
multi-cellular forms of life. Remarkably, the DNA in the mitochondria is
totally different from the DNA in the rest of the cell, which lends support
to this idea.
Margulis subscribes to the vision that the Earth, as a whole, is a
living being. In What is Life? (1955), co-written with Dorion Sagan, she
maintains all life is bacteria - or descends from bacteria. In short, life
is bacteria. And, as such, bacteria are closer to immortality than animals
with bodies.
Bacteria account for the vast majority of life forms on Earth, and are
essential to maintain the conditions for life on the planet. They are the
smallest living cells that can replicate without a nucleus, and are indeed
the building-blocks of life. In comparison, the fertilised human egg is
about 150-200 micrometers in size - about the size of a grain of sand and
barely visible with the naked eye.
What can microbes tell us about our origin and our destinies? And could
we be immortal like our one-celled ancestors?
Creating "life" in the Laboratory
What is the lowest form of life? And can life be created from non-life?
Some scientists believe viruses are the lowest form of life. We are told
viruses need to penetrate a cell and use the cell's genes to survive. In the
process, disease can be produced. But are viruses "alive" or "dead"?
Scientists can't agree.
In 1991 Eckard Wimmer and his associates created a polio virus for the
very first time - outside a cell and in a test tube. They extracted a soup
of proteins from human cells, and then added genetic material from a polio
virus. After a few hours, assembled polio viruses appeared in the mix.
According to a New York Times report (Dec. 13, 1991), Wimmer was
asked, is the product in the test tube living or nonliving? Some consider
viruses to be simple living organisms, others consider viruses to be very
complicated chemicals, said Wimmer. But "when it hits the cell it is very
much alive. Some argue that one attribute of life is that it can reproduce
itself. Well, that is what viruses do when they get into the cells. The
debate on whether viruses are alive has been going on since they were
discovered 100 years ago."
Although the cause of most cancers remains a mystery, research over the
past half-century has focused on cancer viruses as a probable cause. With
research focused on viruses, it would seem ludicrous to ask - can bacteria
cause cancer?
The mere thought of bacteria causing cancer drives most cancer experts
up the wall! However, with the recent interest in nanobacteria and their
discovery in the blood and in various diseases of unknown origin, the
question should not be so easily dismissed.
Furthermore, in the past decade physicians have come to accept the fact
stomach ulcers can be produced by bacteria (Helicobacter pylori), and some
ulcers eventually lead to stomach cancer. For many decades, it was dogma
that bacteria could not live in the acid environment of the stomach. Also,
pathologists could never see or detect bacteria in the stomach lining around
ulcers. With the discovery of Helicobacteria and special staining
techniques, doctors can now demonstrate bacteria in many ulcers - proving
that microbiologists and pathologists were unable to "see" microbes, even
though they are now clearly visible once they accepted the possibility
microbes might be present.
Cancer, New Life, and Reich's "T-Bacilli"
Although the origin and cause of cancer is mysterious, there is no
doubt cancer is the body's futile and often fatal attempt to create new life
and new growth. That is why cancer is so intimately connected with theories
about the origin of life.
One of the most controversial physicians of the last century was
Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), a psychiatrist and cancer researcher who claimed
to discover "orgone energy" - an energy that pervades the world and is
intimately connected with our physical and mental well-being.
In The Cancer Biopathy (1948), he wrote that cancer is a systemic
disease caused by emotional despair and resignation and the chronic
thwarting of natural sexual functioning. And this was just a few of his
highly unorthodox beliefs based on his many observations and experiments.
Reich also uncovered infectious "T-bacilli" (bacteria) in cancer that
resulted from the degeneration of cancerous tissue. In his view, these
bacteria formed a bridge between the living and the non-living. The
T-bacilli were present in the blood and tissue before the cancer tumour
developed; and these microbes were intimately connected to "bions" and the
loss of biological energy. Reich's heretical bions were the carriers of
biological energy; and the staphylococcus and streptococcus germs he found
connected to cancer were actually formed from the degeneration of the bions.
Just as there is no clear dividing line between life and non-life,
there is no clear boundary between healthy and diseased individuals. Reich
claimed the cancer cell developed as the body's attempt to resist the
build-up of the T-bacilli in energy-depleted tissue.
"The first step in the development of the cancer tumour is not the
cancer cell. it is the appearance of T-bacilli in the tissue or in the
blood." But T-bacilli were not only found in cancer; they were also present
in the blood and tissues of both healthy and sick non-cancerous individuals.
