Thoughts and Thinking with Genetics

It seems strange to me how and why thoughts that seem important come to mind. However they come during periods of uninterrupted time such as when running or when I drove my car alone and today when, after awakening from my usual welcome sleep I wondered how a geneticist would answer the question of an example of the inheritance of an acquired character. We know if a pregnant woman takes the drug, Thalidomide her baby may be born with serious physical defects. I have just listened to a video of a course in Genetics given by Bob Goldberg, a UCLA professor that was a remarkable experience.
In his course he tells how the thousands of genes determine everything that ends up as us or any other creature. So, can diet determine how animals can change from the expected to something different? Wouldn't that be an inherited character? Of course I write to so many experts about so many things I do not expect a reply but perhaps Dr. Goldberg is as different as is his course. As a lecturer I have never heard his equal and that goes for his subject as far as I am concerned. He announces in his first lecture that his course is unlike any given in UCLA and more important and I believe it. So, clearly the subject of damage to the fetus of a pregnant female by foods or food additives may be the greatest suggestion of this century- so far. It seems to me that perhaps all the problems of humans such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, MS, MD, ALS, Autism and so many others may all be the result of chemicals that screw up the genetic pattern of normal embryonic people during pregnancy. I hope one day a geneticist of the caliber of Dr.Robert Goldberg will comment on such a wild statement. If you have such a wild thought don't keep it to yourself. Shake it out and dust it off and share it with others, even if you fear ridicule.

An Orthopedic Adventure in a Dog

This case may be of interest to other veterinarians and even to a human specialist in bones. I will mention it as it would be unfortunate for me to die with this procedure left untold. I take you back to a day of frustration when a handsome young adult Saint Bernard was presented for consultation as to performing euthanasia due to the pain and helplessness of the dog's hind legs. I had given up with attempting to help the dog with medication and his hip joints were so bad there was nothing more I could do. It was a tearful time with the family distressed for their pet and for my having to admit my inability to help. It was an all too common a situation with frequent similar cases. I asked if rather than killing the dog I might be permitted to perform surgery that I considered would be of no help but I would at least try something that was not mentioned in surgical procedures for man or beast. It would be an experiment at no cost for the owners. For those without knowledge of the problem it consists of a defective hip joint in which the ball of the ball and socket joint slips in and out of the too shallow socket resulting in pain with every motion of the rear legs. My procedure was to remove the ball of the heads of the femurs. I performed the surgery with literally a hammer and a wood chisel from my work bench. Of course sterilized. The surgery was more difficult than I had imagined and if repeated I would use a giggly saw at the neck of the ball of the joint. It was a difficult and lengthy operation. The huge dog was placed in our recovery room until he had recovered from the anesthesia when I personally helped him to his feet. Much to my surprise that dog used those legs better than before the surgery. I couldn't believe it and the following day had the owners come and take him home for convalescing. That dog led a satisfactory life with hardly a limp in his hind quarters and eventually was euthanized for old age complications. My request for permission to perform a necropsy to study the hip joints was given. The findings were so surprising I could hardly believe it. The socket part of the pelvis had flattened with cartilage and the femur had likewise flattened and within the area between was fluid as in a normal joint capsule. Frankly the surgery was so crude and so difficult I did not offer to perform it on another dog.

