Week Twelve: Cell Biology

1. Describe connections you are making between cell biology and your TCM studies.

Honestly, I must admit I am not making many connections between cell biology and my TCM studies...yet. I haven't started my official TCM classes, so this is one reason. Also, in a way, I want to try to separate the two ways of thinking so that my TCM training is not resting on a mis-matched foundation. At this point, naively or not, I would like to understand TCM on its own merits, and understand cell biology on its own merits. In Western medical journals, it has been shown that acupuncture improves the immune response of the body, can relieve pain, etc., and the correlating biochemical processes involved could be discussed. But to me this removes the art from TCM.

I talked this over with someone just now because my response seems weak to me, and frankly I feel kind of stupid about this question, or maybe just stubborn, or possibly lazy. He said to me, "Well, isn't it integrative medicine that you're learning, and it's not up to you whether or not you want to make a connection?" Hm. Yes. That's true.

Even so...I still feel resistant at the moment to making too much of a connection because there is no art to cell biology; it is not grounded in a broader context. This is the reason I am studying Chinese Medicine and not becoming an allopathic physician.

I am not satisfied with my answer, however, and will keep thinking on it.

2. Impressions on the link "How Cells Divide: Mitosis vs. Meiosis":

The move from asexual to sexual reproduction (and corresponding process of meiosis) brings up a "wow" feeling in me -- such a beautiful and perfect and simple solution with such grand implications of love and community and relationships. In addition to awe and wonder, a lot of mundane questions arise in me as well such as:

How did the process of meiosis come about? What was the transition phase like? Are there any animals or living creatures in existence that are currently involved in the process of this evolutionary transition? Perhaps the sharks and komodo dragons that can sometimes reproduce asexually? Or the bees, ants, and wasps, whose males of those species are reproduced with only half the chromosomes?

The other question I have is which 23 chromosomes are provided by the egg and which by the sperm? And how did they arrive at knowing which 23 the other was providing so as not to provide duplicates?

We are like one body split into two in a way. In order to reproduce ourselves we need another being. That is both mysterious and beautiful.

Week Eleven: Living Diversity

1. Examine your own immediate environment for diversity of species. Post your findings.

Houseplants: We have a few plants in the house.

One "goes to sleep" at night and she is my favorite plant friend. I like to watch the "tic...tic...tic" of the leaves slowly springing inward after the sun sets. I wish I knew the name of this plant.

There is also what is called a "Lucky Chinese Money Tree" that a friend of mine gave to me. She bought it for her boyfriend, then moved to Australia to complete her PhD on Dengue Fever. He was supposed to join her there, but instead he dumped her. When she came back for a visit she took the Lucky Chinese Money Tree away from him, and gave it to me. Lucky?

A tall, bedraggled, all too often ignored Corn plant lives in the living room.

An orchid sits in the kitchen. It has been alive for many years and one must be patient with it. Suddenly it will bloom, lasting for months, and then drop its petals and sit baldly for many months.

Yard Plants:
Oh, way too many to list, but I will list what I know:
Orange tree, lemon tree, rosemary bush, jalapeno, several varieties of tomato that haven't given up yet, calendula, yellow and red onions, brussel sprouts, squirrel-bitten kale, celery, basil, mint, pear, plum, persimmon, fig (the tree most often picked by neighbors), fennel, foxglove, lavender, belladonna, princess tree, bougainvillea, flowering kale, stocks, yarrow, echinacea, rhubarb, green beans, avocado, date palms, blue spruce, magnolia, wisteria, many varieties of succulents and cacti, blackberry, many varieties of roses, crab grass (erg!), clover, nasturtium, passion flower, stinkhorns (a very unusual mushroom...it looks like a penis and smells like semen--I swear!), morning glory, hana flowers, pyrocanthis, spider plant, geranium, orchid, kinickkinick, false madrone, fake orange tree, fireweed, ferns, bamboo,


Foods: pumpkin, onions, garlic, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, rice, teas, coffees, herbs, beans... (if I go into the pantry and list all the different species I find I might never come out...)

People: male and female (different species??)

Dogs: two. Different breeds. Same species.