However, sick and cancerous patients showed a larger number of these forms,
and Reich developed a blood test to show this. T-bacilli were always found
where there is degeneration of protein, and in that respect, Reich wrote:
"All humans have cancer."
The orgone energy of the body determined the resistance of the body to
these microbes. As long as the tissues and blood are "organotically strong,
every T-bacillus will be destroyed and eliminated before it can propagate,
accumulate, and cause damage", wrote Reich. Because cancer germs were
present in healthy people, Reich knew this would be a very difficult concept
for physicians to consider and accept.
Reich wanted scientists to look at science in a new way and to try and
see it from the point of view of "energetic functionalism."
For example, "The bacteriologist, for instance, sees the
staphylococcus as a static formation, spherical or oval in shape, about 0.8
micron in size, reacting with a bluish coloration to Gram stain, and
arranged in clusters. These characteristics are important for orgone
biophysics, but are not the essentials. The name itself says nothing about
the origin, function, and position of the blue coccus in nature. What the
bacteriologists calls 'staphylococcus' is, for orgone physics a small energy
vesicle in the process of degeneration. Orgone biophysics investigates the
origin of the staphylococcus from other forms of life and follows its
transformation. It examines the staphylococcus in connection with the
processes of the total biological energy of the organism and produces it
experimentally through degenerative processes in bions, cells, etc."
Through his scientific experiments with orgone energy, Reich hoped to
harness orgone for the treatment of disease and the good of humanity.
Needless to say, Reich's entire life's work was considered hogwash, and
a scientific inquisition eventually ensued. Branded a menace and a quack, he
ran afoul of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which claimed his
experimental "orgone accumulator" was being used illegally to treat cancer -
and that it was nothing more than a perverted sex box.
Refusing to obey a court injunction, Reich was sentenced to prison. His
books were burned, his equipment destroyed by FDA agents, and he died at the
federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in March 1957, at age 60.
His research into the origin of life, and his belief orgone energy
contained within the tiniest forms of life that could not be destroyed, make
him one of the most misunderstood and hated physicians of the twentieth
century.
But, as we shall discover, there are other heretics in medicine, now
mostly ignored and forgotten, who also believed cancer was connected with
bacteria of human origin. Like Reich, they claimed a study of these microbes
would not only lead to the infectious cause of cancer - but to a cause of
life itself.
Next – Part Two
That last post - from Rumi, via Kaleidescope has haunted me.
Keeping your eyes and your wanting still...for fifty years...
to begin to cross over from confusion...Hmmmmmm
In an effort to cross over from confusion, I am going to attempt
to revive this blog, to use it for a peaceful purpose. I will blog here
as frequently as possible, any and all information that seems to be
worthwhile to chickenlil's list ... health, nutrition and positive advice.
Personal, political and spiritual posts will remain on C. Little, no less -
and anything which is questionable (?) or experimental I will post
further on down the road....
So let's get started! Next...The Bacteria!
...cancer and the Origin of Life:
Part One
By Alan Cantwell, Jr., M.D.
Is new life merely just the beginning of eventual death, as scientists
believe? Or is death the beginning of "eternal life," as religions teach? Or
could life be a never-ending cycle of life/death/life/death reincarnations?
Can new life develop from non-living things? Or was all life and the
universe created eons ago by the Creator, or through some freak accident of
the cosmos? Where did I come from? What will happen to me after death? These
are questions human beings have attempted to answer for centuries.
Nanobacteria, NASA and Astrobiology
Robert Folk is a geologist who specialises in microscopic examinations
of limestone. Working in Italy in the 1980s with a new scanning electron
microscope (SEM) with magnifications up to 100,000X, he repeatedly came
across "hordes of tiny bumps and balls" entombed within the rock that he
initially passed off as artefacts or laboratory contamination, as had every
other geologist using the SEM.
However, after a year of doubts and some reading in microbiology, Folk
learned that exceedingly small cells called 'ultramicrobacteria' did in fact
exist. With further microscopic work, he realised the enormous numbers of
tiny grape-like and chain-like clusters were indeed bacteria. Most amazing
was these "nanobacteria" could be easily cultured as common forms of
bacteria, known as cocci, bacilli, staphylococci and streptococci.
His first scientific presentation of these astounding findings was met
with "stony silence" and "howls of disbelief" from many microbiologists. To
this day, some scientists contend these so-called nanobacteria are simply
too small to contain the necessary genetic material for life.
