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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (6680)	8/4/2001 8:12:26 PM
From: LTK007	Respond to of 74559

<The herbalists take the fact that some chemicals are sometimes useful and distort that into a dishonest charlatan industry preying on ignorant people [and drug habits].> amen to that.max

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (6680)	8/4/2001 8:58:22 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Maurice - ...Of course plants are full of pharmacologically active chemicals. They've been waging war since the first bug started eating them a billion years ago [give or take an eon]. We and they have developed in an attack, counterattack mode [mostly from our primate relatives' need to eat] for all of evolutionary history. Plants use neurotoxins, spikes, nerve hurters, hallucinogens and thousands of chemicals in the battle. Some of those chemicals are effective in, for example, cancer treatment, because the cancer cells in their highly reproductive state are vulnerable to the poisons which kill in the reproducing cells. The rest of our cells survive the attack [mostly, though a lot of the good cells die too] and the cancer is cured [with some luck, timing etc]. ... A marginally related question which has been annoying me. Can a viable human be completely reproduced using only the genetic content of his/her cells? The alternative would be that vitally necessary symbiotes, parasites or micro-organisms exist that have co-evolved separately in parallel with man. In particular, could a sterile robotic colonization starship clone viable humans from only human cells? Regards, Don