Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Virus and (Scientific) Madness by Maximo Sandin


Virus and (scientific) Madness

By Maximo Sandin

A new “scientific breakthrough” has been announced by the media as a new use for the antiviral medicines: The treatment against schizophrenia. According to the magazine Schizephrenia Research (1): “The exposition to the common virus that produces labial herpes can be partially responsible of the diminishing of regions of the brain and the lost of abilities regarding concentration, memory, movement coordination and skills, that has been widely observed in patients with schizophrenia”. The opportunistic appearance of a virus in a supposedly deteriorated organ paves the way for the pharmaceutic industry: "These findings could derive in new forms for treatment or prevention of the cognitive deterioration that normally accompanies the disease, included the therapy with antiviral drugs”, explain the authors.

As a continuation of the disastrous and indiscriminate fight against bacteria, that had as a consequence the expansion of bacterial antibiotic resistance, now has commenced the fight against viruses. It seems like the “star drug” of pharmaceutical laboratories for the XXI century will be antivirals. And they have a huge field of application. As we all know, any disease with a controversial diagnosis has been produced by “a virus”. Therefore we “have to combat against them”. As an example, the infamous antirretroviral Tamiflu is a neuraminidase inhibitor, one of the two “surface antigens” that the Influenza virus carries on its capside (the other one is hemaglutinin). In children treated with Tamiflu neurological problems have been observed, very serious in some cases (in Japan, suicides have been reported regarding this issue) (2). Neuraminidase is an enzyme that is implicated in the development and maintenance of the Myelin sheath in the mammal’s neurons and which inhibitive effect is immediate in children (for the adults, we’ll have to wait...).

In the human genome between 90,000 and 300,000 of virus-derived sequences haven been identified, fundamentally from retrovirus (4), but also DNA virus exist. More precisely the genome of Herpesvirus 6A is integrated in the human chromosome’s telomeres (5). The variability of this numbers is due to the consideration of virus as a whole, or only virus-derived partial sequences. These sequences are “permanent components of the human transcriptome” (6), that is to say, they’re a constitutive part of our genome and are expressed in every tissue (6).

Even the viral sequences that code for the capside have shown to have an active an active role in fundamental biological processes (3, 7, 8). The activity of the retroviral origin sequences is specially abundant and relevant in the embryonary developmental processes (9), therefore in the formation of our tissues and organs. The most coherent inference of the described phenomena would be as following: If the development of solid tumors is due to the beginning of an embryonary process (10, 11) produced by a certain “environmental aggression” then the association of viruses with tumors will not be that of cause, otherwise of consecuence. Tumors release viral particles (12). And the association of virus with damaged or sick tissues would have the same cause. Truly absurd associations of viruses with diseases with an evident environmental, degenerative or autoinmune origin have been diagnosed, such as the chronic fatigue sindrome, artritis, Alzheimer, prostate tumors... Even the activation of an endogenous virus has been described as a consequence of the treatment against multiple sclerosis with the drug Natalizumab. The drug could activate a dormant virus in the kidneys of the patients whose “malignization” triggered a Progressive Multifocal Encephalopathy.

This war against viruses has been started fundamentally by companies that financed in an increasing fashion the “applied” biological research (that meaning with commercial goals) and has become a total nonsense behind the back of the knowledge derived from the “basic” research, in other words the true scientific research. The elaboration of vaccines (another big business for the companies) by the cultivation of viruses in chicken embryos (13), or the more modern, which use cell lines for culture (13), are real factories of hybrid viruses (not to mention the “transgenic” vaccines) which potential danger can be of extreme consequences (14, 15, 16). Furthermore the demential tendency to the use of “antivirals” for all kinds of diseases for which a viral origin is diagnosed in a very unstrict manner imply a new attack to fundamental components of the human organism, components of life. Every day more and more scientific data show that we live surrounded by an unconceivable amount of viruses and bacteria (17, 18) that develop essential functions in our ecosystems (19,20) and that have had key roles in the evolutionary processes of life (21, 22), and that their “pathogenic” aspect is the result of a certain imbalance of their natural functions. It’s a suicidal war against Nature. Actually a war against ourselves.

The real “mental pathology” is that of the rationality and thought predominant in the conception of Nature. A conception embedded in the brain of scientists and that observes Nature as a battlefield in which every component of itself is a “contestant” or “competitor”. But let’s not worry about it, the big multinational pharmaceutical companies are going to defend us against “the worst of all our competitors”. After the defeat in the fight against bacteria, the new battle against viruses has commenced. The mother of all battles. Maybe the final fight?