Other living creatures (mostly) outside of the house: rats, mice, squirrels, raccoons, ruby-throated humming birds, tiny irritating ants, fruit flies, brown apple moth, black widows, house fly, silverfish, tons and tons of rock doves (pigeons!), house finch, an occasional California scrub jay, crows, seagulls and Canadian Geese fly over head, once I saw a very impressive tomato hornworm, ladybugs, aphids, snails, the occasional stray cat, redworms, bees, wasps, and many other bugs and creepy crawlies that populate the outdoors.

2.Impressions of the links on cells

The first link presents theories about how the first cells may have formed. I find these theories kind of silly. It reminds me of an idea a little kid would come up with to explain something mysterious in the grown up world. No matter where the "building blocks of life" came from -- hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, rain, meteorites from outer space -- there is no mechanical explanation that can satisfactorily explain the beginning of life. You can mix all the essential ingredients of life into a soup pot, but do you create life? No. You don't. And I think even after billions of years, you'd still just have chemicals sitting in a soup pot.

In a science-nerd sort of way I think it's sweet that we couldn't survive without our bacterial friends that live in our gut. We are so different, and yet they are part of us, and have been since the beginning. I have a tender feeling toward them -- they are helping to keep me alive, and I am helping them by providing real estate!

To the left, my little buddies.

Week Nine: The Chemistry of Life

1. What are your thoughts on the ethics of “gene therapy”?

I think as a society and a culture and a human family, we should focus on prevention and healthy balanced living (this includes living in harmony with the environment, so that we do not create so many toxic situations that cause disease) instead of these highly technical fixes that treat the human body like a machine. However, I also think that if I had a child that was suffering and the suffering could be alleviated using something like gene therapy, I would probably jump at the chance to have my child treated. This paradox is troubling to me. The world view of this sort of medicine and the need for it all seems so basically wrong, and yet there does seem to be a need for it. We seem to have a lot of weird new diseases and it is awful to watch someone suffer. The hope of a quick fix is quite attractive. I hate that I feel so wishy washy about it all.

I looked gene therapy up on wikipedia and looked at the ethics section of the entry. It talks of the "Weismann barrier" which basically means that gene therapy can be thought of as ethical so long as adjustments to an individuals DNA are not something can be passed along to future generations. "The Weismann barrier is the principle that hereditary information moves only from genes to body cells, and never in reverse. " This principle is commonly accepted and gives gene therapy research the ethical go-ahead--if we really screw this person up, at least it won't spread into the population. However, some believe that if reproductive DNA (like gene therapy to the testicles) is applied, it may actually be passed on to future generations. The "Weismann barrier" can be breached. This may indeed be a problem. Wikipedia also lists other issues with gene therapy and reasons it may not work so well, including the fact that it has caused deaths.

So, ethically it may be wrong to use experimental technology on human beings when we don't fully know the consequences. I am going to gamble and say that gene therapies are being developed through use and abuse of innocent non-human animals, which I always think is wrong. Wrong wrong.

2. Check out and review the one of these Definitions of the “Chemistry of Life”

I looked at the link that took me to Stanford's biochem department. A few things I noticed: Ethics does not play a big role in their course offerings. It is present, but not overwhelmingly so (I didn't see a single course devoted solely to this topic); out of about fifteen faculty members, just two are women--what's it like to be a woman biochemist and how does their approach differ from that of men? Biochemistry, like all advanced sciences, has its own language that injects brain scrambling roadblocks into the brain of the laywoman. So many unfamiliar vocabulary terms made it difficult to understand even the course offering descriptions. They study how molecules act at the cellular level. Backgrounds in organic chemistry and biology are required. Once you graduate from their program you can teach or do research. Highlighted on the website is the usefulness of biochemistry to understanding disease, particularly cancers.

3. Check out and review one of these Animations of General, Organic and Biochemistry

I wish that the animations had some explanatory text. That said, my limited knowledge found the animations mildly interesting.

Fat entry into a cell looks like a tennis ball being hit into a pond. So easily accepted! Olestra has many more "arms" than regular fat and looks mighty scary! I didn't like seeing the collapse and rupture of red blood cells. I hope this is not happening inside my body! Vitamin B12 looks very complicated -- like a bunch of jacks glued together in an artistically wild way. Vitamin C looks much simpler. Folic acid is fat and wormy.

I looked at codeine and morphine, viagra and heroine. I can't say I learned a lot from looking except to say that no chemical is inherently "bad" -- it's just a bunch of elements linked together. And it's odd that these different compounds can have such varying effects on the human body.