Advances in Scientific Research and Implications for Economic Development
Potentially new emerging strain(s) of COVID-19 virus coupled with mounting losses of millions of human lives (estimated 13+ million infected worldwide[1]) within the span of a short half year, underscore the urgency to rigorously re-explore, expand and quickly adopt dynamical and non-mechanistic methods of scientific research, particularly in the health sciences. A renewed focus centered upon optical spectroscopy[2] and mass spectrometry[3] in conjunction with medical forms of non-thermal laser (a wavelength dependent, photo-chemical not a photo-thermal effect)[4] and biophysical techniques — initial spin-offs of Strategic Defense Initiative R&D — is sorely required to leap-frog into viral- infectious disease prevention, life promoting and prolonging initiatives side-by-side with public health measures ramped up to a global scale.
The reality of an out-of control COVID-19 pandemic in conjunction with an assured threat that a complete vaporization of Western financial and monetary markets looms on the immediate horizon, signals an existential conflagration of processes well-suited to be reckoned through application of the scientific method and revolutionary ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, the world’s most accurate physical economist. This epistemological method places “What distinguishes Life, from non-living processes?,” at the center of all scientific inquiry. Whether or not humanity musters up the moral integrity to embrace and deploy the panoply of LaRouche’s Apollo-style platforms targeting an overhaul and upheaval in economic production, R&D of newly conceptualized systems of food production, health care, retooling of the global workforce may become the litmus test of humankind’s durable survival
The significance of LaRouche’s 1970-80’s proposal and concept of the Strategic Defense Initiative resides in the introduction into the civilian economy of a broad array of medical and industrial applications from R&D in a broad spectrum of coherent energy beams research, spin-offs from their adoption by the US Defense Sector. In the realm of defensive weaponry, these new technologies are able to intercept and render inoperable nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in flight. Under the auspices of Strategic Defense Initiative, during the eighties, the federal government contracted with private, public and university- based research organizations to research an array of beam technology –such beams of light propagate at or near the speed of light. Some of these beams are lasers, particle beams, microwave or plasma beams, or magnetic accelerators for projectiles.
This directly applies to our current COVID crisis. It is high time to scrap poorly conceived, conventional methods. Our survival pivots on supplanting obsolescence with a “failure is not an option” approach to every undertaking related to human existence. This emphatically applies in the immediate case with a long overdue need to halt the COVID -19 pandemic and, to overtake threats of mass starvation due to insect-driven plagues as well. On the rise are reports of atypical clinical effects and, a host of extra-pulmonary manifestations related to or, occurring in tandem with SARS-COV2 infection, which are documented and catalogued in studies in France, the USA and, China. Though a limited understanding of these findings persists overall, the good news – if one can call this good — is that these reports are becoming increasingly the subject of scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals – not merely headline grabbers of media reports generally.
A number of recently published papers [5],[6][7] [8] discuss a variety of conditions arising in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 having multi-organ system involvement. Noted are neurologic symptoms of migraines, dizziness , disease or damage to the brain, clustered eruptions of Guillaine Barré syndrome, ageusia [disruption in taste functions], anosmia [loss of smell] acute and sub-acute stroke, as well as neuropsychiatric disorders; Renal conditions: acute kidney injury, hematuria [the presence of blood in the urine]; Hepatic signs of abnormal function or severe liver damage; Cardio Vascular effects: Deep Vei Thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism, catheter-related thrombosis, myocardial injury/myocarditis, arrhythmias, myocardial ischemia; Endocrine effects: hyperglycemia, diabetic ketoacidosis; Gastrointestinal conditions such as diarrhea, nausea/vomiting, anorexia , abdominal pain and, Dermatological conditions.