An Old Wives Tail

One problem with "Old wives tales" is that every so often they are found to have scientific evidence of being true. We still find members of our society who cling to so many such tails long after they are debunked such as mustard plasters for pneumonia, all kinds of herbs that have believers promoting them without proof that they sound as if there must be evidence of their usefulness. The same is true of Astrology. In reading of days only slightly before my childhood one interesting expression used regularly in the medical profession in considering the outcome of certain diseases was, he or she had, "passed the crisis" and would therefore recover. Black magic?
A personal experience leads me to believe that the doctors of those days had knowledge with no scientific proof that they knew the patient would recover. So this blog is to throw some light on that subject. The light I have to throw comes from an incident of a disease three Beaglers had after spending vacation days in North Carolina with our Beagles at field trials. On returning to our homes a month later each of us was stricken with a serious set of symptoms. In retrospect the disease was infectious hepatitis, a virus disease with an incubation period of about 30 days. In my case I lost 25 pounds in 15 days according to our bathroom scale. During that time I could hold nothing down other than part of the water I sipped from time to time. At that time a Yale professor who was Chairman of the United Nations Comission on Jaundice was brought out to talk with me by my father who was concerned. By that time I had turned cannery yellow in skin and eye color. Dr. John Paul was the doctor's name. After discussing my problem Dr. Paul had two bits of advice for me. First was not to take vitamins. The second was to stay out of hospitals. Later he explained to my father that the survival rate of those who did not go to a hospital was much higher than those hospitalized with infectious hepatitis. About vitamins those who took vitamins had a considerably higher death rate than those who did not take vitamins during the disease. My personal doctor had advised vitamins but they were impossible to keep down, fortunately. It was almost 3 weeks without food that one day I tried a milkshake and that was the beginning of my recovery.
Years later, thinking about that situation I wondered if the lack of vitamins was part of the reason for my recovery. I thought, just suppose the virus of infectious hepatitis required say vitamin B1 for its nourishment. In weeks of starvation the virus without my B1 nourishment may have weakened it so that my immune system could overcome it. Before I get back to the old doctors with their,"the crisis is past" expression let me suggest an avenue of research that I wonder about. We have found that it takes special cultures to grow organisms in. Perhaps requirements in the cultures for some of those disease causing agents would be ones the inflicted animal, human or other, could survive without for longer than the "bug." In my case I wonder if I survived because I out lasted the vitamin requirements of the virus.
Back to my original reason for this blog. It may be incidental but it has been reported that any practicing human physician on entering a home with a patient with Typhoid fever could make the diagnosis without seeing the patient, the odor was so typical. The same may be said of a veterinarian entering an exam room with a female with a problem, pyometria, with a discharging uterine infection. With experience doctors would find a pattern of survival with a given problem that in a given number of days of life recovery would follow. So without scientific knowledge of why, doctors would have a basis for such a prediction. In my case in any hospital a patient who could not retain food or medication would be given the medicine or vitamins by injection. Hmmm. Incidentally my two other Beagling friends also came down with infectious hepatitis a month after our vacation and one did spend weeks in a hospital and both recovered. A Post Script. How often is it necessary to eat a given vitamin? Say B1. Is once a week sufficient? How about the other vitamins? How about protein? We have much research in need of being done.

Uncontaminated bread

In about 1950 My first wife, Nancy and I were active in The Cooperative Consumers of New Haven. It has been from day one that our country was settled by those who helped one another be it with sickness or barn building or governing. The Coop movement is in keeping with that spirit and is alive and well here in Brattleboro. With the New Haven Coop the board listened to several members expound on a recipe developed by nutritionists at Cornell University for the best bread possible to make and urged us to have it baked locally and sold in our two stores. A local baker did bake it for us and we sold the best store-bought bread Dorothy and I had ever tasted. We soon found there was a problem with it. More than 24 hours on a store shelf fungi growth was obvious. At home at room temperature we had the same problem. A local bakery baked bread that did not show aging on a store shelf in a weeks time. We never did find what the ingredient was that kept the commercial bread from spoiling but if a blogger has an answer to that question I would like to look into it as a possible cause of health problems.

Hip Dysplasia in Dogs

The more I think of this subject the more amazed I become. Here we veterinarians have about 24 institutes of higher learning all with teachers teaching genetics that offer degrees in Veterinary Medicine. Also there are college level professors of some of the greatest human institutions of learning who apparently lived with genetics and many of whom must have had a dog of their own with Hip Dysplasia and no one I have heard of suggested that a problem that started with a reported dominate trait in a German Shepard dog spread as through the wind to all breeds of dogs. Unbelievable. I, too am in that designation of ridiculous ignorance.
Archeologists claim there were dogs in Mexico born without hair 6,000 years ago. Some interested parties went to Mexico and combing the villages found 10 hairless specimens and the result was a new bred. That's how a genetic trait spreads and not like some bacterial or virus disease. I want to shout it for all to hear and to cry over. I think of the sadness of veterinarians who had to euthanize so many thousands of cases of dogs in such pain that living with it was asking too much.
I recall one dog brought in for euthanasia and I asked if I might perform surgery as an experiment at my expense. The owners were willing. I went to work as a carpenter with hammer and wood chisel and removed the heads of the two femurs from both hind legs. I recall helping that huge St Bernard to his feet as he recovered from the anesthesia and that dog walked better with his back legs after that brutal surgery than before surgery. He lived out a normal life and when his end came the owners permitted me to perform a post mortum. That dog had two opposing flattened bony areas covered with cartilage with what appeared to me to be joint fluid.
It was as I have said elsewhere one breed that seemed not to be susceptible to Hip Dysplasia until years after all other dogs had had it reported and that was the Greyhound. The reason to me was that the breeders were for years only interested in breeding fast dogs and believed to do that the pregnant bitches had to be run while pregnant for the puppies to be fast. The exercise of running while pregnant flushed the toxic substances from their systems without affecting their puppies as the other breeds failed to do.
I believe we in my profession should be ashamed and immediately identify the substance(s) responsible. When that answer is found we will be ahead of the human medical people who may be permitting non-exercising pregnant humans to be bearing babies who will be born to suffer one or more of the problems without answers such as Autism.
In the veterinary field there are breeding programs to eliminate the problem which in actuality are programs to produce individuals resistant to the causative agent.

