My hesitation to say the Scripture is a great literary work, but it is

Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang's father is a Christian minister; in his youth he at times would give a sermon when his father was away. He once said to the congregation that he approached the Bible as a literary work. His father was not pleased as a minister reads the Bible with a pious heart, not with an enlightening mind.

Lin Yutang's father is right, but few can argue that the Scripture is in and of itself a great literary work. A bit over 400 years ago James I convened about 50 most distinguished scholars, many of them may be men of letters, in his days to translate the Bible into English for the Church of England, now known as King James Bible.

After being exposed to the intellectual academic world in Shanghai and Peking, Lin turned away from Christianity, only to return to it in his 50s. The journey of the heart and mind (心路歷程) is told in his book of From Pagan to Christian, which I read earlier this year. I believe there is nothing wrong to study religion with a rigor as we would other scholarly and intellectual subjects.

Let there be light: and there was light

Professor Roy Glauber

Upon hearing the news of Roy Glauber's (Harvard professor) Nobel award (in physics) in October 2005, I wrote an article, in which I said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” I am pleased to note, about 2 months later, on December 8, 2005, when he gave the Nobel Lecture, he also began with something like this: Our good Lord said, “Let it be quantum electrodynamics.” . . . that was the modern translation of the Hebrew. We quote the same Scripture, but he said it in a more poetic, aesthetic, subtle, and dynamic way, no doubt.

He also quoted Shakespeare's way of using 'light' in a splendid way,

“These dark days in Stockholm emphasize the importance of light in our lives. It is equally important in our literature. The word, "light", has vastly many meanings. Shakespeare, in Love's Labours Lost, has one of his cleverer characters make fun of that by speaking the line, ‘Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile ...’ Loosely translated, that means: Intellect, seeking understanding, easily fools reason. - Or perhaps it's the other way around.”

Bible quotations in Churchill's speeches

Churchill often quoted Bible in his speech. We heard the following in his first speech to the Joint Session of Congress on December 26, 1941, a bit over one year before Madame Chiang Kai-Shek did.

As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable will-power, salvation will not be denied us. In the words of the Psalmist, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” [Psalm 112:7 King James Bible] Not all the tidings will be evil.

Churchill was hesitated to quote the Scripture in the speech and mentioned his concern to FDR, who gave his approval; at which time Churchill was living in the White House.

While Cairo Conference was being planned, FDR cabled Churchill that their “meeting place is known to enemy” and suggested moving to Khartoum. Churchill thought Cairo well protected and cabled FDR, “See St. John, Chapter 14, Verses 1 to 4”; the passages are

Let not your heart be troubled:

Ye believe in God,

Believe also in me. . .

I go to prepare a place for you.

Reading religion from the historical perspective

Is it absurd to connect Nativity trail to tax cut?

One of my Facebook friends said he and his son will walk the Nativity Trail (about 80 miles) before Christmas, to which I made a comment,

It is nice to learn that you are going to walk the Nativity Trail. I presume you'll let us know when you reach Bethlehem, sending out the gospel. According to Luke, the Nazareth to Bethlehem journey was prompted by Caesar Augustus' decree for tax and that Joseph, a native of Bethlehem, was required to go back to register for census. We read in Will Durant's book [The story of civilization], “Luke adds that 'in those days there went out a decree of Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. . .” and “Josephus notes a census by him in Judea.”

President Trump promised a tax cut before Christmas. It may sound absurd to connect nativity to tax, but it is what Luke wrote. Gospel of Luke was written probably in the year 70 to 90 AD after the Christ's birth; so one may say it is almost “contemporary”.

Both Caesar and Jesus walked on this earth

Rarely did I write about religion in my blog.  But Christmas season is upon us, it may not be entirely inappropriate for me trying to be “evangelical” whatever it may mean to you.

Being a history buff, I don’t just read medicine, I read the history of medicine.  While reading about human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, I need to find out who was the one first connected HPV to cancer (yes, he is a Nobel laureate), who developed the vaccine or even the folly of trying to connect herpes simplex virus (HSV) to cancer.  And that is also the way I approach religion.

