Regeneration

[supersport]

How do evos explain the regeneration of body parts?

http://www.amazon.com/Body-Electric-Electromagnetism-Foundation-Life/dp/0688069711/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207197213&sr=8-2

Please read the following examples taken from "The Body Electric" by Robert O. Becker, M.D. and then answer a couple questions at the bottom:

The first is the ability of a salamander to regenerate many parts of his eyes:

"If the lens in a newt's eye is destroyed, the colored cells of the top half of the iris extrude their pigment granules, then transform by direct metaplasia into lens cells. They soon start synthesizing the clear fibers of which the lens is made, and the whole job is finished in about forty days. In case the iris is gone, too, a newt can create a new one from cells of the pigmented retina, and those cells can also transform into the neural retina layer in front of them. If the optic nerve gets damaged, the neural retina in turn can regenerate the nerve tract backward and reconnect it properly with the brain."[/i]

Next, damaged gut in frogs somehow regenerate:

"When we cut pieces from the gut of adult frogs and newts and merely put the ends close together in the abdomen, 40 percent of the animals survived by quickly reconnecting the two ends and completely healing them in about a month -- all without a surgeon."

Human spleens:

"Now it appears that the (human) spleen can make the same kind of comeback, at least in children. Howard Pearson and his colleagues at the Yale University School of Medicine found that, when ruptured, the delicate spleen left bits of itself scattered in the abdomen, which grew and gradually resumed the organ's obscure blood-cleansing functions. Now when they remove a spleen, many surgeons wipe it on the peritoneum (the tough membrane that lines the abdominal cavity) to sow replacement seeds."

One of his most amazing discoveries came about by accident. It seems that he and his team "harvested" blood from newts on a regular basis, but in order to do so, the hearts had to be destroyed by cutting them in half and extracting the blood: (This is incredible.)

"One day when (a colleague) had finished the chore (cutting the heart in two and extracting blood), she asked me, "what would happen if I sewed these animals up?" I answered that, because their hearts had been destroyed, they would die within minutes, with or without sutures, from lack of oxygen to the brain. We looked it up to make sure. The standard works on regeneration all agreed that no animal's heart could repair major wounds. Unlike skeletal muscle, the cardiac variety had no satellite cells to serve as precursors for mature heart-muscle cells. In any case the textbooks stated, the animal would die long before such repair could occur.

Next week Sharon put our three intended sacrifices in a bowl of water and with a straight face asked me if they looked healthy enough to use. I told her they looked fine. "Good!" she exclaimed. "These are the same three we used last week!".....

....Flabbergasted, I helped anesthetize and dissect this trio of miracles. Their hearts were perfectly normal, with no evidence of ever having been damaged in any way....

later... "As soon as the salamander heart is cut open, blood pools around the wound and clots quickly, usually in about one minute, sealing the hole like wet plaster. Almost immediately, the nearest red blood cells crack open like eggs. Their nuclei, surrounded by a thin coating of cytoplasm, glide by some means yet unknown directly to the raw, frayed edge of the heart muscle and insinuate themselves into the tangle of dying and injured cells. To a biologist this is uncanny. It's as though the engine of a passing car could walk up to a stranded truck, climb under the hood, and drive it away....

...Meanwhile, the newt has survived by absorbing dissolved oxygen from the water through its skin. Now, at about the four-hour mark, there are enough new muscle cells to withstand contraction, and the heart begins pumping again, slowly. After about eight hours, the heart is virtually normal in appearance and structure, and after a day it's indistinguishable from an uninjured one."

Later, Dr Becker asks, as if he's desperately pleading for an answer from a higher source: What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.

Yea, evos...what's responsible for all this stuff? Where's the science? Where's the mechanism? Usually, evo scientists just dismiss whatever they can't understand or don't see. But they can't do that here because the results are indesputable and undeniable. Something is doing the organizing -- what is it?

And after you don't answer that question, you can get busy not answering this one as well: The scientific community often handwaves the existence of a trait by simply saying that the trait is beneficial.....any trait that we see in nature can thank its lucky stars that it's beneficial -- otherwise we wouldn't be seeing it. In a nutshell, that's their creation story. So are we really to believe that newts, for example, had a trait selected eons ago where, by chance, if their heart was cut into two pieces that it could sew itself back up? What gene would offer that ability? Same with the lenses...same with the spleen thing in humans -- and livers in humans. If you had this book, you'd read page after page after page of organisms doing this stuff. Bones, brains, cartilage, organs etc.

