F Rosa Rubicondior: Medicine
Showing posts with label Medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medicine. Show all posts

Saturday 21 October 2023

Malevolent Designer News - How Science is Racing to Beat Creationism's Favourite Sadist


Black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis
Illustration from The Malevolent Designer

Catherine Webber-Hounslow
Racing to defuse a ‘ticking’ public health time bomb | YaleNews

Like the parasitic worms that zombify their hosts I wrote about in my previous blog post, I also wrote about the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis, now proliferating in North America and infecting more and more victims with Lyme Disease, in my popular, illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good.

As the reputed work of an intelligent [sic] designer, this tick can only be regarded as evidence of the pestilential malevolent of any designer that could design such a creature, as it serves no purpose other than to be the vector of a number of different pathogens and to make more ticks.

Monday 16 May 2022

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Favourite Malevolence Suffers Another Blow From Science

Congenital melanocytic nevus.
These can be very large and often involve the head, face or genitalia.
Skin drug treatments may regress dangerous birthmarks and prevent melanoma

Creationist mode:


The malevolent designer that creationists worship must be getting really pissed off with modern bio-medical scientist, the way they keep finding ways to combat the nasty things it designs to increase the suffering in the world, and all because someone scrumped one of its apples, allegedly.

Fresh from science's partial victory over the SARS-CoV-2 virus with which the divine malevolence caused a major pandemic, killing millions, ruining economies and businesses and making even the survivors suffer long-term complications, we have news that scientists led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), MA, USA may have come up with a treatment for a rare form of melanoma that about 20,000 babies a year are born with.

The congenital melanoma is usually in the form of a large mole or 'giant nevus' that covers part of the face, head or other parts of the body and carries a very high risk of becoming malignant. Because of the high risk of malignancy, the treatment up to now had been surgical removal, which was not always successful in that the melanoma could recur, and which often left a large, permanent scar. Congenital giant nevi are normally caused by a mutation in the gene NRAS, which, as any intelligent [sic] design creationist will tell you, only happens by design.

Wednesday 21 July 2021

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Beloved Malevolence is Fighting Back

SARS-CoV-2 Y453F and L452R variants contribute to evasion from cellular immunity and the L452R variant also increases viral infectivity.

From: Motozono, C. et.al., Cell Host & Microbe, 2021.(CC BY 4.0)
SARS-CoV-2 spike mutation L452R evades human immune response and enhances infectivity | News | Kumamoto University

Creationist mode:



Creationism's malevolent designer, having gone to such lengths, catalogued in this blog, to design the SARS-CoV-2 virus to kill as many people as possible and make many more sick, was never going to take defeat by human medical science with its clever vaccines, lightly.

Now scientists from Kumamoto University, Japan, have shown how it has redesigned the virus' spike protein so it not only makes it more infective but also helps it evade the immunity produced in response to the vaccines, which specifically target the spike protein.

This mutation, or as Creationists would call it, the new design, is known to science as L452R and is already present in both the δ-variant and the ε-variant. The δ-variant is the one currently responsible for the massive increase in infections in much of the world, include the UK, where new cases have rocketed from under 1,700 daily new cases in early May to over 54,000 four days ago, although we have seen a slight falling back from that figure to 44,000 new cases today. Most experts are predicting a large increase over the next few weeks, possibly reaching 100,000 new cases next month. Unless some of the restrictions, including obligatory wearing of face coverings in enclosed public spaces and public transport are reimposed, I think this figure is easily achievable.

UK Daily New Covid-19 infections (21 Jul, 2021)
Immunity in response to the vaccines has two components:
  1. Humoral immunity (antibodies circulating in the blood which attack the viral spike proteins rendering them innactive).
  2. Cellular immunity (pre-programmed helper and killer T-cells, produced in the bone marrow on demand when cells signal that they have been infected).
The new 'design' appears to lessen the effect of the humoral immunity because the modification in the spike protein means they don't bind so firmly to the virus. It makes the virus more infective because it binds more firmly to the ACE2 proteins on the cell surface, so gains entry to the cell more quickly, and it reduces the mobilisation of T-cells, especially in people who carry the HLA-A24 allel, which is common in East and South-Asian people.

So, it seems the intelligent [sic] designer has left no stone unturned in its search for its next move in the arms race with human medical science.

