Dinosaur Tumor Studied for Human Cancer Clues

[Allan Edels <edels@msn.com>]

> From Yahoo: 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060404/sc_space/dinosaurtumorstudiedforhumancancerclues

Text of article follows:

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Dinosaur Tumor Studied for Human Cancer Clues

Heather Whipps
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Tue Apr 4, 9:00 AM ET



Cancer in dinosaurs and illnesses in other animals are being studied in a 
groundbreaking new program that combines medical school with the study of 
natural history.

Educators hope the effort will produce doctors with a better understanding 
of why we get sick.


Despite being millions of years removed from our time and our own species, 
illnesses in animals like the dinosaurs can shed light on the evolution of 
human disease, says Christopher Beard, curator and specialist in vertebrate 
paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.


"Some diseases that afflict humans today, such as malaria, gout, and cancer, 
are truly ancient and were handed down to us from our distant ancestors," 
Beard told LiveScience. "By studying the distribution of these diseases in 
other living and fossil organisms, we can gain insights into the nature of 
these diseases."


Part of the course


Students will now be offered the chance to learn about the history of 
disease as part of their regular medical school training, the University of 
Pittsburgh Medical Center announced recently.


The university is welcoming four renowned curators from Carnegie Museum into 
its classrooms to teach seminars and use the museum collection, which is 
considered one of the world's premiere displays of natural history 
artifacts, for demonstrations. Included in the collection is a 
150-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur bone complete with a tumor.


Finding a cancerous Jurassic lump doesn't surprise Michael Kennedy, a 
surgeon and professor at the University of Southern California. "Cancer is 
the most common cause of death in animals. It is not a uniquely human 
disease," he said in a recent telephone interview. The renewed focus on 
history in the teaching of medicine pleases Kennedy, also the author of "A 
Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine" (Asklepiad Press, 2004), 
which describes the intricate historical links that connect diseases.


"History has traditionally been pushed aside in medical schools because it 
doesn't seem like a necessary part of the curriculum," he said. "But the 
history of disease has many practical applications today."


Backaches and the avian flu


Kennedy pointed to the current avian flu crisis as an example.


For several years now, health officials have been studying DNA extracted 
from frozen victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic buried in Alaska. 
According to Kennedy, they'll attempt to compare the deadly strain, which 
killed approximately 50 million people and was also thought to have jumped 
from birds to humans, to the contemporary flu to determine its potency.


The University of Pittsburgh's program will allow students to examine the 
birth of other familiar and modern health problems like back pain and 
hernias, which originated when humans began to walk upright about five 
million years ago.


"That evolutionary transformation radically altered the human skeleton, 
causing us to suffer many health problems that the typical mammalian 
quadruped doesn't have to worry about," Beard explained. "For example, 
chronic lower back pain in humans results from our peculiarly S-shaped 
vertebral column, which places extraordinary pressures on our lumbar 
vertebrae."


Help from apes


While the museum does not have any early human fossils in its collection, 
its wide variety of prehistoric primate specimens should provide enough 
clues about the earlier phases of human evolution to keep students busy, 
Beard said.


"These fossils, along with skeletons of living primates, will allow us to 
trace the major changes that have occurred in the human skeleton as we 
diverged from our close primate relatives."


Students interested in the field of sports medicine might take particular 
interest in this section of the museum, according to Beard.

"Some changes in the human skeleton that we often regard as being unique to 
us?such as our remarkably mobile shoulder joints that allow us to pitch 
baseballs and play golf?are actually features that we hold in common with 
our closest primate relatives, the apes," he said

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Allan Edels