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On December 15 2011 17:36 B.I.G. wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:27 Dhalphir wrote:
Somewhat unfortunately, she's not likely to get rich from this. Vital cures like this never make the creator any money, because the government won't stand for you charging an amount proportional to what it cost to develop.
But, she'll be famous for life if it leads to a true cure. oh yeah because the only possible motivation she could have is mo money...
That's quite notorious of you..
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PICTURES OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!!
But seriously, why doesn't the Wall Street Journal have some picture of her holding up a giant check or something? I need to gauge whether or not this girl's as nerdy as I imagine her to look.
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Our kids are our future. Glad to see young teenagers doing something positive for a change. Mad props to her.
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On January 25 2012 17:28 TheToaster wrote:
PICTURES OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!!!
But seriously, why doesn't the Wall Street Journal have some picture of her holding up a giant check or something? I need to gauge whether or not this girl's as nerdy as I imagine her to look.
google is a wonderful thing:
http://x0c.xanga.com/149f836250033280155747/m223184122.jpg
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If I was the president of the world or of her rich country... or president Of anything with lots of money really, I 'd make her so rich that all she would have to do is keep developing what she's doing and she wouldn't have to do anything else. I'd make sure she is wealthy as well as her children and her children's children.
All it takes honestly is lots of motivation that is motivated by an emotion that is forced opon someone who is capable of doing something that they're good at (example to grandparents dying) and anything can be achieved really.
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On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 
That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally.
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Wow, this would be amazing if it worked. Congrats to her too. That's really impressive stuff. Fingers crossed.
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On January 25 2012 17:59 Bleak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally.
What natural selection can't take care of embryo selection, and in the future embryonic genetic modification, will.
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On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter...
Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things.
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On January 25 2012 19:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter... Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things.
Siemens does not take plagiarism lightly. Why would you believe a random internet poster over a prestigious science competition?
Seriously, even if they have some judging mishaps at the lower levels, Siemens doesn't choose winners lightly. The contest is actually a pretty big deal. No, cancer was not cured. But some nontrivial scientific progress was made along the way. And yes, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Ticklishmusic, either link the fck to the place the girl plagiarized from or stop fouling up the thread with your bitter and unfounded accusations.
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On January 25 2012 20:22 SerpentFlame wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 19:32 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 25 2012 11:24 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 10:22 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 10:09 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 25 2012 09:01 dAPhREAk wrote:On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 15:30 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:On January 24 2012 14:50 ticklishmusic wrote:On January 24 2012 14:46 dAPhREAk wrote:
thought the thread was bumped because she had cured cancer. instead, some dude with a chip on his shoulder decides to shit on her.... not cool dude... I'm just saying that her research is not original at all. I really hate seeing articles where the author makes a discovery or event seem like it's a huge deal or really groundbreaking when it really isn't. Then I pointed out that Siemens has some problems in their selection process based on personal experience. Well, if that's the case, then wtf is going on here. Could they really be that dumb? Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. For example, if you work in a lab, someone at the institution might be a judge, or know one of the judges. It's simple for them to be like "oh, I have this girl working in my lab. She's doing a project on X. You should give it a look." I had a friend who competed in ISEF (different science fair track), and her dad gave her a draft research proposal and told her to go crazy with it. In short, science fair judging can be pretty messed up. There are hundreds of research papers in hundreds of topics being published, written, editted every day. The judges can't read all of them either. To be fair though, most likely what she did was make some minor contribution to the field of knowledge-- like test out something that sounds complicated to layman, but in the field was a relatively simple experiment that hadn't been done or published about yet. My own project was of that sort (though I suppose the buzzword "cancer" is a lot cooler sounding than "cellulase" or "ethanol". That's what most "higher-level" science fair projects do. serious.... chip.... on.... your.... shoulder.... first, you call her a plagiarizer. now, you are saying she may have cheated.... I freely admitted that I had a bad experience with science fairs. If I wanted, I could have omitted that. My point is that high school level science fairs are often filled with projects that are not entirely the student's work, fairly simple when taken in context of the field they were done, or had extensive assistance and access to labs and resources. If you've looked on various science/ college forums like collegeconfidential or physcisforum, you can find other stories of science fair shenanigans. And again, I did not call her a cheater-- don't accuse me of saying that. I said that A. her project is not a breakthrough, and that there are and have been many other projects on the topic and B. that science fairs have a lot of stuff apart from pure scientific review. Published, peer-reviewed papers are the only source of information for discoveries I'm willing to trust. EDIT. Did I say anything about my friends being awesome? No I didn't. I pretty much said they cheated on their ISEF project. I didn't mean to boast about my project either-- I offered it as a comparison of another project done. But seriously, you admitted you were playing video games when you were 17. I was busy working on a lab scrounging for a topic to do a science project on. I know more about what goes on it these things. lets try quoting: On January 24 2012 14:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I think it's pretty pathetic Siemens gave her a prize for a project that was more or less plagarized. On January 25 2012 05:40 ticklishmusic wrote:
Yes. It's also possible she has some sort of connection with the judges. i cant find where you talked about your friends, so i will take that back. Sigh. I said Siemens was pathetic. And I backed up my opinion of science fairs quite enough I think. Saying she had a connection with a judge might be a stretch and admittedly a statement made colored by (whatever bad diction) my experience, but it happens quite often. Try looking at the list of Siemens projects. There are thousands of them, and probably quite a few dozen really good ones. I'm willing to bet that a few of those got passed over in earlier rounds of judging for various reasons. This is pretty tangential to the discussion (which was pretty tangential anyways), but cancer is a huge keyword, buzzword, whatever in science fairs. Do a project on cancer, and many judges will be like "OMG CANCER CURE YAY". I once saw a project at a regional science fair about "cancer worms", in which some student got some earthworms, irradiated them and compared the size of tumors between those that were cut and those that weren't. And somehow that was a cure for cancer. I believe it made it to the state level before it lost to some project about peanut butter... Back in Dec., I was really happy for this person, but even though you basically killed nearly all of adoration I had for her achievement, I'm not feeling down. What's important to me is knowing the fact of the matter. If in fact she did was basically already done, and chances are she simply copied it, then it's there's nothing amazing here. I congratulate her on her putting in the effort into this project/presentation as it surely did take effort, and on her luck in the competition, but I guess there really isn't much else to say. She didn't discover anything or do anything novel. That said, I hate sensationalism, and it gives me a more negative outlook on things. Siemens does not take plagiarism lightly. Why would you believe a random internet poster over a prestigious science competition? Seriously, even if they have some judging mishaps at the lower levels, Siemens doesn't choose winners lightly. The contest is actually a pretty big deal. No, cancer was not cured. But some nontrivial scientific progress was made along the way. And yes, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Ticklishmusic, either link the fck to the place the girl plagiarized from or stop fouling up the thread with your bitter and unfounded accusations.
Yeah, but standing on the shoulders of giants doesn't take just 1000 hours... As I wrote before in 1000 hours you may at best get to know the literature and even that would be tough as the topic she contributes too is not new and you need to be familiar with what's been done "to stand on the shoulders of giants". There is a reason why PhD in science takes 5+ years. And these people are already the best of the best.
It's all cool that's she won and there must have been something ingenious about it but I would be damn surprised if there was anything even close to as revolutionary as the article claims. I would be even more surprised if she wasn't working under a team of researchers.
Seriously, research takes years and you need to have huge prior knowledge before you're ready to really make any sort of contribution. Reading the posts in this thread one would think that anyone can just grab a book, spend a few months reading it and come up with revolutionary idea. It just doesn't work like that.
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On January 25 2012 17:31 nBk wrote:
Our kids are our future. Glad to see young teenagers doing something positive for a change. Mad props to her.
i don't think anything changed, kids have always been the future, and some have invented things of worth at young ages. I think the media just didn't cover the events really well. Obviously this is a step above.
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I'm glad there are people like this in the world 
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On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
That's because in the countries where the research is being conducted, cancer is a bigger killer than AIDS. Not saying it's not important, but when was the last time you saw an internationally funded laboratory complex in Africa on par with North American, European, or Asian labs? They'll prioritize closer to home, if you know what I'm saying.
For that matter, there are more philanthropic organizations and wealthy philanderers in those areas than Africa. There's just not enough money in the budget for African nations to worry about donations and charities (as they are more on the recieving side than the donating side).
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Rofl, there is no cure for cancer. Cancer is a group of diseases like bacterial infections, each type of cancer needs to have specific treatment. The media is just ignorant and or is being sensational to sell stories to the stupid.
Please, do some research before you do statements like this one!
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On January 26 2012 04:27 Rob28 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2011 17:37 m1rk3 wrote:
it's funny how something that's not a major killer (cancer) receives a lot of money, yet something like aids and HIV in africa does not. So many people die from the latter versus cancer. Yet, the amount of money for a cancer drug is 1000 times that of a drug to treat aids.
That's because in the countries where the research is being conducted, cancer is a bigger killer than AIDS. Not saying it's not important, but when was the last time you saw an internationally funded laboratory complex in Africa on par with North American, European, or Asian labs? They'll prioritize closer to home, if you know what I'm saying.
