[Gina]

is the freedom we all share to exchange ideas no matter how varied or outside the box they may be. It is only thanks to high level of trust and comfort that this board nurtures that enables many of us who would otherwise remain silent to actually speak up and sometimes, even speak out. We are so fortunate to have such a truly OPEN forum and I can not thank Christine and Joe enough for all they must do behind- the- scenes to continually provide us with such a fabulous tool.

Obviously, many of us will differ in ideology from time to time, and I admittedly tend to follow evolutionary thinking and enjoy reading folks like Darwin, Richard Dawson and Bryan Skyes and many others who share these views. However, I also read Stu Kaufman (At home in the Universe, is particularly accessible) and several varied supporters of intelligent design and was personally raised very strictly religious and protestant.

That said, almost any anthropology book that you would pick up would note that the lives of the early hominids were brief, certainly by 21st century homo sapien standards anyway...and "grandmothers" actually are a rather recent evolutionary phenomenon, one that has MOST likely--as was pointed out above, made a world of difference to our entire culture.

I will look up the studies on the inverse relationship between estrogen and her-2 and post them either here or in the articles section for any one interested...the her-2 link to a common ancestor ideas presented in my thread above were just some original research areas that if I had the time, I would enjoy pursuing..more as a hobby than serious "science"...smile... Also, it is important to remember that her-2, as a remnant of some sort of self-destruct mechanism, was an early theory that I examined and not one that I pay much attention to these days, but is still viable until proved or disproved one way or the other.

However, it is at least of passing note that a LARGE percentage of species, extinct and contemporary, die out after their reproductive capabilities have diminished in order to free up and provide space and resources so that their young might flourish. Our species found, however, ...over many, many years of evolution, that the emergence of "grandmothers" provided both significant survival advantage to our progeny and a reliable way to increase our numbers "to cover all the earth"...and this is just as true today as it was perhaps, thousands of years ago...grandmothers are a very vital link to all that we were in the past and to much of what our sons and daughters will become in the next generations.

Grandmothers to mothers to daughters pass on the mitochondrial DNA..., latest research areas of interest has been to zero- in on this mitochondrial DNA to see if it has any involvement with the her-2 cascade scenarios. And even though I tend to follow an infectuous first cause paradigm of her-2, I can not ignore the data that not only do quinolones and other certain types of antibiotics disrupt plasmid protein synthesis, but they ALSO, by virtue of the fact that the mitochondria were-- in pre-eucaryote days anyway, most likely bacteria, ..have the power to disrupt mitochondrial DNA/ RNA protein synthesis and if some part of the A to c-myc- to her-2 to Vegf to Z cascade is being influenced by these mitochondrial pathways--passed down to us from those very same great great great grandmothers, then, the disruption caused by the quinolones and other certain classes of antibiotics is what produces the positive effect in downgrading her-2 mediated disease and not because these quinolones and other antibiotics are taking out some postulated first cause air breathing gram negative organism...but, if one were to strictly apply Ockham's razor here...the infectuous first cause theory would still win out as it is the most elegant by virtue of its simplicity of the two: Take out the organism causing the cascade and entire cancer promoting machinery grinds to a dead stop, and the rest of the cell is left intact.

Pragmatism would urge us not to waste time debating the two theories as ad hoc though they may be--as the end result is more or less the same, but if, for whatever reasons the quinolones and certain anti-biotics have a measureable effect on down grading her-2, let's release that for compassionate use RIGHT now and save the splitting -hair arguments for why they work for later, but that is just me, someone who supports a common sense to science approach.

In order to ever do justice to investigating ANY of these outside -the -box original hypotheses, one would certainly require more resources than a private citizen such as myself has at this time anyway. Also, love him or hate him, even our President --in his recent State of the Union speech --was calling on PRIVATE as well as public sector involvement to get on board, regardless of partisan politics, and simply SOLVE THE PROBLEMS. The new Virginia Governor, echoed this exact same sentiment in his after remarks and is well-known to have worked hard in Virginia with former governor Mark Warner to achieve just that.

Folks, we have a multi-faceted problem here were her-2 is concerned. If proteins were bits of colored yarn..it is like we have a multi-colored, knotted wad of them to untangle before completely understanding the mechanism of her-2 mediated disease.

Let's start untying the knots and unraveling the yarn....the more of us who share what we are learning with each other on this board, just like we have been doing in this thread and so many others, the faster we can unravel the whole ball. Let's agree that not only is it OK to disagree, but that it is expected and even sought after. Nothing new and different is-- by definition-- ever created out of absolute homogeneity. Only after debating and reviewing as many angles of the issue and viewpoints as we can will the taste of ultimate consensus be obtained and made all the sweeter. I look forward to that day.

Also, on the issue of begetting and the expanded value of web-sites such as ours, I was thinking today, that in the past, the only way the DNA could be passed on was via physical direct transmission from one generation to the next and unless you passed your genes on via this route, they died with you. But then, it occurred to me that thanks to the invention of the internet, for those of us who may not be blessed to pass on our "code" in the traditional way, that sites such as these may evolve into collective knowledge repositories that in their own way will transmit "the code" of life via wisdom gained and transmitted by words rather than merely genes to future generations and that these repositories will benefit and advance our species continued survival and expansion in a way not unlike the extended benefit provided by our grandmothers. So in the final analysis, even though I may never physically be able to transmit my own mitochondrial DNA to an actual "daughter" there still remains hope that something of what my great, great, great, grandmothers passed down to me, may still live on, not in the flesh, but in the word.

"In the beginning was the word."

Godspeed,
Gina