In microbiology, the ultramicroscopic bacteria are regarded as stressed
or resting forms of big bacteria, and are thought to be both rare and
dormant. Geologists prefer the spelling "nannobacteria" to conform with the
spelling of extremely tiny "nannofossils", a common term in geology dating
back to the nineteenth century.
But Folk claims nanobacteria are enormously abundant in minerals and
rocks and they form most of the world's bio-mass. If so, how could they have
been missed for so long? Folk says microbiologists have little or no
interest in bacteria found in soils or rocks; and for fifty years it has
been standard microbiological dogma that bacteria smaller than 0.2
micrometers cannot exist.
Size does matter, even when discussing the tiniest forms of life. The
term "ultramicroscopic" is applied to bacterial cells smaller than 0.3
micrometers. At this size, bacteria are still barely visible as the tiniest
of dots discernable with the light microscope. The ordinary light microscope
can magnify objects up to 1000X and objects smaller than 0.25 micrometers
cannot be seen. The electron microscope is able to photograph objects at
magnifications of 300,000X, or higher.
Nanobacteria are the smallest of living creatures, measuring in the
0.05 to 0.2 micrometer range (a micrometer is 1/1000 of a millimeter). This
puts nanobacteria as an intermediate life-form between normal bacteria and
viruses. Viruses are around 0.01 to 0.02 micrometers in size and cannot be
seen with the ordinary light optical microscope.
The size of bacteria, nanobacteria and viruses is exceedingly important
to bear in mind because it is connected to more than a century of
microscopic study into the germ origin of infectious disease. Furthermore,
the "dividing line" between bacteriology and virology has been the customary
"filter pore size" of 0.2 micrometers. Microbiologists have always assumed
such a filter pore will catch all bacteria, and fluid running through a 0.2
micrometer filter pore would be bacteria-free.
When geologists photographed 0.1 micrometer "bumps" they passed them
off as contamination, never believing they could be living bacteria. Folk
says, "You see what you are looking for and what you have faith in!"
By the early 1990s these nanobacteria were investigated by a team of
biologists in Finland, headed by Olavi Kajander. Since that time
nanobacteria have been found in kidney stones, dental plaque, the gall
bladder, in calcified arteries and heart valves, and in certain skin
diseases. Kajander's team also reported nanobacterial forms as small as 0.05
microns in human blood, and have retrieved DNA on particles as small as 0.2
microns. Most disturbing are reports showing nanobacterial contamination of
fetal bovine serum used in the production of many viral vaccines. This adds
concern to the controversial problem of "vaccine-induced illness" and the
fear some people have of contaminated vaccines.
Are nanobacteria connected with the origin of life on Earth?
Nanobacteria-like "fossils" have been observed in several meteors, such as
the Martian meteorite found on the Antarctic ice shelf in 1984. This
meteorite is believed to be 4.5 billion years old, and is thought to have
left Mars 16 million years ago. Supporters of nanobacteria research insist
these bacteria have implications for how life began on Earth and other
planets like Mars.
NASA, the US space agency, has an Astrobiology Roadmap program, which
consists of more than 200 scientists and technologists. Astrobiology
addresses three basic questions: How does life begin and evolve? Does life
exist elsewhere in the universe? What is the future of life on Earth and
beyond?
According to Roadmap, there are revolutionary changes going on in the
world of microbiology.
"Our ongoing exploration has led to continued discoveries of life in
environments that have been previously considered uninhabitable. For
example, we find thriving communities (of microbes) in the boiling hot
springs of Yellowstone, the frozen deserts of Antarctica, the concentrated
sulfuric acid in acid-mine drainages, and the ionizing radiation fields in
nuclear reactors. We find some microbes that grow in the deepest parts of
the ocean and require 5000 to 1000 bars of hydrostatic pressure. Life has
evolved strategies that allow it to survive even beyond the daunting
physical and chemical limits to which it has adapted to grow. To survive,
organisms can assume forms that enable them to withstand freezing, complete
desiccation, starvation, high levels of radiation exposure, and other
physical and chemical challenges."
In addition, astrobiologists tell us that huge amounts of bacteria and
possibly viruses are contained in Earth's upper atmosphere. It is estimated
a ton of these organisms arrive on Earth every day!
Quorum Sensing and Communication Between Bacteria In an amazing discovery, scientists have learned that bacteria can
communicate with each other. When enough microbes gather to form a "quorum",
they release a hormone (a pheromone) which allows them to "talk" to one
another and plan strategies, and even make some genetic changes to allow
survival. Not only do similar bacteria talk to each other, they also talk
between species.