Actually, cancer kills 12.49 percent of all deaths, while HIV/AIDS accounts for 4.87 percent. (Source: Wikipedia, which cites the WHO)
Of course, cancer tends to be a first world problem that strikes at people who've lived already long lives, while HIV/AIDS kills off younger people in the 3rd world in droves. I personally believe in an ideal world, we'd put HIV/AIDS as a higher priority, but the idea that more people die from AIDS than cancer is not correct.
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On January 26 2012 04:29 znow1 wrote:Show nested quote +
Rofl, there is no cure for cancer. Cancer is a group of diseases like bacterial infections, each type of cancer needs to have specific treatment. The media is just ignorant and or is being sensational to sell stories to the stupid.
Please, do some research before you do statements like this one!
... Yeah, cancer is a failure in physiological homeostasis. It has nothing to do with "disease" in the conventional way of thinking.
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On January 25 2012 17:59 Bleak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 10:37 synapse wrote:On January 25 2012 10:24 Uldridge wrote:On January 25 2012 10:10 Bleak wrote:On January 25 2012 09:48 Rotodyne wrote:On January 25 2012 09:44 Bleak wrote:
Cancer is like the new flu, it is really quite widespread nowadays. Natural selection will take care of it eventually though. no, actually it won't. cancer usually occurs after reproductive age, natural selection is not involved. I was thinking in terms of people who don't get cancer due to their genes being better reproduce and survive. That doesn't make sense. Cancer can come in many forms and types and is mostly completely random. "Good" genes have nothing to do with it. ANYONE can get cancer, that's the scary thing. An individual has an estimated amount of 10^23 cells in the body. Every cell becomes a growing danger for mutation with every next generation. DNA replication has it's flaws, but it's mostly corrected. The system is so good that it only makes 1 mistake (1 wrong base) per cell cycle. This is also accompanied with the decaying of the telomeres... Also, take into account the amount of harmful radiation out there and the higher chances of getting this disease are evident. There's also cancer inducing viruses like Human Papilloma Virus to account for. I believe every human body has at least some mutated cells in the body, who just don't have the genetic instability yet to develop into a cancer. This is NORMAL. Only the ones with all the right variables (like being able to make blood vessels grow towards you for growth, telomerase activation, ..) become real threats to the human body. The sad thing is, while the evolutionary process has given us much to thank for, it does come with a price. It's normal for a mammalian to develop a cancer, how horrible that may sound.. (think about how many pets die from some sort of cancer.. I have had two pets die of it..) Any person could have had the misfortune of having just the wrong gene targetted at the wrong time for a cancer to develop, no good or bad genes will fix this. However, I do believe some people are more predisposed to cancer than others. Hope this is kind of understandable and not just a ramblefest to read, I tend of being all over the place.. I do believe there are certain genes that can (maybe indirectly?) lead to higher chances of certain cancers. Even if this weren't true though, most cancers occur past the normal ages at which we reproduce, so @Bleak: yeah natural selection can't do anything about cancer. EDIT: I will assume you typo'd 10^23 and meant 10^13 That's scary to hear man. If evolution can't take care it, it seems like we're fucked eternally.
Its funny because all natural selection cares about is getting you to have more kids and having those kids survive to make more kids. You know the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations? They basically give you a much higher risk of breast/ovarian cancer to the point that carriers of these genes sometimes get both ovaries and breasts removed as a defensive measure.
You might ask yourself, why would these alleles exist in our gene pool if its survival of the fittest? Well the simple answer is that it has little effect on whether or not a woman reproduces, since by the time she gets cancer she has probably already reproduced. The more interesting answer is that some studies suggest that BRCA1 and BRCA2 confer increased fertility (and possibly skew male/female sex ratio of offspring). By keeping BRCA1 and BRCA2 in the gene pool natural selection is effectively making a tradeoff between increased fertility earlier in life for increased mortality later in life.
Edit: As a thought experiment, think about regeneration. The ability to regenerate organs/tissue is extremely useful for obvious reasons but can increase risk of tissues turning cancerous. Examples of tissues that can regenerate quickly are skin and intestinal tissue, both places where cancers are frequent. Ever wonder why we have comparatively poor regenerative abilities in our heart/brain?
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Man you haters are just jealous, there's no need to downplay her achievement lol.
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United States10328 Posts
hello guys!
in other news Angela Zhang wasn't selected as a finalist for the other most-prestigious-high-school-research-contest, the Intel Science Talent Search. I'm a bit surprised, but it's not terribly rare for Siemens finalists to not make Intel finals, I guess.
http://www.societyforscience.org/sts/2012/finalists
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EPT