Neuro Critical Care Society authors [9] report that “…While SARS-COV2 presents primarily as a respiratory disease, injury to other organ systems, including the nervous system is well documented. These observations shed light on the broad physiological impact of COVID-19, and awareness of these extra-pulmonary features may help inform the overall prognosis in patients affected. The reported neurological effects of COVID-19 are myriad…”
Commercial media coverage highlights COVID-19 virus research which is the subject of a paper online “ahead of print” in the science journal CELL, entitled “The Global Phosphorylation Landscape of SARS-CoV-2 Infection.[8]” Phosphorylation of proteins is a crucial phase in cell “life cycle,” activity whereby phosphorus treats or impregnates cell components – proteins can become activated or deactivated. In vitro research by this team of scientists used mass spectrometry — which measures subtle changes in mass of these protein molecules — and detected novel changes that SARS-CoV-2 infected cells underwent during this cell activity phase, to invade and take over the host metabolic machinery to reproduce itself: Tenacle-like structures were forming from the infected cells. (They hypothesize that these “tentacles then poke holes in nearby cells, allowing the virus to infect new cells.”) In the context of these studies, the researchers proceeded to investigate and detect possible drugs candidates and compounds which can target these SARS-CoV-2 altered pathways and, which possess antiviral efficacy with a potential to be developed as COVID-19 therapies. Apart from the particular avenue of research which obviously provides sorely needed specific findings about how SARS-CoV-2 virus infects and co-ops the cells of its host, this project provides an example of the fruitful nature of international collaboration and cooperation to achieve a goal which benefits all nations. Performing this work were teams from the listed twenty participating research entities, including at the Virology Institutes of the Pasteur Institute and the University of California, the University of Freiburg, Heidelberg University Hospital, The Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, N.Y. and NIH/NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Hamilton, MT.
WHAT IS A VIRUS, ANYWAY?
Reproduced from the archives of the science journal 21st Century Science & Technology, in an article authored in 1988 by pathologist, Dr. John Grauerholz, is an extremely well-stated characterization of a virus:
“Viruses: ‘Bad News’ That Grows — A virus consists of a segment of genetic material, DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein capsule and, in the case of HIV, an envelope composed of fats, proteins, and sugars. As one immunologist put it, ‘a virus is bad news wrapped in a protein coat’ — the bad news being the genetic information in the DNA or RNA of the virus. Unlike bacteria or other parasites, which contain all the metabolic machinery necessary to reproduce themselves and are capable of growth outside of cells, viruses are totally dependent on the metabolic machinery of the cells they infect—they are obliged to reproduce inside host cells and are wholly inert outside of a host cell.
“The most common forms of human illness caused by viruses result from what are called productive infections, where the virus enters the cell and takes over its metabolic machinery to reproduce itself, destroying the cell. The copies thus produced go on to infect other cells and repeat the cycle until the host is either destroyed or mounts an immune response that eliminates the virus. The destroyed cells are replaced by new cells where possible or sometimes by scar tissue. In the case of cells that cannot be replaced, like nerve cells, the patient may be left with permanent damage, as in the case of polio.
“Certain viruses, like herpes, can remain in an in active or latent form within certain cells where they are hidden from the immune system, When such latent viruses are activated, they cause a local productive infection, like a cold sore, which generally heals as the immune system eliminates the newly produced virus. However, some of the virus remains in the latent form to serve as a reservoir for future infections.
“Other viruses are associated with the development of tumors, which may occur long after the initial infection. In these cases, rather than causing cell death from productive infection, the virus transforms the infected cell and immortalizes it.” [10]
References:
- “Quantitative Optical Spectroscopy for Tissue Diagnosis.” Richards-Kortum R & Sevick-Muraca E. 1996 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.physchem.47.1.555
- “Mass Spectrometry across the sciences.” McLafferty FW.2008, PNAS https://www.pnas.org/content/105/47/18088
- (This paper covers basic uses of mass spectrometry. Future papers on this site will identify how this technology is being deployed on the frontiers of biological science and R&D.)
- Effects of a Single Treatment with two nonthermal laser wavelengths on chronic neck & shoulder pain. Silverman RG, et al. 2019, Med Dev (Auckl), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6724421/ — (This paper gives the reader a general idea of how the technology differs from that of other laser applications in medicine that are based on the focusing of heat energy. However, future papers will identify the more groundbreaking uses of this technology.)
- ‘Neurological involvement in COVID-19 and potential mechanisms: a review,’ Ghazal A., et al., Springer Link https://doi.org/10.1007/s12028=020-01049-4
- ‘Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19,’ Gupta A. et al., Nature Medicine, Published 10 July 2020
- Varatharaj A. etal. Neurological & neuropsychiatric complications of Covid-19 in patients…” www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Published online June 25, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(20)302
- Helms J, et al. ‘Neurologic features in severe SARSCoV-2 infection.’ N Engl J Med. 2020, https ://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc 20085 97.
- Bouhaddou et al., The Global Phosphorylation Landscape of SARS-CoV-2 Infection, Cell (2020), https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.034 Art
- Grauerholz, John, M.D., “Optical Biophysics and Viruses: Tracking Down the Cause of AIDS”, Twenty First Science and Technology, July-August 1988.
GLOSSARY
The Medical Project 