The Future of Medicine: "KING KONG"

A new drug is set to shake the very foundation of the pharmaceutical world. [Target Line News] The "KING KONG" of Modern Medicine According to The Wall Street Journal We've seen the influence of Lipitor… We've witnessed the impact of Metformin and Zoloft… TV shows such as The Flintstones depict humans and dinosaurs living together in harmony. But that’s just fiction, right? Actually, not quite. The dinosaurs the earliest humans lived among were not the huge lumbering lizards we most commonly think of when we see the word. Those had been extinct for almost 66 million years before the first humans began to make their mark. The dinosaurs that comingled with our ancient ancestors were modern birds—the closest natural relatives to the extinct dinosaurs—which means that we live with dinosaurs too.Science is learning more and more about the versatility of form in dinosaurs with each great find in China, the Americas, Antarctica, and elsewhere. During their heyday in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, dinosaurs evolved to fill niches in most ecosystems. Some were large, some were small, some walked on land, some were amphibious, and some dinosaurs even possessed the ability to fly. But did they have real honest-to-goodness feathers? Recent research shows that they did, but this isn’t the end of the story. For many years science has known that the only remaining descendants of the dinosaur lineage are the birds. (So, if anyone asks you whether dinosaurs really died out at the end of the Cretaceous, you can point out the window at our feathered friends.) One of the most surprising developments in paleontology in recent years has been the discovery that, like birds, dinosaurs—many dinosaurs, in fact—possessed feathers. It stands to reason that if birds have them, they must have evolved in something older, right?Let’s take a quick look at feather design. The typical feather in modern birds consists of a central shaft (rachis), with serial paired branches (barbs) forming a flattened, usually curved surface—the vane. The barbs branch into barbules, and the barbules of adjacent barbs are attached to one another by hooks, stiffening the vane. In many birds some or all of the feathers lack the barbules or hooks, and the plumage has a loose hair-like appearance. The precursors of bird feathers were simple, straight, dense, filamentous structures made mostly of keratin. These eventually evolved into branched, then downy, structures in several stalked forms that soon disappeared. Over time, this branched condition resolved itself into a central stalk with vanes on either side, and these vanes later evolved into barbs. Dinosaurs were the dominant species for nearly 165 million years, during a period known as the Mesozoic Era. Growing evidence suggests that many dinosaurs were warm-blooded, bore colorful feathers, and engaged in behaviors similar to those of contemporary birds. Their reign concluded at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when an asteroid the size of a mountain slammed into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula with the force of 100 trillion tons of TNT. The impact created a crater 115 miles across and several miles deep and sent tons of rock, dust, and debris into the atmosphere. A darkness descended across the planet that, along with other related catastrophes, wiped out an estimated 80 percent of life on Earth. Small mammals are known to have lived with dinosaurs during the mammoth beasts’ final reign. Many of these warm-blooded creatures survived the cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs and much of the other life on Earth at the time and eventually evolved into a wide range of animals. Millions of years later, humans do live together in domestic bliss with dinosaurs. We just call them chickens and parakeets. Life, uh, finds a way. While these drugs took decades to leave their mark… [Pills]( A new drug is set to shake the very foundation of the pharmaceutical world. Indian medicine has a long history. Its earliest concepts are set out in the sacred writings called the Vedas, especially in the metrical passages of the Atharvaveda, which may possibly date as far back as the 2nd millennium BCE. According to a later writer, the system of medicine called Ayurveda was received by a certain Dhanvantari from the god Brahma, and Dhanvantari was deified as the god of medicine. In later times his status was gradually reduced, until he was credited with having been an earthly king who died of snakebite. The period of Vedic medicine lasted until about 800 BCE. The Vedas are rich in magical practices for the treatment of diseases and in charms for the expulsion of the demons traditionally supposed to cause diseases. The chief conditions mentioned are fever (takman), cough, consumption, diarrhea, edema, abscesses, seizures, tumours, and skin diseases (including leprosy). The herbs recommended for treatment are numerous. The golden age of Indian medicine, from 800 BCE until about 1000 CE, was marked especially by the production of the medical treatises known as the Charaka-samhita and Sushruta-samhita, attributed respectively to Charaka, a physician, and Sushruta, a surgeon. Estimates place the Charaka-samhita in its present form as dating from the 1st century CE, although there were earlier versions. The Sushruta-samhita probably originated in the last centuries BCE and had become fixed in its present form by the 7th century CE. Of somewhat lesser importance are the treatises attributed to Vagbhata. All later writings on Indian medicine were based on these works. Because Hindus were prohibited by their religion from cutting the dead body, their knowledge of anatomy was limited. The Sushruta-samhita recommends that a body be placed in a basket and sunk in a river for seven days. On its removal the parts could be easily separated without cutting. As a result of these crude methods, the emphasis in Hindu anatomy was given first to the bones and then to the muscles, ligaments, and joints. The nerves, blood vessels, and internal organs were very imperfectly known. The Hindus believed that the body contains three elementary substances, microcosmic representatives of the three divine universal forces, which they called spirit (air), phlegm, and bile (comparable to the humours of the Greeks). Health depends on the normal balance of these three elementary substances. The seven primary constituents of the body—blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow, chyle, and semen—are produced by the action of the elementary substances. Semen was thought to be produced from all parts of the body and not from any individual part or organ. Both Charaka and Sushruta state the existence of a large number of diseases (Sushruta says 1,120). Rough classifications of diseases are given. In all texts, “fever,” of which numerous types are described, is regarded as important. Phthisis (wasting disease, especially pulmonary tuberculosis) was apparently prevalent, and the Hindu physicians knew the symptoms of cases likely to terminate fatally. Smallpox was common, and it is probable that smallpox inoculation was practiced. Hindu physicians employed all five senses in diagnosis. Hearing was used to distinguish the nature of the breathing, alteration in voice, and the grinding sound produced by the rubbing together of broken ends of bones. They appear to have had a good clinical sense, and their discourses on prognosis contain acute references to symptoms that have grave import. Magical beliefs still persisted, however, until late in the classical period; thus, the prognosis could be affected by such fortuitous factors as the cleanliness of the messenger sent to fetch the physician, the nature of his conveyance, or the types of persons the physician met on his journey to the patient. A drug so powerful… Morgan Stanley sees 250 million prescriptions by 2030. [Step into the Future and Learn More ]( [Privacy Policy]( [Privacy Policy]( [Terms&Conditions]( [Terms&Conditions]( [Unsubscribe]( [Unsubscribe]( Occasionally, our affiliate partners offer exclusive opportunities for Target Line News readers. We highly recommend carefully considering the message above. This email was created and sent to you by FIT, LLC, owner and operator of Target Line News (TLN). a good idea to us]( to make sure you get every email. 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