Creationist mode:


Now the real science:
The L452R mutation is a hallmark of the Delta variant that is currently spreading worldwide, and in Japan, about 60% of the population have HLA-A24, which is responsible for cellular immunity. The L452R mutation not only evades the HLA-A24 cellular immunity but can also enhance the infectivity of the virus. We have been carefully investigating the immune response against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in real time to monitor how the mutations affect human immunity and viral infectivity.

Dr. Chihiro Motozono, Senior author
Division of Infection and Immunity,
Joint Research Center for Human Retrovirus Infection,
Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
In this study, the research group first used immunological experiments to demonstrate that an antigen derived from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is strongly recognized by HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity, which is often found in Japanese people. They then performed a large-scale (>750,000) sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 strains and found several important mutations in the spike protein region typically recognized by HLA-A24. These are the Y453F spike mutations found in strain B.1.1.298, which was prevalent in Denmark in 2020, and the L452R mutation in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617 (commonly known as the Epsilon and Delta variants respectively) that are currently spreading around the world. Further immunological experiments demonstrated that these mutations escape HLA-A24 cellular immunity. The researchers believe that this is the first time a “variant of concern" has been demonstrated to evade cellular immunity.

The Y453F and L452R mutations were located in the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which are crucial for gaining entry into host cells. Researchers thus examined the effects of these mutations on the infection and replication efficiency of the virus. They found that the L452R mutation enhances its membrane fusion activity, infectivity, and viral replication.
The team's findings were published recently, open access, in the journal, Cell Host & Microbe:
Highlights
  • L452R and Y453F mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike RBM have emerged
  • L452R and Y453F mutants escape HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity
  • L452R increases viral infectivity and fusogenicity and promotes viral replication

Summary

Many SARS-CoV-2 variants with naturally acquired mutations have emerged. These mutations can affect viral properties such as infectivity and immune resistance. Although the sensitivity of naturally occurring SARS-CoV-2 variants to humoral immunity has been investigated, sensitivity to human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-restricted cellular immunity remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that two recently emerging mutations in the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, L452R (in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617) and Y453F (in B.1.1.298), confer escape from HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity. These mutations reinforce affinity toward the host entry receptor ACE2. Notably, the L452R mutation increases spike stability, viral infectivity, viral fusogenicity, and thereby promotes viral replication. These data suggest that HLA-restricted cellular immunity potentially affects the evolution of viral phenotypes and that a further threat of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is escape from cellular immunity.

Motozono, Chihiro; Toyoda, Mako; Zahradnik, Jiri; Saito, Akatsuki; Nasser, Hesham; Tan, Toong Seng; Ngare, Isaac; Kimura, Izumi; Uriu, Keiya; Kosugi, Yusuke; Yue, Yuan; Shimizu, Ryo; Ito, Jumpei; Torii, Shiho; Yonekawa, Akiko; Shimono, Nobuyuki; Nagasaki, Yoji; Minami, Rumi; Toya, Takashi; Sekiya, Noritaka; Fukuhara, Takasuke; Matsuura, Yoshiharu; Schreiber, Gideon; Ikeda, Terumasa; Nakagawa, So; Ueno, Takamasa; Sato, Kei
SARS-CoV-2 spike L452R variant evades cellular immunity and increases infectivity
Cell Host & Microbe
, Volume 29, Issue 7, 1124 - 1136.e11

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
The reason this is happening with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is obvious to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of evolution. Occasional variations in the replication of the viral RNA in infected cells are sifted by the sieve of natural selection, so that those few that are better at surviving and reproducing in the environment we are creating with our vaccines will quite quickly become the dominant form in the viral gene pool. A higher survival rate is a consequence of becoming more infective, producing more viruses and/or evading the immunity the vaccines are conferring on us.

Hospital Admissions (21 July 2021)

Deaths (21 July, 2021)
The significant factor here is that these mutations don't need to arise in people who have been vaccinated; they only need to infect vaccinated people to be selected for. So long as there are billions of people who have not been vaccinated, there is a high probability that a billion to one chance mutation will happen daily in the viral population numbered in the trillions. It is only by massively reducing this breeding ground by vaccinating as many people as possible that we can reduce the chance of these mutations arising.

The good news is, that, as the figures from the UK show, while new infections are approaching figures last seen last January and February, the number of hospitalisations and deaths are only a small fraction of what they were then. The vaccines are working to prevent serious illnesses and deaths.