Life is too amazing. It's too bad so many people don't know it and/or don't admit it.

[Ian Nerr]

Life is too amazing. It's too bad so many people don't know it and/or don't admit it.

People like you, for instance.

[David B]

You might also consider the ability of grasses to continue to grow when cropped, as opposed to, say, cabbage leaves when eaten by cabbage white butterfly caterpillars.

Lizards regrowing cast off tails, too. Not a myth - something I've observed, but in contrast to human amputees, no matter what power of prayer is put into it.

I attribute these these faculties - and the lack of them, depending on species - to the blind algorithms of evolution.

David B

[Constant Mews]

How do evos explain the regeneration of body parts?

http://www.amazon.com/Body-Electric-Electromagnetism-Foundation-Life/dp/0688069711/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207197213&sr=8-2

Please read the following examples taken from "The Body Electric" by Robert O. Becker, M.D. and then answer a couple questions at the bottom:

The first is the ability of a salamander to regenerate many parts of his eyes:

"If the lens in a newt's eye is destroyed, the colored cells of the top half of the iris extrude their pigment granules, then transform by direct metaplasia into lens cells. They soon start synthesizing the clear fibers of which the lens is made, and the whole job is finished in about forty days. In case the iris is gone, too, a newt can create a new one from cells of the pigmented retina, and those cells can also transform into the neural retina layer in front of them. If the optic nerve gets damaged, the neural retina in turn can regenerate the nerve tract backward and reconnect it properly with the brain."[/i]

Next, damaged gut in frogs somehow regenerate:

"When we cut pieces from the gut of adult frogs and newts and merely put the ends close together in the abdomen, 40 percent of the animals survived by quickly reconnecting the two ends and completely healing them in about a month -- all without a surgeon."

Human spleens:

"Now it appears that the (human) spleen can make the same kind of comeback, at least in children. Howard Pearson and his colleagues at the Yale University School of Medicine found that, when ruptured, the delicate spleen left bits of itself scattered in the abdomen, which grew and gradually resumed the organ's obscure blood-cleansing functions. Now when they remove a spleen, many surgeons wipe it on the peritoneum (the tough membrane that lines the abdominal cavity) to sow replacement seeds."

One of his most amazing discoveries came about by accident. It seems that he and his team "harvested" blood from newts on a regular basis, but in order to do so, the hearts had to be destroyed by cutting them in half and extracting the blood: (This is incredible.)

"One day when (a colleague) had finished the chore (cutting the heart in two and extracting blood), she asked me, "what would happen if I sewed these animals up?" I answered that, because their hearts had been destroyed, they would die within minutes, with or without sutures, from lack of oxygen to the brain. We looked it up to make sure. The standard works on regeneration all agreed that no animal's heart could repair major wounds. Unlike skeletal muscle, the cardiac variety had no satellite cells to serve as precursors for mature heart-muscle cells. In any case the textbooks stated, the animal would die long before such repair could occur.

Next week Sharon put our three intended sacrifices in a bowl of water and with a straight face asked me if they looked healthy enough to use. I told her they looked fine. "Good!" she exclaimed. "These are the same three we used last week!".....

....Flabbergasted, I helped anesthetize and dissect this trio of miracles. Their hearts were perfectly normal, with no evidence of ever having been damaged in any way....

later... "As soon as the salamander heart is cut open, blood pools around the wound and clots quickly, usually in about one minute, sealing the hole like wet plaster. Almost immediately, the nearest red blood cells crack open like eggs. Their nuclei, surrounded by a thin coating of cytoplasm, glide by some means yet unknown directly to the raw, frayed edge of the heart muscle and insinuate themselves into the tangle of dying and injured cells. To a biologist this is uncanny. It's as though the engine of a passing car could walk up to a stranded truck, climb under the hood, and drive it away....

...Meanwhile, the newt has survived by absorbing dissolved oxygen from the water through its skin. Now, at about the four-hour mark, there are enough new muscle cells to withstand contraction, and the heart begins pumping again, slowly. After about eight hours, the heart is virtually normal in appearance and structure, and after a day it's indistinguishable from an uninjured one."