The Sucklings

Yesterday the outstanding Senator from my State of Vermont spoke for 8 hours in the U. S. Senate on behalf of We the People. Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out the efforts to increase the incomes of people so wealthy and so few it is unlikely any average citizen will ever see one in person ever in our lives other than in the media. Please listen and watch Senator Sanders on your computer. The super wealthy are people who acquired fortunes that never would have been possible were they not citizens of our country. These super rich should appreciate their country to the extent that half of the money they own when alive should, after their deaths go to their country. I call it patriotism. Some of us go to war and are killed for patriotism but never the super rich. Some of the super rich have made fortunes from profits from war efforts.

Have you heard of any of the wealthy requesting tax brakes? Of course not. Can you imagine Bill Gates asking for tax brakes? Who then are asking for tax brakes for the wealthy? It is the sucklings of the super rich, conservative Republicans. Fat cat Republicans who have made it in wealth themselves who don't give a dam for either their country or the people in it. Unfortunately the people voted against bad times in the last election and no way did they vote in favor of the no, no, no leaches. It appears that among the lobbyists must be included most Republicans bought and paid for by those who want corporations to run our government and not our government. When they say, "get the government off our backs" they are saying clear the way for profit making corporations to run everything. It was Abraham Lincoln who said so many years ago, "With the advent of the corporation will be the end of the Republic."

I believe a wise man who sees the problems has been chosen by we the people to attempt to do something about it. We must all back President Obama and his efforts or the final struggles of our great Democracy will be ended. We should consider the fact that there are over one hundred thousand hired guns, armed and employed by our army to do what the army should be doing who are available to those who can pay for their services. We are at a cross roads and the choices are limited but the road taken soon will determine the life of the Republic. Get mad and get active or bury your head in the sand.

Another View of Major Medical Problems

Please do not be turned off by the seemingly unimportant nature of the first paragraph but read on. This is perhaps an important observation concerning health for you to have heard articulated here for the first time. The story goes something like this. King Arthur was in his castle dining with all his Knights when the sound of horses' hoves was heard outside the castle. He announced to his Knights that if in the future they ever heard the sound like they had just heard they should think of horses and not Zebras.
My computer tells me that yearly over a billion dollsrs is spent on Autism research with no light at the end of the tunnel. I have to ask, is the research being invested on a zebra hunt here in the U,S? My Mother had Alzheimer's when she died and huge funds are spent to attempt unraveling the cause or causes. Are the scientists looking for Zebras? Go down the list of Autism, Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, ALS, late appearing diabetis and other problems with so far, unknown causes all because each is considered a zebra problem?
For me as a scientist who has been involved in research it seems of primary importance to examine the most obvious possibilities of causes of the above before looking for zebras. When I realized that Greyhounds did not have the dread dysplasia of all other breeds and recognized that the running exercise of the pregnant bitches when pregnant was a sound reason I concluded the Greyhoounds' exercise eliminaated the toxin(s) that caused the problem it was logical to suspect diet as the cause. Researchers looked for the genomme for the answer not thinking that that was a zebra hunt.
Granted one or more of the unsolved problems above may have predated the food
additive(s) that cause others but it seems almost crininal that food additives and combinations have not been thourghly investigated and that brings up some reasons why.
We live in a fire department culture in which we tend to treat problems as emergencies with heroic effort but if a problem takes long periods of time between cause and effect the answers may be lacking. In the case of the weed or flower in our gardens, lupine eaten at just a short period in the gestation period of a cow her calf will be born defective. If a pregnant woman takes the drug, Thalidimide her baby will often be defective for its life.
With the current situation it was in 1933 that Autism was first reported in humans and in 1935, Hip Dysplasia in dogs. The first food additive that was added in great quantity to both human and dog foods happens to be citric acid. Hundreds of thousands of metric tons each year most of which goes into food. Doesn't it seem like common sense to do long time research if only observational research? As a start have that one item removed from the diets of pregnant woman in one group of volunteers.
As a veterinarian I am confident some enterprising dog food manufacturer could actually produce a citric acid free diet and advertise it as just that, a diet to determine if their diet would be effective in the prevention of that canine problem. Even charging twice the usual cost of dog food there will be enough breeders who would be not only willing but anxious to try it on their pregnant bitches and thus to make it a financial success.
So often members of the Veterinary Medical profession have led the way for progress in the Human Medical profession as with a Dr. Salmon in salmonella and in solving the gastric ulcer problem in humans that was considered a psychiatric problem and a bacterial problem of hogs. We were right there, too. The veterinarians who proved that insects can carry and spread disease to others and orthopedic surgery are all veterinary contributions.
If the most obvious possibility is found lacking then go to the next most obvious and then come the combination's but all should be suspect before the zebras.