While reading history I always tried to read the works of the serious, credible and respectable historians.  Will Durant is one of them (I may have to add his wife, Ariel, to be fair); his Caesar and Christ (The Story of Civilization, Book 3) is the source upon which I am writing this post.

If you’re one of the non-believers who was not sure whether Jesus ever actually walked at Galilee or on this earth, you may have to presume Caesar was a myth, invented to glorify the Roman Empire.  Durant told the stories of Caesar and Jesus exactly the same way.

In fact, He began with “Did Christ exist?” in the Chapter of Jesus. “Napoleon, meeting the German scholar Wieland in 1808, asked him no petty question of politics or war, but did he believe in the historicity of Christ?” Durant wrote. History written by contemporary historians tends to be more trustworthy.

Credible historians tend to use the stories written by the contemporaries, the same is also true when it comes to religious writing. In Antiquities of the Jews (AD 93 by Josephus, a Jewish historian), we read,

“At that time lived Jesus, a holy man, if man he can be called, for he performed wonderful works, and taught men, and joyfully received the truth.  And he was followed by many Jews and many Greeks.  He was the Messiah.”

How and why I believe in the “miracles” Jesus performed

Many are troubled by the fact that a man with flesh could do “miracles”. Josephus said He did “wonderful works”, this is also more or less in line with what Durant wrote.

He [Jesus] did not claim omniscience; he could be surprised by events; only his earnestness and enthusiasm led him to overestimate his capacities, as in Nazareth and Jerusalem.  That his powers were nevertheless exceptional seems proved by his miracles.

Probably these were in most cases the result of suggestion—the influence of a strong and confident spirit upon impressionable souls.  His presence was itself a tonic; at his optimistic touch the weak grew strong and the sick were made well. . . . With a few exceptions they are not beyond belief; similar phenomenon may be observed almost any day at Lourdes, and doubtless occurred in Jesus’ time at Epidaurus.

Christ himself attributed his cures to the “faith” of those whom he healed; and he could not perform miracles in Nazareth, apparently because the people there looked upon him as “the carpenter’s son,” and refused to believe in his unusual powers. . . He felt he could work them only through the help of a divine spirit within him. . . He was reluctant to attempt them, forbade his followers to advertise them, reproved men for requiring a “sign,” and regretted that even his apostles accepted him chiefly because of the “wonders” he performed.

I am not well versed in discussing Jesus’s combined divinity and human nature. But this is the Jesus that I accept. This is His teaching and performance that I believe.  He is above us, but is also one of us.

St. Paul might not have met Jesus in person before resurrection, and he enviously admitted that Peter, James, and John had known Christ in the flesh.

Science and religion are non-exclusive to each other

Many of the respectable scientists that I admire are all atheists or agnostics. Science is my first love; I am a true believer in science; life process is a bunch of chemical reactions that follow physical laws. But, “Science and religion are non-exclusive to each other”, as I said in my letter-to-the-editor (to Observer-Reporter, a newspaper in Washington, PA) in 2003 after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster with a title of “Understanding Science and Religion”.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-am-trying-to-collect-my-letters-to.html

Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist is a historical event that is well recorded

Pope John Paul II visited Al-Maghtas (in Jordan) in March 2000, he said “in my mind I see Jesus coming to the water of the river of Jordan not far from here to be baptized by John the Baptist,” at which moment the Pope was subliminally connected with Jesus and John he Baptist.

Luke recorded Jesus was baptized in the fifteenth year of Tiberius (Roman Emperor 14AD to 37AD), so that happened in the year of 25AD.  This suggested Jesus accepted John’s teaching, but somehow Jesus himself never baptized anyone.

Josephus (the Jewish historian) attributed John’s arrest to Herod’s [ruler of Galilee] suspicion that John was fomenting a political rebellion in the guise of a religious reformation.  Gospels of Mark and Matthew may have somewhat different reasons of John’s arrest.  Nevertheless, the fact of Jesus’ baptism and John’s arrest were vividly recorded in history book and gospels.

