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This could be world changing news if true


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3748014,00.html

sounds good for people going through radiation therapy but I dont know how effective it would be on a mass scale of radiation poisoning. I would think getting it to people in time would be difficult.  Its an interesting article. thanks for posting it.

Definitely interesting, but I think we're going to want to wait until the results are reproduced by others.

I have one main question about it. The article says that they have found a way to negate the programmed self-destruction of a cell damaged by radiation, thus allowing the cell time to heal itself. That's all well and good, but their are some very good reasons for cells to die, a primary one being cancer. For instance, if you go out and suntan, there is a good chance that many of your skin cells will die after being damaged by UV radiation. If they did not die, but were allowed to live on in their now damaged form, you may very well be enjoying your first case of skin cancer.

So the researchers would need not only to prevent cell death in healthy cells, but to promote cell death in damaged ones. Tough trick.

Odd article, too. Spends less time discussing the science, and more time discussing the military propaganda aspect. Do they mean to say if they found a cure for radiation sickness, they would not share it? That's a bit past unethical. Also, not sharing data to reproduce is one of the hallmarks of pseudo-science.

We'll see. A cure for radiation sickness would be good news indeed.

Mofo is right. Radiation does several bad things to cells, not the least of which is direct damage to DNA. I'm not sure how a drug is going to fix THAT, but if a cell's DNA is altered or damaged, the last thing a person wants in for that cell to keep on living.

Well I agree.

However, a quick google search gave no links to trustworthy news sites. So I doubt very highly the story is anywhere near the truth. Most likely extremely sensationalised to the point that it is not close to the truth. 

Still any step forward which encouraged this sensationalism is still positive, except if it gives anyone false hope of course but thats the fault of the mass media.... Still interesting all the same.

The article linked to is extremely sensationalistic.  Always check the primary sources, in this case Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/index.dtl) magazine.  The summary of the article can be found here (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;285/5434/1651a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Gudkov&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT).

"... a team reports that it has identified a novel compound that may protect against the side effects that sometimes limit the doses of radiation or chemotherapeutic drugs that cancer patients can take ..."

"It apparently does this by inhibiting the cell death or growth arrest ..."

In other words, it doesn't allow as many damaged cells to die that normally would;  presumably, some or many of these cells can then continue to function (although probably in a limited fashion).  Hardly a cure for anything, and marginally effective at best against massive doses of radiation such as would be incurred in a nuclear attack.

Total disclosure:  I am not a scientist nor in the medical profession; I was, however, a radiation worker long ago (I was a reactor operator).