Later, Dr Becker asks, as if he's desperately pleading for an answer from a higher source: What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.

Yea, evos...what's responsible for all this stuff? Where's the science? Where's the mechanism? Usually, evo scientists just dismiss whatever they can't understand or don't see. But they can't do that here because the results are indesputable and undeniable. Something is doing the organizing -- what is it?

And after you don't answer that question, you can get busy not answering this one as well: The scientific community often handwaves the existence of a trait by simply saying that the trait is beneficial.....any trait that we see in nature can thank its lucky stars that it's beneficial -- otherwise we wouldn't be seeing it. In a nutshell, that's their creation story. So are we really to believe that newts, for example, had a trait selected eons ago where, by chance, if their heart was cut into two pieces that it could sew itself back up? What gene would offer that ability? Same with the lenses...same with the spleen thing in humans -- and livers in humans. If you had this book, you'd read page after page after page of organisms doing this stuff. Bones, brains, cartilage, organs etc.

Life is too amazing. It's too bad so many people don't know it and/or don't admit it.

Guzman, your ignorance of science is tripping you up. Your insistence on "one gene = one complex trait" is a false model.

The fact that you have rejected science means that you are hopeless behind in your assertions, and can always be shown to be wrong. Fortunately, scientists don't care what you think, since your opinions are completely uninformed. You're not even a nuisance to the scientific community. You're non-existent. Now, were you to learn something about science to the point where you carry on a serious conversation on the subject of biological regeneration, then you might be listened to.

[socle]

What happened to this promise?
Nope. I'm officially done with science. I have no more use for it.

:mad:

[Constant Mews]

What happened to this promise?
Nope. I'm officially done with science. I have no more use for it.

:mad:

Read his OP. He's keeping his promise.

[Steviepinhead]

David B:
Lizards regrowing cast off tails, too. Not a myth - something I've observed, but in contrast to human amputees, no matter what power of prayer is put into it.
And then there's this (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=regrowing-human-limbs).

[ck1]

This OP reminded me of my undergraduate days. I worked with a prof on a project dealing with limb regeneration in newts. Can't remember the details, and unfortunately did not save the thesis I wrote on the subject.

Oh well.

Moving on...

Supersport, perhaps you can provide the paper that provides the details for this work on newts:

One day when (a colleague) had finished the chore (cutting the heart in two and extracting blood), she asked me, "what would happen if I sewed these animals up?" I answered that, because their hearts had been destroyed, they would die within minutes, with or without sutures, from lack of oxygen to the brain. We looked it up to make sure. The standard works on regeneration all agreed that no animal's heart could repair major wounds. Unlike skeletal muscle, the cardiac variety had no satellite cells to serve as precursors for mature heart-muscle cells. In any case the textbooks stated, the animal would die long before such repair could occur.

Next week Sharon put our three intended sacrifices in a bowl of water and with a straight face asked me if they looked healthy enough to use. I told her they looked fine. "Good!" she exclaimed. "These are the same three we used last week!".....

....Flabbergasted, I helped anesthetize and dissect this trio of miracles. Their hearts were perfectly normal, with no evidence of ever having been damaged in any way....

I found this article, suggesting that zebrafish (but not newts) can regenerate a segment of the heart representing up to 20% of the total:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=secret-of-heart-regenerat

[supersport]

You might also consider the ability of grasses to continue to grow when cropped, as opposed to, say, cabbage leaves when eaten by cabbage white butterfly caterpillars.

Lizards regrowing cast off tails, too. Not a myth - something I've observed, but in contrast to human amputees, no matter what power of prayer is put into it.

I attribute these these faculties - and the lack of them, depending on species - to the blind algorithms of evolution.

David B

well that was vague -- almost like a handwave or an act of faith. did you forget we're talking science here?

[ck1]

Here is Amazon's description of the book SS used for his OP:

The Body Electric tells the fascinating story of our bioelectric selves. Robert O. Becker, a pioneer in the filed of regeneration and its relationship to electrical currents in living things, challenges the established mechanistic understanding of the body. He found clues to the healing process in the long-discarded theory that electricity is vital to life. But as exciting as Becker's discoveries are, pointing to the day when human limbs, spinal cords, and organs may be regenerated after they have been damaged, equally fascinating is the story of Becker's struggle to do such original work. The Body Electric explores new pathways in our understanding of evolution, acupuncture, psychic phenomena, and healing.