In her “Everyday in Tuscany”, Frances Mayes wrote about seeing Signorelli's Baptism of Christ by John te Baptist (I will talk about it more next post) in the church of San Medardo. This is such a pivotal event in the history of Christianity, no wonder so many Italian Renaissance painters have a painting of this event.

Every Day in Tuscany and Etruscan civilization and wine

While browsing at Carnegie Library online site to look for an eBook to read, I checked out “Everyday in Tuscany: Season of an Italian Life,” it turns out to be a cannot-put-it-down eBook.

Caesar and Christ

While reading Will Durant's The Story of Civilization Book 3 (Caesar and Christ), I found out how Roman Empire came into being and also discovered Etruscan civilization, which took place in Etruria, Italy where Tuscany is today.

Etruscan civilization lives in Roman Empire

Etruria and Rome fought 14 wars in two centuries and Roman became the ruler of Italy in 272BC, but Etruscan influence survived in Roman Empire to the end. Roman numerals are probably Etruscan, and the name Rome may have come from Etruscan rumon, river. The Etruscans gave Roman brutal gladiatorial contests. Etruscan engineers built walls and sewers of Rome. In fact, for about one century Etruscans ruled the Roman nation. The following excerpts are from Durant's Caesar and Christ.

Greeting the visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is an Etruscan chariot with body and wheels of wood, sheathing and tires of bronze, the high front embossed with figures of considerable grace.

Etruscan Orator

Etruscan art is nearly all that we know of Etruscan history. We can trace in it the manner and morals of the people, the power of religion and caste and the changing tides of economic and culture contact with Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

But either case there is in these painting so frolicsome and impish vivacity that makes one wonder how pleasant the life of Etruscan must have been, if their tombs were so gay.

Love of music and the dance is one of the gracious aspects of Etruscan civilization (about 700 BC until assimilated into Roman Republic, late 4th century BC)

From the seventh to the fourth centuries BC, it was custom among Roman aristocrats to send their sons to Etruscan cities for higher

from Etruscan tomb

education; there, among other things, they learned geometry, surveying, and architecture. Roman dress derived from the Etruscan, or both from a common source.

Etruscan Apollo of Veii

Foreigners flocked to Paris to study during the reign of Louis XIV. Thousands of Italians, Germans and English preferred Paris to their native lands. David McCullough's The Greater Journey was about Americans studied in Paris during 19^th century.

Writing the pleasure of food, wine, gardens and the “voluptuousness of Italian life.”

The author of Every Day in Tuscany is Frances Mayes who with her husband (a poet) has lived in Cortona, Tuscany for 20 some years. She is well known in writing the pleasure of food, wine, gardens and the “voluptuousness of Italian life.”

Being an ignoramus as far as wine goes, I still indulge in wine reading. It may be unfortunate that I enjoy wine reading than I do wine. For those who can appreciate fine wines, especially Italian ones, may get more out of this than I do.  (The followings are excerpts from "Every Day in Tuscany").

Red wine in winter works a spell that I don’t fall under in hot weather. The gorgeous, profound Vino Nobiles, Brunellos, and Super Tuscans can overwhelm summer food. Though Tuscans almost never order white wine, even when it’s one hundred degrees, local makers are undermining that prejudice with some fulsome and spicy whites. I keep my own stash in summer, especially our winemaker friend Riccardo Baracchi’s Astore and some of our recent local whites from D’Alessandro. But when the cold comes down, and in the spirited autumn weather, our biggest Brunello glasses are on the table every night, the decanters filled by six for dinner at eight.

