RIP George Clarkson

[ramtrumpet]

George Clarkson was my step great uncle who I saw once a year at Thanksgiving. However, despite not being very close, in his death he is kind of an inspiration for me. I have never met anyone before who has accepted death like him. He has been sick with cancer and bed-ridden for weeks. Despite this, he requested on Christmas day that he be

Comments

[purple_sax09]

I’m sorry to hear about your step-great- uncle

[balletgal114]

im sorry for your loss.....i'll keep your family in my prayers.
Leslie

[saxycatcher]

Sorry to hear about your step great-uncle. Sounds like he was an admirable guy, from the way you talk about him

[saxycatcher]

Alrighty, here's the real science. Evolution comes down to the survival of the species, not necessarily the survival of the individual. Passing on our genes is the thing we're most interested in, from a scientific, biological standpoint. Speaking from this view, we want to pass on the most correct and un-corrupted genes possible. What cancer actually is is an error in the copying of your genes. When cells multiply, as they must for us to keep on living, they make mistakes. We're suffering harmless mistakes all the time - some of them don't affect us at all, and sometimes, as a defense mechanism, the cell self-destructs to prevent passing on this corrupted data. Cancer is a mistake (a flipped pair, leaving a pair out, adding a pair, etc. of the AT-CG stuff) which turns off the cell's self-destruct mechanism. So, this corrupt cell multiplies and multiplies and multiplies, which is why there are tumors. (If we don't die of other things first, we would all eventually die of cancer. Our cells are reproducing all the time, and it'