[supersport]

just to reiterate: I'm looking for the scientific mechanism that allows this stuff to happen. Dr Becker asks the appropriate questions here:

What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.


See guys, it's stuff like this that make creationists like me doubt and deny evolution and materialism. The human body, according to materialists, operates like a machine...it operates simply by mindless chemicals and molecules bouncing off each other, doing things for no real purpose. But how can there be no purpose involved in the re-generation of a limb?...or even healing for that matter?

[David B]

You might also consider the ability of grasses to continue to grow when cropped, as opposed to, say, cabbage leaves when eaten by cabbage white butterfly caterpillars.

Lizards regrowing cast off tails, too. Not a myth - something I've observed, but in contrast to human amputees, no matter what power of prayer is put into it.

I attribute these these faculties - and the lack of them, depending on species - to the blind algorithms of evolution.

David B

well that was vague -- almost like a handwave or an act of faith. did you forget we're talking science here?

It was indeed brief, and hence vague.

But your OP wasn't really talking science, in the sense of peer reviewed papers.

If you want to talk science then where do you want to start?

Age of the Earth?

Age of the Universe?

Fossil record showing billions of years of evolution before mammals?

What?

David B

[Faid]

I don't get it, guz- do you find it hard to understand how organisms can heal?

[ck1]

Well, I do learn things from supersport's threads:

In mammals several pathogenic mechanisms might result in loss of functional myocardium, scar formation and, eventually, heart failure. The inability of mammalian hearts to rebuild lost contractile tissue is due to a restricted proliferation potential of mammalian cardiomyocytes and to the absence of effective cardiac progenitor cells, which are able to replace dead or damaged cardiomyocytes. .....

This situation is fundamentally different in newt and zebrafish. Both organisms re-grow functional myocardial tissue after partial amputation of the heart and repair damaged areas without the generation of non-functional scar tissue. In zebrafish up to 20% of the ventricular myocardium can be replaced after resection over a two-month period (Poss et al., 2002).

http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/119/22/4719

[ck1]

just to reiterate: I'm looking for the scientific mechanism that allows this stuff to happen. Dr Becker asks the appropriate questions here:

What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.


See guys, it's stuff like this that make creationists like me doubt and deny evolution and materialism. The human body, according to materialists, operates like a machine...it operates simply by mindless chemicals and molecules bouncing off each other, doing things for no real purpose. But how can there be no purpose involved in the re-generation of a limb?...or even healing for that matter?

Well, a quick look through Pubmed indicates that limb regeneration is guided by the Wnt, FGF, BMP, and Notch signalling pathways. These are defined and ordered pathways, and they are not analogous to a pile of bricks spontaneously producing a building.

[Theropod]

How do evos explain the regeneration of body parts?

How do you?

And after you don't answer that question, you can get busy not answering this one as well: The scientific community often handwaves the existence of a trait by simply saying that the trait is beneficial.....any trait that we see in nature can thank its lucky stars that it's beneficial -- otherwise we wouldn't be seeing it. In a nutshell, that's their creation story. So are we really to believe that newts, for example, had a trait selected eons ago where, by chance, if their heart was cut into two pieces that it could sew itself back up? What gene would offer that ability? Same with the lenses...same with the spleen thing in humans -- and livers in humans. If you had this book, you'd read page after page after page of organisms doing this stuff. Bones, brains, cartilage, organs etc.

Starfish have similar abilities. So what? Show how this is evidence of anything other than the result of natural selection. You've played the ball and it is in your court. Either return volley or don't. Why can't birds regrow wings or us limbs? Did your designer run short of ideas?

[Dlx2]

Well, a quick look through Pubmed indicates that limb regeneration is guided by the Wnt, FGF, BMP, and Notch signalling pathways. These are defined and ordered pathways, and they are not analogous to a pile of bricks spontaneously producing a building.

Canonical Wnt signaling, oh how I do so very much love you.

[Dneh]

just to reiterate: I'm looking for the scientific mechanism that allows this stuff to happen. Dr Becker asks the appropriate questions here:

What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.