Paolo moves us through his chardonnay, chianti, his two cepparellos (a pure Sangiovese grape content), and two syrahs. With the chardonnay, we start with crostini neri, the Tuscan classic made from chicken livers, and mostarda di peperoni, a condiment of peppers, and a small cannellini bean salad with sopressata. Because Paolo talks about each wine in Italian and then in English for the benefit of a sprinkling of expats, the dinner extends way into the night. Unlike many tastings I've attended in America, wine flows. Arnaldo doesn’t limit us to a taste of each wine, but keeps pouring as people ask questions. By the time we are served the secondo, my attention has mellowed. I remember a California friend whose mantra was, “They all taste good to me.”

For the racy [well used] chianti, Arnaldo selected a tasty gnocchi with ragù made from local Chianina beef. The combination could not be more genuino. I’d like to stand up and quote Cesare Pavese: “A gulp of my drink,” he wrote, “and my body can taste the life / of plants and of rivers.”

The fruit torta I pass by, but I do try a sip of the Isole e Olena Vin Santo, 2000. It tastes like late Thanksgiving afternoon by the fire, a cashmere throw over my legs, lines of a poem running through my head. I’d like to make a walnut cake, just to serve with this smooth elixir. Just as I imagine this vin santo held up to the flames and sloshed around for the play of toast and topaz colors, I feel a surge of homesickness for my daughter, my grandson Willie, my writer neighbors, even for Willie’s goofy labradoodle. Isn’t this the best response to a wine, that taste provokes a fierce emotion? And maybe surreal associations? The ginger-curled, bouncing labradoodle is exactly the color of this elegant vin santo.

My reservation to proclaim Werner Heisenberg as a true hero in denying Hitler an atomic bomb

When I said almost all the German physicists that I know were respectable and honorable intellectuals under Nazi, I was talking about the world renowned giants in quantum physics.  Of course, the frenzied Nazi fanatics came from all walks of life, including scientists, even two Nobel laureates (Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, who attacked Einstein’s “Jewish physics”, and attacked Werner Heisenberg as “White Jew”).

Otto Hahn (who discovered the nuclear fission that makes making atomic bomb possible) asked Max Planck (then the director of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, an institute now bears his name) to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, Planck replied, “If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it.”  Pessimistic and passive though Planck might be, he knew he couldn’t make a difference.  Planck basically avoided direct confrontation with the Nazi regime.

I believe Heisenberg was truly against Nazism, but it is the same when I said Robert Lee was against slavery. This is not enough to exonerate them or claim their innocence.  I still have reservation in proclaiming Heisenberg as a true hero in denying Hitler an atomic bomb.

Family connection of Werner Heisenberg and Heinrich Himmler                                        Heisenberg’s maternal grandfather was a rector of the Max Gymnasium [a school preparing students for college] in Munich, and was a close friend of headmaster Himmler, whose second son, Heinrich Himmler, the notorious head of the feared SS of the Reich.  If the degree of evil can be measured, I would rank Himmler as No. 2, only after Hitler.

I have no knowledge that Heisenberg knew Himmler personally, but when Heisenberg was attacked by Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark as “White Jew” since he supported Einstein’s theoretic physics and relativity theory, Heisenberg sent Himmler a letter, asking for help (the letter was delivered by Heisenberg’s mother to Himmler's mother.)  Himmler did intervene and the attacks stopped.

This family connection is through no fault of his own.  Heisenberg’s wife described this event in great detail in her “Inner Exile”, but she conveniently failed to mention another fact that Himmler advised Heisenberg that if he must discuss relativity in physics classes he must keep Einstein’s name out of it.  Heisenberg accepted this restriction.

Heisenberg’s naïve political view that a Hitler Europe was no threat to America                     FDR had a far-sight that America couldn’t coexist with a Hitler Europe (i.e. when the Great Britain was also under Hitler’s yoke) and even if America were able to survive or beat the Nazi, many more million Americans would have to perish.

