Poisoning the Devil

Poisoning the Devil

The Tasmanian Devil and Devil Facial Tumour Disease

The global extirpation of the world’s apex predator fauna is consistently highlighting their important functional role in preserving biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem resilience. Apex predator declines and extinctions are promoting more invasive and homogenised ecosystem states, linked with secondary species extinctions, changes to community composition, and redefined carnivore guilds. In ...

Telomerase: The Devil Inside

High telomerase activity is detected in nearly all human cancers but most human cells are devoid of telomerase activity. There is well-documented evidence that reactivation of telomerase occurs during cellular transformation. In humans, tumors can rely in reactivation of telomerase or originate in a telomerase positive stem/progenitor cell, or rely in alternative lengthening of telomeres, a tel...

The red devil revisited.

When I went to medical school, I was taught that conceptually, the toxicity of doxorubicin and anthracyclines in general could be compared with that of acetaminophen, such that as long as I operated within “the safe dose,” patients with cancer would derive only benefits, not toxicity. I do not believe that my teachers are to be blamed for this thinking. If we take a look at the original von Hof...

The Devil in Confessions.

It is a humbling experience to go to the Web site of the Innocence Project (http://www.innocenceproject.org), a nonprofit legal clinic at the Cardozo School of Law that handles cases in which postconviction DNA testing of evidence has provided proof of innocence. A recent visit to the site led me to the case of Eddie Joe Lloyd, who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of a 16-year-old girl in...