See guys, it's stuff like this that make creationists like me doubt and deny evolution and materialism. The human body, according to materialists, operates like a machine...it operates simply by mindless chemicals and molecules bouncing off each other, doing things for no real purpose. But how can there be no purpose involved in the re-generation of a limb?...or even healing for that matter?

So you can see no evolutionary benefit for the ability of a wound to heal or for the process of tissue regeneration?

Seriously Sport, this latest "woo" book is 10 years out of date anyrate. Did you even consider doing some basic searches in the real scientific literature? Tissue and limb regeneration in amphibians has been a model system for decades. The signaling pathways are well described

I could link you to dozens of recent articles on the mechanisms of tissue regeneration but you wouldn't read them and couldn't understand them anyrate. Science is hard.

I will give you a hint though-try reseaching stem cells.

It is actually turning out to be quite straight forward to reprogram adult differentiated cells into pluripotent stem cells. Cells which can give rise to every single cell type in the body! How? Simply by introducing three transcription factors! Using these cells it will most likely be possible to regenerate many patient specific human tissues and organs and who knows, even limbs.

[espritch]

Perhaps SuperSport would like to share with us his explanation of why salamanders can regenerate body parts but humans can't. Seems to me if this was a result of some magic mind, amputees could just think themselves new limbs. This is a far more interesting question. After all, when a salamander regrows a limb, it is just repeating what it did when it grew from a embryo into a salamander in the first place. But why is it we can't perform the same trick?

I wonder what the chances are that SuperSport will actually answer this question? I'm guessing slim to none.

[Jobar]

Guzzle, if you'd spend half as much time trying to understand the *actual scientific knowledge* we have about things like this, as you do looking for crackpot woo bullshit to wave in front of us like a cross in front of a Jewish vampire, you might, just possibly, learn something.

You could start with that Scientific American article that Steviepinhead linked to above. It's dead on this topic, if he hadn't linked to it I would've. It's in this month's issue (April '08).

[tjakey]

The guz is done with science, remember? Though I'm not sure how he justifies using a computer hooked up to the internet to tell the world that he is done with science.

[supersport]

just to reiterate: I'm looking for the scientific mechanism that allows this stuff to happen. Dr Becker asks the appropriate questions here:

What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.


See guys, it's stuff like this that make creationists like me doubt and deny evolution and materialism. The human body, according to materialists, operates like a machine...it operates simply by mindless chemicals and molecules bouncing off each other, doing things for no real purpose. But how can there be no purpose involved in the re-generation of a limb?...or even healing for that matter?

Well, a quick look through Pubmed indicates that limb regeneration is guided by the Wnt, FGF, BMP, and Notch signalling pathways. These are defined and ordered pathways, and they are not analogous to a pile of bricks spontaneously producing a building.


what's the source of the signal?

[Dneh]

How to grow a heart!

http://www.stemcell.umn.edu/stemcell/faculty/Taylor_D/home.html

[supersport]

Perhaps SuperSport would like to share with us his explanation of why salamanders can regenerate body parts but humans can't. Seems to me if this was a result of some magic mind, amputees could just think themselves new limbs.

I wonder what the chances are that SuperSport will actually answer this question? I'm guessing slim to none.

I'm not convinced humans can't. Heck, we regenerate things all the time: muscle, skin, brain, bone, even spinal columns to some degree, etc. Granted we are not as capable of regeneration as we might like to be, but maybe we just haven't yet learned how to do it. Maybe regeneration takes belief, for example. But if a doctor tells a paraplegic that he'll never walk again, why in the world would he ever believe otherwise? It's the same with cancer. We all know the placebo effect is real, yet doctors insist on giving cancer patients death sentences by saying things like "I'm sorry but you've only got 6 months to live." Well gee wiz, doc....thanks for giving people absolutely no hope.

It may or may not be the same with regeneration in humans. Of course the scientific community would never test such a thing.

[espritch]

Perhaps SuperSport would like to share with us his explanation of why salamanders can regenerate body parts but humans can't. Seems to me if this was a result of some magic mind, amputees could just think themselves new limbs.

I wonder what the chances are that SuperSport will actually answer this question? I'm guessing slim to none.