Heisenberg was taken to England as a “prisoner” at the end of war and was sent back to Germany in January 1946.  In a letter to his wife (1/25/1946, still not released yet), in which he wrote,

“. . . The war, from an American point of view, could actually have been totally senseless if we did not succeed in connecting central Europe again with the intellectual tradition of the last two thousand years; had it only been about destruction, one could easily have left that to Hitler.  At any rate, no American could seriously claimed that Germany had been a threat to America or that a Hitler Europe was more dangerous, in terms of power, than Eurasian continent under the political leadership of Russia. …”

One cannot blame Heisenberg for being a patriot to his country and his people, but as of January 1946 Heisenberg was still ignorant or oblivious to the true nature of Hitler evil regime.

Max Planck: The father of quantum mechanics/physics and the suffering in his old age

The exact date of birth of quantum mechanics/physics is December 14, 1900 when Max Planck announced his revolutionary idea that energy emitted by a resonator could only take a discrete value (quanta, hence quantum mechanics; E = hf; E=energy, f=frequency, h=Planck constant).  Based on Planck’s concept, Einstein proposed in 1915 that light is also quantized—his photoelectric effect (E = hv) that earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, and Planck was so honored in 1918.

Max Planck and Albert Einstein

Max Planck fired what could be called the first shot in physics’ quantum revolution in 1900.

When Max Planck died on October 4, 1947, Einstein wrote to his wife,

“Your husband has come to the end of his days after doing great things and suffering bitterly.  It was a beautiful and fruitful period that I was allowed to live through with him. . . . The hours which I was allowed to spend in your house, and the many close conversations, which I had with your dear husband, will remain among my happiest memories for the rest of my life; nothing can alter the fact that a tragedy event has affected us both.  May you draw comfort in your days of loneliness from the thought that you brought happiness and contentment into the life of your respected husband.  From the distant place I share your grief and greet you with all the former affections.”

I couldn’t have written it better for a message of sympathy and reminiscence.  I am glad to know that my view is in line with Einstein that the behavior of most, if not all, German physicists was decent, respectable and honorable under Nazi, whereas their conduct as a group left a lot to be desired.

Einstein mentioned the “tragedy event” that they both shared he was referring to the execution of Planck’s son by Hitler thugs in early 1945 when his son, Erwin, was implicated in the ill-fated July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.

Erwin Rommel was also implicated in the failed plot to kill Hitler.  Hitler delegated Keitel to tell Rommel that if he took his own life, he would be given a state funeral and his families would be spared.  The German public was told that Rommel was killed by enemy airplane.  I seem to recall seeing a photo in which Hitler was comforting Rommel’s wife in the state funeral.

This photo of Einstein was taken by Roy Glauber who, in his 2005 Nobel Lecture, said Einstein posed for him when he was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1951.  Glauber said this was his “unpublished work”.

Einstein posed for Roy Glauber in 1951

Werner Heisenberg and “collective guilt” of Germans under Nazi

I’ll write a series of articles using “Heisenberg” as the category.  One of the topics of my reading WWII is the “collective guilt” of the German people.  How could such a highly educated, civilized and hard-working people be led by a monstrous evil into an unprecedented tragedy?

As Churchill said, “Even in Germany itself there are millions who stand aloof from the seething mass of criminality and corruption constituted by the Nazi party machine” that was responsible for the power of its fuhrer, who was a “a haunted, morbid being, who, to their eternal shame, the German people in their bewilderment have worshiped as a god.”

Sommerfeld & Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1930 Nobel laureate)

In telling the tale of Werner Heisenberg’s role in Nazi’s effort in making atomic bomb, I’ll also survey the attitude and mood of the German general population in war time and the periods leading to the war.

Arnold Sommerfeld (a giant in developing quantum physics, the mentor for Werner Heisenberg), who, in October 1946 invited Einstein to rejoin the Bavarian Academy, to which Einstein replied,

Planck & Einstein

“It was a real joy for me to receive your letter after all these dark years.  None of us would have dreamed of all the horror we have been through.  The Germans slaughtered my Jewish brethren; I’ll have nothing further to do with them, not even with a relatively harmless academy.  I feel differently about the few people who, insofar as it was possible remained steadfast against Nazism.  I am happy to learn that you were one of them.”