Menwhile, we can only wonder at the mindset of those fanatical Creationists who are so full of admiration for what they believe to be the creator of this terrible pandemic.

Wednesday 10 March 2021

Malevolent Designer News - How Our Immune System Turns Against Us

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis implicates a type of immune cell — called a dendritic cell — in the development of chronic lung diseases that can follow after a respiratory viral infection. Shown is a stained section of mouse lung. Epithelial cells, which line the airway, are red. Dendritic cells are green. Any cell nuclei are blue.

Credit: Holzman Labs
Immune cell implicated in development of lung disease following viral infection – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Imagine a designer designing an aircraft with a vital system so designed that, on random occasions, vital systems failed spectacularly causing the plane to crash, killing everyone on board, not through accidents caused by inept design but deliberately, designed by its designer in the full knowledge of what it would do.

That's the sort of intelligent [sic] designer that Creationists worship, as we can see from this finding from Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri, USA. Creationists believe their putative intelligent [sic] designer is the Abrahamic god, whom they believe is omniscient, omnipotent and perfect in every way. They also believe it to be all-loving and wanting a maximally good world for its creation.

This means that there are certain fundamental axioms to which all ID advocates subscribe:

Friday 29 January 2021

A Little Bit of Good News About the SARS-CoV-2 Virus!

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Credit: NIAID
T cells can mount attacks against many SARS-CoV-2 targets—even on new virus variant

The good news is that research by scientists at La Jolla Institute of Immunology (LJI), La Jolla, California, USA has shown that our T cells are capable of recognising many targets on the surface of the virus (known as epitopes) and so can mount an attack against the new variants.

The bad news is that this is so for naturally-acquired immunity (in people who have recovered from the infection). It is not clear that this applies to immunity acquired by vaccination. All the vaccines approved for general use so far are based on mRNA technology that produces antibodies to the surface 'spike' proteins only, not to other surface proteins.

The research and its importance is explained in an LJI News release by Madeline McCurry-Schmidt:

Monday 25 January 2021

Covidiot News - The Myths the Fruitloops are Falling For

Not sure about the Pfizer vaccine, now it's been approved in Australia? You can scratch these 4 concerns straight off your list

Writing for an primarily Australian readership, Archa Fox, Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia, exposes the nonsense behind four myths concerning the Pfizer ant-Covid mRNA vaccine about to be rolled out in Australia.

Sadly, Australia has a few pockets of QAnon conspiracists who are promulgating these myths, some of which leave you wondering what it is that could induce these idiots to believe this stuff. But then, Australia also has more than its fair share of fundamentalist Christians, Young Earth Creationists and probably flat-earthers too. Scientific illiteracy and bottomless credulity are not confined to Bible-belt USA.

Firstly, a little bit of information about what the vaccines are and how they work. Bear with me if you already understand this stuff.

Monday 14 November 2016

Nasty Design. Nasty Designer?

Mycobacterium abscessus, a species of multidrug resistant mycobacteria, has recently emerged as a significant global threat to individuals with cystic fibrosis and other lung diseases.
Picture credit: © adiruch na chiangmai / Fotolia
Source: ScienceDaily
Emergence and spread of a human-transmissible multidrug-resistant nontuberculous mycobacterium | Science

I've written several posts with examples of the sheer malevolent nastiness of creationists' notional intelligent (sic) designer, asking if it can get any nastier, but this latest example really does take some beating.

It has now redesigned a mycobacterium so it can now overcome our attempts to stop it making children with cystic fibrosis even sicker, often fallay so!

This was discovered by a team from the University of Cambridge, UK and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute was published a few days ago in Science:

Saturday 1 October 2016

Has The 'Intelligent Designer' Been Tweaking Zika?

Fatal Zika Virus Infection with Secondary Nonsexual Transmission - NEMJ Correspondence

Parasites in general and viruses like the zika virus in particular continue to be an embarrassment to creationists who insist everything is intelligently designed for a purpose.

The main embarrassment of course is in explaining why it designed them in the first place, although 'The Fall' is regularly trotted out as the excuse. But, this gives away the fact that the 'intelligent (sic) designer' is the Christian god and that intelligent design 'science' is fundamentalist, Bible-literalist Christianity posing as science to try to sneak past the 'Establishment Clause' in the US Constitution.
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