I'm not convinced humans can't. Heck, we regenerate things all the time: muscle, skin, brain, bone, even spinal columns to some degree, etc. Granted we are not as capable of regeneration as we might like to be, but maybe we just haven't yet learned how to do it. Maybe regeneration takes belief, for example. But if a doctor tells a paraplegic that he'll never walk again, why in the world would he ever believe otherwise? It's the same with cancer. We all know the placebo effect is real, yet doctors insist on giving cancer patients death sentences by saying things like "I'm sorry but you've only got 6 months to live." Well gee wiz, doc....thanks for giving people absolutely no hope.

It may or may not be the same with regeneration in humans. Of course the scientific community would never test such a thing.

Preachers have been telling people God can heal them of anything for thousands of years (long before there was any such thing as science). Are you saying no one actually believes their preachers? I wonder why?

[Kss'taritixtl]

Originally Posted by supersport

I'm not convinced humans can't. Heck, we regenerate things all the time: muscle, skin, brain, bone, even spinal columns to some degree, etc. Granted we are not as capable of regeneration as we might like to be, but maybe we just haven't yet learned how to do it. Maybe regeneration takes belief, for example. But if a doctor tells a paraplegic that he'll never walk again, why in the world would he ever believe otherwise? It's the same with cancer. We all know the placebo effect is real, yet doctors insist on giving cancer patients death sentences by saying things like "I'm sorry but you've only got 6 months to live." Well gee wiz, doc....thanks for giving people absolutely no hope.

It may or may not be the same with regeneration in humans. Of course the scientific community would never test such a thing.

Then test your hypothesis. Amputate one of your legs and pray for a new one or eat a tic tac a doctor gave you and promised you to regrow your limb. And no, you are not allowed to use antibiotics. And then publish a paper. Any doctor who explains the stupidity of this to you is of course just a pessimist that gives you no hope.

[Febble]

The thing is, ss, your premise is wrong. It isn't true either that scientists can't explain regeneration or that they ignore it.

Goodness me, the whole stem-cell debate is about how we induce cells to grow into something we specify, rather than something they have already been switched to grow into.

[Theropod]

snip...

Maybe regeneration takes belief, for example.

snip...



So salamanders, starfish and other animal examples of regeneration are based on belief?

Sweet!

[Wolfhound]

Perhaps SuperSport would like to share with us his explanation of why salamanders can regenerate body parts but humans can't. Seems to me if this was a result of some magic mind, amputees could just think themselves new limbs.

I wonder what the chances are that SuperSport will actually answer this question? I'm guessing slim to none.

I'm not convinced humans can't. Heck, we regenerate things all the time: muscle, skin, brain, bone, even spinal columns to some degree, etc. Granted we are not as capable of regeneration as we might like to be, but maybe we just haven't yet learned how to do it. Maybe regeneration takes belief, for example. But if a doctor tells a paraplegic that he'll never walk again, why in the world would he ever believe otherwise? It's the same with cancer. We all know the placebo effect is real, yet doctors insist on giving cancer patients death sentences by saying things like "I'm sorry but you've only got 6 months to live." Well gee wiz, doc....thanks for giving people absolutely no hope.

It may or may not be the same with regeneration in humans. Of course the scientific community would never test such a thing.He is such a wealth of FSTDT material. I call dibs on this one!! :D

[Wolfhound]

Wahoo! Yesterday's declaration of his divorce from science (since they've been separated so long) is up! http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/comments.aspx?q=37185

[Wolfhound]

Yaaaaay! This one's up, too! http://www.fstdt.com/fundies/comments.aspx?q=37238

[ericmurphy]

well that was vague -- almost like a handwave or an act of faith. did you forget we're talking science here?

Why is there a "we" in this sentence, Guzman? I thought you were "done with science."

Well, are you or aren't you? Like many of your own positions, you don't seem too clear on this one, either.

[supersport]

I don't think any of the questions in the OP were answered.

Dr Becker: What unifies an organism, making every cell subservient to the needs of the whole? How is it that the whole being can do things that none of its components can do separately? What makes an organism self-contained, self-directed, self-repairing? What organizes growth? What is the control factor? How does all the information about the missing parts get to these undifferntiated cells, telling them what to become, which genes to activate, what proteins to make, where to position themselves?...It's as if a pile of bricks were to spontaneously rearrange itself into a building, becoming not only walls, but windows, light sockets, steel beams, and furniture in the process.

