Genes anc

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type of damage that affects our genes that can cause cancer .. radiation, certain chemicals, etc. But what sort of damage is it?

The discovery 1 previously wrote about concerned cells in the walls of blood vessels. When a blood vessel is damaged, certain blood cells, called platelets, release a GF which stimulates the blood vessel cells to repair the damage.

The blood vessel cells contain the gene for this GF, just like every other cell in the body, but the gene is switched off. It the gene is damaged in a particular way, it may be switched on, and the cells will then stimulate themselves to grow and divide. Result - cancer.

No doubt, many cancers will prove to be caused in this way, but there are other ways to achieve the same result.

GFs work by attaching themselves to special proteins called receptors, on the outside of their target cells. The recepor is like an ignition switch 'he GF switches it on and par of the receptor sends a message to a special gene in the nucleus controlling growth and division, switching it on in turn.

One cancer gene recently discovered codes for the part of the receptor that sends the message to the nucleus. Such a cell doesn't need a GF to make it grow.

Yet another type of cancer gene has been discovered. It is a modified form of the special gene controlling the whole process of growth and division.

Normally, it can only be switched on by the appropriate message, but in Burkitt's lymphoma (a cancer of the immune system), this gene has somehow hopped from its normal place on a chromosome into the middle of the genes for anti-bodies which are always switched on in immune cells. So these cells are constantly dividing.

Incidentally, some viruses carry human cancer genes and can insert them into , humar chromosomes. Burkitt's lymohoma is thought to be causec oy just such a virus, probably carrying a copy of the special gene mentioned above. Genetic engineering leads to biological warfare.

Worries about biological warfare are fuelling a row about genetic engineering in the USA.

The US Recombinant-DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) has just approved the cloning of a gene for a potent toxin. The toxin is made by certain gut bacteria and is responsible for the symptoms of a type of dysentry which kills many children in the Third World.

The researchers work for the US Department of Defense in the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and say they are interested in developing a vaccine against this type of dysentery.

However, the research could easily be used for aggressive purposes, despite the good intentions of the researchers.

This raises several difficult questions. On the one hand, we want to fight the many virulent diseases ravaging the Third World. On the other hand, we dun't want to allow our rulers to develop ever mure terrible weapons of destruction.

One solution might be to take all such research out of the hands of "Defence" departments. However, capitalist governments could still find ways to misapply health research, so the question of workers' control of the results of such research comes up.

Alternatively, do we just try to ban such research whille capitalism lasts, and perhaps encourage public health measires to combat such diseases as dysentery? Suggestions, please.

3500495 Napoleon III seems quite a benign gentleman.

The point - well brought out by the material presented in 'The Stateless Nations' - is that the bourgeoisie proceeded not according to consistent democracy, but by other principles. It did not recognise the free right of peoples, nations, and segments of peoples to join together or separate at will: its primary drive was to ensure that each state should hold what territory it had, and acquire as much more as possible.

The East European and Russian Marxists at the turn of the 20th century drew the lessons of West European history, consciously using them as a guide for the breaking-up of the empires of Russia, Austria, and Turkey. British Empire to the African in the 19th and early 20th century, and some pockets of colonising Europe.

The stateless nations of Europe hold a mirror to the world in which a comparatively civilised version of a world-wide problem is shown. It is a problem which will probably only be resolved by the creation of free socialist federations and finally by a free world socialist federation.

Next week 'The Stateless Nations' deals with Brittany, the Celtic area in north-west France populated by people who moved there as refugees from the Saxon invasion of Britain 1400 years ago and still retain a distinct character.

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