Shepherds

Why didn`t the shepherds get cancer?

– A possible reason.

The best known shepherds are they who went to find the newborn Jesus. Their journey changed the course of history. They found what was to become the centre and the goal; the heavenly communion with Christ. Shepherds seemed to be the chosen ones from an early stage. In the jews` exodus from Egypt, they played a crucial role, and both Moses and King David were shepherds before they got chosen as leaders. In this society, cancer was rare. Why? In accordance to the immune surveillance theory, I will try to give an explanation.

In cancer, the genome goes “wild”. In the highly proliferating cancer cells, it is in vast abundance and scattered around. The rapidly dividing cells` genome lies open for transcription and replication, and is an easy target.

Now and then such cellular changes occur. To ward them off, one need a stuff that chops up their genome. One such stuff could be ammonia. It`s a gaseous by-product in bacterial breakdown of urine, especially sheep`s urine. Its odour is well known. And the shepherds breathe in a lot. Ammonia’s reaction with water is basic:

NH3 + H2O <=> NH4+ + OH-

The interior of cancer cells tends to be alkaline due to accumulation of lactate, ion channel efflux of H+, and due to consumption of H+ in excessive fatty acid synthesis. Less H+ gives more OH- and this drives the equilibrium to the left.

Ammonia diffuses directly through cell membranes and soakes the whole tissue. The body ward off this molecule with aminotransferases and by the urea cycle in the liver. DNA, with its densely stacked nirogen bases G: :C and A::T is somehow condensed and possesses hydrogen bonding between the bases (between N, O and H atoms).

My assumption is that DNA is especially vulnerable for ammonia, which will disturb (break) the hydrogen bonding between the nitrogen bases and let the DNA-strands come unsewn. (Like dissolves like; the related molecule urea is used in laboratories to split dsDNA). Hence the fragile cancer cells in mitosis will be the first to be destroyed. This could be an explanation for the low cancer incidence among the shepherds. Although NH3 is a toxic molecule, to breathe in a sheepfold or over an open bottle of household ammonia, for that matter, is not that hazardous. This seems strange, but for God is nothing impossible, and he can use the strangest ways to fully elaborate his love for humankind.

Written by: Ottar Stensvold

PS! See these links about ammonia`s selective destruction of the cancerous Jurkat cells and the cancerous HeLa cells:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18642273

http://www.springerlink.com/content/p055268176kk0547/