[Faid]

I don't think any of the questions in the OP were answered.Are (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=21461&postcount=15) you (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=21501&postcount=18) sure? (http://talkrational.org/showpost.php?p=21514&postcount=23)

Guz, this looks more and more like the old you. How about actually debating with others for a change?

[Febble]

Yea, evos...what's responsible for all this stuff?

Replication with modification plus natural selection.

Where's the science?

The entire corpus of modern biology.

Where's the mechanism?

Replication with modification plus natural selection.

Usually, evo scientists just dismiss whatever they can't understand or don't see.

No they don't, and you provide no supportive evidence for this claim. "Evo scientists", far from dismissing whatever they can't understand, see what they don't understand as opportunities for a grant application.

But they can't do that here because the results are indesputable and undeniable.

It is undisputable and undeniable that complexity arises. There is no reason to think that replication with modification plus natural selection can't do the job.

Something is doing the organizing -- what is it?


Replication with modification plus natural selection.

[supersport]

Yea, evos...what's responsible for all this stuff?

Febble: Replication with modification plus natural selection.

Oh, that makes regeneration happen? How? I need to hear this. what does natural selection have to do with regrowing an organ like a spleen?

[Fathermithras]

This is funny. This is like asking "How does evolution explain puberty?" or "How does it explain growing?" Cells replace themselves. People heal. All of these things are explainable. Jesus lap dancing christ.

[supersport]

This is funny. This is like asking "How does evolution explain puberty?" or "How does it explain growing?" Cells replace themselves. People heal. All of these things are explainable. Jesus lap dancing christ.

then quit yapping and explain it. Explain how RMNS creates a body that is controlled by its mind.

[Fathermithras]

then quit yapping and explain it. Explain how RMNS creates a body that is controlled by its mind.

WTF? Where did mind enter into any of this?

[Gojira]

"Evo scientists", far from dismissing whatever they can't understand, see what they don't understand as opportunities for a grant application.


:notworthy::notworthy::notworthy:

That's the thing.

If the Creos don't understand, it is at best something to be ignored.

If the scientists don't understand, it is something to be investigated.

[Febble]

Yea, evos...what's responsible for all this stuff?

Febble: Replication with modification plus natural selection.

Oh, that makes regeneration happen? How? I need to hear this. what does natural selection have to do with regrowing an organ like a spleen?

Oh, OK. What natural selection has to do with it is that the mechanisms for regeneration would tend to have been selected if they were advantageous.

As for the actual mechanisms - well, that's fairly straightforward cell division, together with the expression of genes that control the production of the relevant proteins under control of regulatory genes. Regulatory genes are, in effect, switches, whose on/off state is determined by a large number of chemical inputs from the local and wider environment.

In other words, it does work rather like a "mind" - neural activity is also the result of a complex network of signalling between cells - neurons - the difference being that in the case of neurons, the result is an action potential, and in the case of cells that are regenerating tissue, the result is a protein.

OK?

[Febble]

"Evo scientists", far from dismissing whatever they can't understand, see what they don't understand as opportunities for a grant application.


:notworthy::notworthy::notworthy:

That's the thing.

If the Creos don't understand, it is at best something to be ignored.

Well, better than that - if they don't understand, they have a Gap, into which they can insert God.

Which seems a bit tough on God. I don't, myself, see why God has to be confined to these shrinking gaps. Seems like bad theology to me, quite apart from being terrible science.

[Monad]

This OP reminded me of my undergraduate days. I worked with a prof on a project dealing with limb regeneration in newts. Can't remember the details, and unfortunately did not save the thesis I wrote on the subject.

Oh well.

Moving on...

Supersport, perhaps you can provide the paper that provides the details for this work on newts:

One day when (a colleague) had finished the chore (cutting the heart in two and extracting blood), she asked me, "what would happen if I sewed these animals up?" I answered that, because their hearts had been destroyed, they would die within minutes, with or without sutures, from lack of oxygen to the brain. We looked it up to make sure. The standard works on regeneration all agreed that no animal's heart could repair major wounds. Unlike skeletal muscle, the cardiac variety had no satellite cells to serve as precursors for mature heart-muscle cells. In any case the textbooks stated, the animal would die long before such repair could occur.

Next week Sharon put our three intended sacrifices in a bowl of water and with a straight face asked me if they looked healthy enough to use. I told her they looked fine. "Good!" she exclaimed. "These are the same three we used last week!".....

