If life is not worth living it may be the liver!!
Normally there would be no cyanide at the drill site. Heavy metals in solution can cause assorted internal problems, some mimic other elements in enzyme systems(imperfectly) causing the enzyme to function improperly as the body tries to use it in a synthesis pathway and it will not work, some are toxic in other ways. I doubt that minesite contamination would cause this. Careless techniques in an assay lab can cause uptake of heavy metals resulting in poisoning. Uptake of cyanide in a lab/anywhere usually causes rapid death.
DeGuzman may have felt at the end of his tether with exposure imminent, or he could have been killed by the real perps, or he could be alive and well in Rio??.
Liver replacements(temporary) allow the real liver to rest and regenerate, after which the substitute is disconnected, and the procedure repeated as many times as is needed. They are only a short term replacement(days/hours) as they perform only a small subset of full liver function. Transgenic pig livers that have the immuno flags of a human system are under test. If perfected they could become permanent implantable replacements for damaged livers. About 5 years away from the start of the approval process. Big problem is risk of adding dormant pig virus genes to your system, after which they turn on, make a virus, and it spreads readily and kills 100% of people. Small chance, but the risk is there, so the pig genome is under search for dormant visuses, and if found will be excised and that line used as clone stock. Most cold viruses incubate in farm ponds in China, where pig, duck, geese, and human wastes are mixed in pond areas allowing new mixes of viruses to form and propagate. That's why we always hear them called china hong-kong etc variations. So lots of pig visuses can stick to human cells with minor changes. A virus that can attach and enter any cell, can cause a rapid haemorrhagic infection as it just breaks open all your cells, the African ebola is like this in some variants. We are right to be careful of pig viruses in transgenic livers, but it can be solved, and they will be used after being made safe.
Bill . |