Barbara Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University, is a
leading pioneer in quorum sensing. Writing about her work for Wired magazine
(April 2003), Steve Silberman says that communicating microbes are able to
collectively track changes in their environment, conspire with other
species, build mutually beneficial alliances with other types of bacteria,
gain advantages over competitors, and communicate with their hosts - the
sort of collective strategizing typically ascribed to bees, ants, and
people, not to bacteria."
Quorum sensing has profound implications in the war against
disease, particularly now that so many bacteria are becoming resistant to
antibiotics. According to Silberman, "Bassler's research points to new ways
of fighting disease that will aim not to kill but to scramble data in the
bacterial network. One approach would be to block the receptors that receive
the molecular signals so that cells never become virulent; another would
target the DNA-replication mechanisms set in motion inside cells when the
signals are received."
Not everyone in microbiology is convinced bacteria can communicate. But
if some clairvoyants can talk to dead people, why can't bacterial cells talk
to one another? And don't all the cells in our body "talk" to each other in
some way?
Viruses, Bacteria, and the Beginnings of Life
Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species was published in 1859 and is the
seminal book giving rise to biology, as well as to the scientific and
religious controversies that continue to this day. People were incensed to
think humans could have arisen from monkeys and apes. Now some scientists
think we developed side-by-side along with bacteria.
Every human, plant and animal cell has genetic material inside a
nucleus. Surrounding the nucleus is a jelly-like cytoplasm which contains
the "mitochondria", which are considered to be tiny chemical factories that
process the nutrients which provide energy to the cell.
Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts
believes the ancestors of all life are the bacteria, which fused into higher
forms of life. Margulis follows in the footsteps of American biologist Ivan
Wallin, who in 1927 first claimed mitochondria originated as free-living
bacteria. Wallin thought ancient bacteria and their host cells evolved
together to establish an inseparable symbiotic partnership. He even claimed
to have removed mitochondria from cells and to grow them. Needless to say,
Wallin's ideas were ridiculed and almost universally rejected.
But Margulis also theorises the origin of the mitochondria in our cells
is derived from separate organisms that long-ago moved into other cells and
entered a symbiotic (sort of a co-dependant) relationship with
multi-cellular forms of life. Remarkably, the DNA in the mitochondria is
totally different from the DNA in the rest of the cell, which lends support
to this idea.
Margulis subscribes to the vision that the Earth, as a whole, is a
living being. In What is Life? (1955), co-written with Dorion Sagan, she
maintains all life is bacteria - or descends from bacteria. In short, life
is bacteria. And, as such, bacteria are closer to immortality than animals
with bodies.
Bacteria account for the vast majority of life forms on Earth, and are
essential to maintain the conditions for life on the planet. They are the
smallest living cells that can replicate without a nucleus, and are indeed
the building-blocks of life. In comparison, the fertilised human egg is
about 150-200 micrometers in size - about the size of a grain of sand and
barely visible with the naked eye.
What can microbes tell us about our origin and our destinies? And could
we be immortal like our one-celled ancestors?
Creating "life" in the Laboratory
What is the lowest form of life? And can life be created from non-life?
Some scientists believe viruses are the lowest form of life. We are told
viruses need to penetrate a cell and use the cell's genes to survive. In the
process, disease can be produced. But are viruses "alive" or "dead"?
Scientists can't agree.
In 1991 Eckard Wimmer and his associates created a polio virus for the
very first time - outside a cell and in a test tube. They extracted a soup
of proteins from human cells, and then added genetic material from a polio
virus. After a few hours, assembled polio viruses appeared in the mix.
According to a New York Times report (Dec. 13, 1991), Wimmer was
asked, is the product in the test tube living or nonliving? Some consider
viruses to be simple living organisms, others consider viruses to be very
complicated chemicals, said Wimmer. But "when it hits the cell it is very
much alive. Some argue that one attribute of life is that it can reproduce
itself. Well, that is what viruses do when they get into the cells. The
debate on whether viruses are alive has been going on since they were
discovered 100 years ago."
Although the cause of most cancers remains a mystery, research over the
past half-century has focused on cancer viruses as a probable cause. With
research focused on viruses, it would seem ludicrous to ask - can bacteria
cause cancer?
The mere thought of bacteria causing cancer drives most cancer experts
up the wall! However, with the recent interest in nanobacteria and their
discovery in the blood and in various diseases of unknown origin, the
question should not be so easily dismissed.