REFERENCES

1.- David J. Schretlen, Tracy D. Vannorsdall, Jessica M. Winicki, Yaser Mushtaq, Takatoshi Hikida, Akira Sawa, Robert H. Yolken, Faith B. Dickerson and Nicola G. Cascella. (2010) Neuroanatomic and cognitive abnormalities related to herpes simplex virus type 1 in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research Volume 118, Issues 1-3, May 2010, Pages 224-231.

2.- Agencia EFE (30/7/2009). Alta tasa de efectos secundarios en niños que recibieron Tamiflu contra la gripe A.

3.- Megumi Saito, Carmen Sato-Bigbee and Robert K. Yu. (2008). Neuraminidase Activities in Oligodendroglial Cells of the Rat Brain. Journal of Neurochemistry

Volume 58 Issue 1, Pages 78 – 82.

4.- Lower, R., J. Lower, and R. Kurth. (1996). The viruses in all of us: characteristics and biological significance of human endogenous retrovirus sequences. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 93:5177-5184.

5.- Arbucklea, J. H. Et al., (2010). The latent human herpesvirus-6A genome specifically integrates in telomeres of human chromosomes invivo and in vitro. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0913586107.

6.- Seifarth, W. et al., (2005). Comprehensive Analysis of Human Endogenous Retrovirus Transcriptional Activity in Human Tissues with a Retrovirus-Specific Microarray. J Virol. 2005; 79(1): 341–352.

7.- Bouton, O., et al. (2004). The endogenous retroviral locus ERVWE1 is a bona fide gene involved in hominoid placental physiology. PNAS | vol. 101 | no. 6 | 1731-1736.

8.- Gabus C. et al., (2001). The prion protein has DNA strand transfer properties similar to retroviral nucleocapsid protein. J Mol Biol. 6;307(4):1011-1021.

9.- Andersson, A.- C., et al. (2002). Developmental Expression of HERV-R (ERV3) and HERV-K in Human Tissue. Virology Volume 297, Issue 2, Pages 220-225

10.- Kho, A. T. et al., (2004). Conserved mechanisms across development and tumorigenesis revealed by a mouse development perspective of human cancers. Genes Dev.; 18(6): 629–640.

11.- Schuller U., Kho A. Zhao Q., Qiufu Ma., Rowitch DH. (2006) Cerebellar ‘transcriptome’ reveals cell-type and stage-specific expression during postnatal development and tumorigenesis.Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience. Volume 33, Issue 3, 6, Pages 247-259.

12.- Seifarth, W. et al., (1995). Retrovirus-like particles released from the human breast cancer cell line T47-D display type B- and C-related endogenous retroviral sequences. J. Virol., Vol 69, No. 10, 6408-6416.

13.- INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PHARMACEUTICAL AND MANUFATURERS & ASSOCIATIONS http://www.ifpma.org/influenza/index.aspx?47

14.- Khan A. S. et al., (2009). Proposed algorithm to investigate latent and occult viruses in vaccine cell substrates by chemical induction. Biologicals. 2009 Mar 17. [Epub ahead of print].

15.- ISIS Report 07/10/09 Flu Vaccines and the Risk of Cancer http://www.i-sis.org.uk/fluVaccinesCancerRisks.php

16.- Hussain, A. I. (2003). Identification and Characterization of Avian Retroviruses in Chicken Embryo-Derived Yellow Fever Vaccines: Investigation of Transmission to Vaccine Recipients. J Virol. 2003, 77(2): 1105–1111.

17.- Grice, E. A. et al., (2009). Topographical and Temporal Diversity of the Human Skin Microbiome. Science 29, Vol. 324. no. 5931, pp. 1190 - 1192

18.- Williamson, K.E., et al., (2003). Sampling Natural Viral Communities from Soil for Culture-Independent Analyses. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Vol. 69, No. 11, p. 6628-6633

19.- Gewin, V. 2006. Genomics: Discovery in the dirt. Nature .Published online: 25 January 2006; | doi:10.1038/439384a

20.- Suttle, C. A. (2005). Viruses in the sea. Nature 437, 356-361.

21.- Gupta, R. S. 2000. The natural evolutionary relationships among prokaryotes. Crit. Rev. Microbiol. 26: 111-131.

22.- Villarreal, L. P. (2004). Viruses and the Evolution of Life. ASM Press, Washington.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
ban nha mat pho ha noi bán nhà mặt phố hà nội