....Flabbergasted, I helped anesthetize and dissect this trio of miracles. Their hearts were perfectly normal, with no evidence of ever having been damaged in any way....

I found this article, suggesting that zebrafish (but not newts) can regenerate a segment of the heart representing up to 20% of the total:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=secret-of-heart-regenerat

I guess Supersport has managed to answer the old creationist canard "what use is half a heart" himself :) He must have switched sides without noticing.

[SAWells]

Well, a quick look through Pubmed indicates that limb regeneration is guided by the Wnt, FGF, BMP, and Notch signalling pathways. These are defined and ordered pathways, and they are not analogous to a pile of bricks spontaneously producing a building.


what's the source of the signal?

Damaged cells spill their contents into the surrounding environment- this creates a chemical signal (e.g. calcium ions) to which other cells respond. The signal for healing to occur comes from the wound. Of course.

[Oolon Colluphid]

How do evos explain the regeneration of body parts?

How do you?
Actually, that's a damned fine question. Because Guzzie's question inadvertently shows he hasn't a clue. And that's because it is pretty much irrelevant to how the critters that can do it got that way.

See, unless supersport is suggesting that limb regeneration happens by magic, by miracle, with God personally intervening in the stump of every lizard's tail and salamander's leg, then there must be natural mechanisms at work. Whether those mechanisms were created or evolved is interesting, but irrelevant until we know how they do it. Only when we know how can we have a stab at deciding if they were created of could have evolved.

As it stands, this isn't even an argument from personal incredulity. It's a statement of 'gosh wow!'

So come on then Guzzie. How do they do it?

Me, I'll be off to my copy of Scott Gilbert's Developmental Biology tonight to find out. I remember there being a large section on this very thing (it's what prompted me to include it here (http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm#limbregeneration)), but I don't remember the details.

Heh. Indeed, here's another question for you, Sporto. If your god knew how to form these, so obviously useful, mechanisms, why did he not give them to humans? You know, us. His Chosen Species.

The forgetful bugger seems to have left the idea out of the blueprints for mammals in general. Is your god an idiot? A sadist, condemning those involved in accidents to a limb- (or even finger-)less life, while giving... bloody salamanders! ...the ability?

[Obd]

Oh that's easy Oolon. Lizards and salamanders just think about regenerating a bodypart and it happens. This ofcourse means that they're mentally superior to humans.

[Per Ahlberg]

Of course. I refer you all to Karel Capek's War with the Newts (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/capek/karel/newts/): a chilling vision of our future salamander overlords.

[Monad]

Of course. I refer you all to Karel Capek's War with the Newts (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/capek/karel/newts/): a chilling vision of our future salamander overlords.

Nice one. I also find Blish's A Case of Conscience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Conscience) very unsettling. In this an alien species is found on a distant planet with a perfect society - they are rationalistic and have no wars, crime etc, and in their development they start out as something like a lungfish and then in their teens they are something like an amphibian and as adults a sort of warm blooded reptile. Due to this a member of a group of humans (who happens to be a Jesuit priest) who have been charged with making first contact judges they have been deliberately created by Satan as a temptation to make it seem that peace, logic, and understanding can exist in the complete absence of souls, God or any other deity.

[pSimon]

Hmm. I can only dimly remember that one. Must go dig my copy out.

Long time since I read Black Easter (http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/blish.html), too.

[Monad]

Black Easter and it's sequel are two of my favourite books - would love to see a film version of them

[espritch]

"Evo scientists", far from dismissing whatever they can't understand, see what they don't understand as opportunities for a grant application.


:notworthy::notworthy::notworthy:

That's the thing.

If the Creos don't understand, it is at best something to be ignored.

Well, better than that - if they don't understand, they have a Gap, into which they can insert God.

Which seems a bit tough on God. I don't, myself, see why God has to be confined to these shrinking gaps. Seems like bad theology to me, quite apart from being terrible science.

You have to remember that their god is the god of ancient sheep herders from 3000 years ago. He does need a very big gap to hide in because he's a rather small god. That's why he can't create a universe over 6000 years old.

[Monad]

Oh I forgot to mention one of the things that convinces the priest the aliens are the creation of Satan is that their ontogenesis recapitulates their phylogenesis which he believes should be impossible - ergo Satan did it. Nice logic.