Furthermore, in the past decade physicians have come to accept the fact
stomach ulcers can be produced by bacteria (Helicobacter pylori), and some
ulcers eventually lead to stomach cancer. For many decades, it was dogma
that bacteria could not live in the acid environment of the stomach. Also,
pathologists could never see or detect bacteria in the stomach lining around
ulcers. With the discovery of Helicobacteria and special staining
techniques, doctors can now demonstrate bacteria in many ulcers - proving
that microbiologists and pathologists were unable to "see" microbes, even
though they are now clearly visible once they accepted the possibility
microbes might be present.
Cancer, New Life, and Reich's "T-Bacilli"
Although the origin and cause of cancer is mysterious, there is no
doubt cancer is the body's futile and often fatal attempt to create new life
and new growth. That is why cancer is so intimately connected with theories
about the origin of life.
One of the most controversial physicians of the last century was
Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), a psychiatrist and cancer researcher who claimed
to discover "orgone energy" - an energy that pervades the world and is
intimately connected with our physical and mental well-being.
In The Cancer Biopathy (1948), he wrote that cancer is a systemic
disease caused by emotional despair and resignation and the chronic
thwarting of natural sexual functioning. And this was just a few of his
highly unorthodox beliefs based on his many observations and experiments.
Reich also uncovered infectious "T-bacilli" (bacteria) in cancer that
resulted from the degeneration of cancerous tissue. In his view, these
bacteria formed a bridge between the living and the non-living. The
T-bacilli were present in the blood and tissue before the cancer tumour
developed; and these microbes were intimately connected to "bions" and the
loss of biological energy. Reich's heretical bions were the carriers of
biological energy; and the staphylococcus and streptococcus germs he found
connected to cancer were actually formed from the degeneration of the bions.
Just as there is no clear dividing line between life and non-life,
there is no clear boundary between healthy and diseased individuals. Reich
claimed the cancer cell developed as the body's attempt to resist the
build-up of the T-bacilli in energy-depleted tissue.
"The first step in the development of the cancer tumour is not the
cancer cell. it is the appearance of T-bacilli in the tissue or in the
blood." But T-bacilli were not only found in cancer; they were also present
in the blood and tissues of both healthy and sick non-cancerous individuals.
However, sick and cancerous patients showed a larger number of these forms,
and Reich developed a blood test to show this. T-bacilli were always found
where there is degeneration of protein, and in that respect, Reich wrote:
"All humans have cancer."
The orgone energy of the body determined the resistance of the body to
these microbes. As long as the tissues and blood are "organotically strong,
every T-bacillus will be destroyed and eliminated before it can propagate,
accumulate, and cause damage", wrote Reich. Because cancer germs were
present in healthy people, Reich knew this would be a very difficult concept
for physicians to consider and accept.
Reich wanted scientists to look at science in a new way and to try and
see it from the point of view of "energetic functionalism."
For example, "The bacteriologist, for instance, sees the
staphylococcus as a static formation, spherical or oval in shape, about 0.8
micron in size, reacting with a bluish coloration to Gram stain, and
arranged in clusters. These characteristics are important for orgone
biophysics, but are not the essentials. The name itself says nothing about
the origin, function, and position of the blue coccus in nature. What the
bacteriologists calls 'staphylococcus' is, for orgone physics a small energy
vesicle in the process of degeneration. Orgone biophysics investigates the
origin of the staphylococcus from other forms of life and follows its
transformation. It examines the staphylococcus in connection with the
processes of the total biological energy of the organism and produces it
experimentally through degenerative processes in bions, cells, etc."
Through his scientific experiments with orgone energy, Reich hoped to
harness orgone for the treatment of disease and the good of humanity.
Needless to say, Reich's entire life's work was considered hogwash, and
a scientific inquisition eventually ensued. Branded a menace and a quack, he
ran afoul of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which claimed his
experimental "orgone accumulator" was being used illegally to treat cancer -
and that it was nothing more than a perverted sex box.
Refusing to obey a court injunction, Reich was sentenced to prison. His
books were burned, his equipment destroyed by FDA agents, and he died at the
federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in March 1957, at age 60.
His research into the origin of life, and his belief orgone energy
contained within the tiniest forms of life that could not be destroyed, make
him one of the most misunderstood and hated physicians of the twentieth
century.
But, as we shall discover, there are other heretics in medicine, now
mostly ignored and forgotten, who also believed cancer was connected with
bacteria of human origin. Like Reich, they claimed a study of these microbes
would not only lead to the infectious cause of cancer - but to a cause of
life itself.
Next – Part Two
// posted by Linda Weissinger Lupowitz @ 6:31 PM 