Otto Hahn (who discovered the nuclear fission; you may read the post of “Nuclear fission—a woman slighted by Nobel Prize committee” for further details) also asked Einstein to become a foreign member of Planck Institute (former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics), Einstein emphatically said “No”; in the response Einstein said, “the conduct of the German intellectuals—seen as a group—was no better than that of a mob.”

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2013/12/nuclear-fissiona-woman-slighted-by.html

Einstein obviously had an unforgiving heart, I wouldn’t blame him.  Almost all the prominent German physicists in that era were all very decent intellectuals and, with very few exceptions, never joined Nazi Party.  But, “as a group”, as Einstein said, their conducts were tantamount to the accomplices to an evil regime. This may be unavoidable in a tightly controlled, brutal and oppressive political apparatus.  I would touch these issues as I go along.

After reading two books about Heisenberg the past week or two, I still cannot draw a conclusion whether he was a true hero who skillfully deprived Hitler of an atomic bomb or an accomplice.  His wife, Elizabeth Heisenberg, wrote a book in 1980 (English translation in 1984), after Heisenberg passed away in 1976.  “Inner Exile: Recollection of a Life with Werner Heisenberg” is a genuine attempt to defend her husband’s reputation.

The second book, “My Dear Li” was published by their daughter in 2016 after Elizabeth passed away in 1998.  These are their correspondence between 1937 and 1946.  These letters shed no further light in search of the truth about atomic bomb, but one can have a better grasp about the life under Hitler Germany.

The basis of cancer is genetic, using hepatitis B virus to illustrate the case

The main theme of this post is to say “the basis of cancer is genetic; the cancerous state is maintained by genes.”

The difference of germ cell mutation and somatic cell mutation  

Speaking of ‘genetic’, many automatically relate that it comes from parents and will pass along to children.  But, that is not the case.  There are two main types of cells: germ cells and somatic cells.  Germ cells are sex cells (gametes) that include sperms and eggs.  Each gamete contains one set of chromosomes (23).  When a boy (sperm) meets a girl (egg); they unite to form zygote (contains 2 sets of chromosomes or 46) which is the very beginning of an embryo.

Thus gamete (either sperm or egg) mutation can pass along to offspring, such as sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis or color blindness. Somatic (body) cells mutation will not pass along to offspring, but may cause cancer.

The basis of cancer is genetic                      

One needs to grasp two concepts to understand the story of why the basis of cancer is genetic:                              

(1)  Virus infection may lead to cancer; virus does it by ‘manipulating’ our genes.                                                 

(2)  Mutation of our genes (caused by virus or by chemical agents or radiation) leads to cancer.

Renato Dulbecco first demonstrated a viral infection may lead to cancer 

Dr. Renato Dulbecco

I wrote an obituary of Renato Dulbecco in February 2012 when he died, I called it “Remembrance (which is the obituary for Wall Street Journal): Renato Dulbecco”, to protest WSJ for not having a “Remembrance” for such a medical giant.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2012/02/remembrance-renato-dulbecco-1914-2012.html

Dulbecco (at Caltech in 1960s) was the one demonstrated that DNA of a virus can integrate into the chromosomal DNA of the host cell, causing the uncontrolled cell growth, which is the genetic basis of cancer, and for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1975, thus viral genes transform normal cells into cancer cells.

Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus (at UC Medical School at San Francisco in 1975) discovered the origin of so-called ‘cancer gene”, which is not of virus, but of our own gene.

Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus: The concept of proto-oncogene and oncogene 

Dr.Michael Bishop

If a given (human) gene is picked up and transduced/transformed by retrovirus (i.e. when cell is infected by retrovirus) into an oncogene, then this given human gene is called proto-oncogene.

In addition to virus being the culprit to transform a proto-oncogene to oncogene, certain chemical agents or radiation can cause a mutation of a proto-oncogene to become an oncogene, these chemical agents are called carcinogens, which are usually mutagens.

Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus worked on the Rous sarcoma virus (see the story later) in the early 1970s to make this discovery.  Even though the cancer is caused by virus, but the so-called ‘viral oncogenes’ are not truly viral at all but are of human genes in origin.  They discovered the retrovirus genomes are incorporated into the human gene and exploited to wreak havoc.  Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus were honored with Nobel Prizes in Medicine for this pivotal discovery in 1989.

Dr. Harold Varmus

The sequence of nucleotide in an oncogene can be different by only a single nucleotide from the sequence of the corresponding proto-oncogene, which is still normal and healthy.

Since the nucleotides sequence of a gene (DNA) is translated into the amino acid sequence of a protein the gene makes, so the sequence of amino acid of a oncogene protein [made by oncogene] can be different by only a single amino acid from the sequence of the corresponding proto-oncogene protein [made by proto-oncogene].

Dr. Peyton Rous

This is a good example that a single amino acid (among millions) goes astray can wreak havoc to cause cancer or sickle cell anemia.

Peyton Rous started it all 

Peyton Rous was honored with a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1966, almost 40 years after he first discovered a virus (now bears his name) cause cancer in chicken.  This is the main reason why Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus picked Rous sarcoma virus to work.

A visit by Dr. Chih-Wen Lin whose article in the Journal of Hepatology prompted me to write this article article

Last week our friend, Dr. Chih-Wen Lin came to visit us from Taiwan.  有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎。.  His article (“Heavy alcohol consumption increases the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma in hepatitis B virus-related cirrhosis”) in 2013 Journal of Hepatology (see photo) prompted my writing of this article.

Dr. Lin is the Director of the Department of Gastroenterology at E-DA Hospital/I-Shou University in Kao-Hsiung, Taiwan.  Their data showed that the 5-year cumulative incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is 10.7% in alcoholic cirrhotic patients, and the alcoholic cirrhotic patients with concomitant hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection have significantly higher incidence of HCC (36.8%) than those with HBV infection alone or alcoholism alone.

The focus of this post is not to discuss Dr. Lin’s article, but to show you that alcoholic cirrhosis without HBV infection can also lead to HCC (liver cancer).  In fact, cirrhosis from steatohepatitis (the most severe form of fatty liver), hemochromatosis or Wilson disease can also lead to HCC, less frequent though it may be.

The mechanisms of liver cancer-making in hepatitis B and hepatitis C are different                

Up to 90% of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma are known to have chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, hepatitis B infection may be a rare exception; HBV can cause HCC in the absence of cirrhosis, in contrast to HCV-related HCC which is found almost exclusively in patients with cirrhosis.

Hepatitis B virus (a DNA-containing virus) is able to integrate its DNA into the DNA of the host cells to transform it into oncogene, whereas hepatitis C virus (an RNA-containing virus) doesn’t have this ability.

The mechanism of how HCC (liver cancer) is formed is quite heterogeneous and complex, hepatitis B and hepatitis C play a big role, but they are not the sole perpetrators.  Alcohol is an important cofactor in patients with either hepatitis B or C infection with cirrhosis that leads to HCC (liver cancer), the mechanism of which is not clear, or at least unknown to me.  I read somewhere that telomerase is even involved.

Dr. Baruch Blumberg: A towering figure in medicine, a humble scientist and a great man           

It would be remiss of me not to mention Dr. Baruch Blumberg while talking about hepatitis B.  He discovered Australia antigen, later proved to be hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), the origin of hepatitis B infection in mid-1960s, leading to the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976. His memoir is “The Hunt for a Killer virus: Hepatitis B”, a fascinating story.

He also made the first hepatitis B vaccine that was used in Taiwan.  His The Lancet article (Nov. 1, 1969) connected hepatitis B related cirrhosis to hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer).  Another related article was also published on July 5, 1975 Lancet

Medicine is complex                                                                                                                          Like Oppenheimer told his students at U.C. Berkeley, “I can make it clearer, but I cannot make it simpler.”  I am hoping you would paraphrase Enrico Fermi that before you read this article, you’re confused, and after reading this article, you’re still confused, but at a higher level.