Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  03/26/2013 03:44 AM Report

Brian Lamb: Christopher Hitchens smoked a lot, is that what got him esophageal cancer?

Francis Collins: Hard to say exactly, he was a heavy smoker, he would agree with that, he was a heavy drinker, he would agree with that. Both of those are risk factors for esophageal cancer but his father had esophageal cancer, so heredity as well. It’s the old statement about, you know, genes load the gun but environment pulls the trigger, he may have had both of those going at once.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  03/26/2013 03:21 AM Report

"His original diagnosis seemed as though he might have only a couple of months to live, he actually lived a whole year and a half." Francis Collins

Brian Lamb: How long both--how close to his death were you able to talk to him?

Francis Collins: I was seeing him quite a lot until the last three months when he went to Texas to do this proton beam therapy and never got well enough to come back. So--and those intervals, I didn’t see him much.

(Proton beam? DNA analysis of his cancer cells as well as his normal cells? Help from the NIH Director? Sounds like someone got the one percent treatment.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  03/26/2013 03:14 AM Report

(The Director of the NIH is a nice friend to have.)

Brian Lamb: So when you sent (Chris Hitchens) to Saint Louis, what did he do there?

Francis Collins: So he was examined by their cancer experts, they conducted DNA analysis of his normal cells from his blood, so that could tell you what was the DNA he was born with, but then they also looked at the DNA in his specific (GNOM) cells because cancer is a disease of the (GNOM) that comes about because of mistakes in the DNA you’re born with, causing good cells to go bad and starting to grow when they shouldn’t. Here’s no exception, and so in his cancer (GNOM), they found a dozen, or so, mistakes that had been acquired during the live that were driving those cells to grow. And at least one of those not previously described suggested the possibility of using a therapy that you would not normally contemplated for a (inaudible) cancer. So there was a chance there to try something that was rational for the evidence based design or drug, based upon the detail of his particular tumor. And this is where cancer is going, the idea that cancer is one disease is very yesterday. Every cancer is essentially a unique disease for that person because it has a different collection of these glitches in its instruction book. The goal that many of us have is to get to the point where every cancer has that detailed information, you can then look at a menu of therapies and do the match and say, for this person, this drug is likely to be beneficial, this one is probably not. And we would then move from our current approach to cancer which is pretty much generic, (one side, that’s all), into something personalized or precision based or it really is designed for that person.

quotes88  10/27/2012 08:44 AM Report

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Gelles  10/27/2012 04:44 AM Report

From Bookmarks Magazine

Concerning Hitch 22 , a memoir by C Hichens.

===== begin excerpt from Amazon reviews =====

Christopher Hitchens stands alone among 20th- and 21st-century pundits for his enthusiastic enmity and political flip-flopping, but while he makes no apologies for his beliefs, he does acknowledge their intrinsic contradictions.

Critics praised Hitchens's frankness in sharing the details of his mother's suicide and of his breezy bisexuality, but they simultaneously balked at his decision to omit significant people and events (i.e., his wives, his children, and his role in Bill Clinton's impeachment).

They also objected to his relentless name-dropping and some overly dense prose, and a few were appalled that Hitchens would continue to insist that Saddam Hussein did indeed possess WMDs.

Despite these complaints, Hitch-22 is a sharp, rebellious, and sometimes bawdy account of the making of a modern mastermind. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

===== End excerpt from Bookmarks Magazine

I intend to read this book or listen to this book.

My relatives are asleep and have not read my charge that their minds are closed to real educational opportunity. Some will never knosw the charge at all. But I expect they will demand that I read more and write less.

Gelles  10/27/2012 04:28 AM Report

Correction:

I prefer to spell God as Good

Gelles  10/27/2012 04:25 AM Report

From Publishers Weekly

Presented at the teachable moment not for profit but for the benefit of all, especially all audiences, in accordance with applicable law.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Copied from Amazon.com

===== Concerning Hitchens book "God is not Great ... etc."

===== Begin copyrighted content =====

Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy.

===== End copyrighted content =====

My appreciation of Hitchens began with his endorsement of the preventive war under President Bush to remove the Bath fascist party from power in Iraq. He sided with neocon thought that the world would be better if the regime were ousted from power by military force -- because political and diplomatic forces had failed in that mission.

I am still of this opinion -- and do not know for sure about Hitchens final view.

In the matter of atheism, I prefer to spell God and Good -- and not to find great fault with popular religions.

The appreciation of Christopher Hitchens offered in this hour long program was one more example for me of the importance and educational value of the Charlie Rose Show.

I rank Hitchens and Salmon Rushdie extremely high in the order of essential literary production and living examples this audience has before it. I argued with my relatives that they had a duty to listen to Rose and know as much as possible of authors like Hitchens and Rushdie. Thye argued back that I, myself, read too little of the available material -- and they were entitled to remain far more ignorant than me for this reason.

How closed minded they are! They prefer to watch football games only and never pay heed to the Rose show. I will print their defense against this charge -- if they make one.

EthicalHumanist  10/26/2012 08:18 PM Report

Hitchens was a brave man and a true intellectual, I'm glad he left his mark.

anne4444  10/25/2012 07:19 PM Report

Thank you for sharing.

Human needs to be free in order to connect into his or her divinity.

"All men are created equal."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal

SharkswithfrikingLazers  10/25/2012 05:17 PM Report

Christopher Hitchens was fascinating to listen to because of his vocabulary and a turn of a phrase. Too bad nicotine and alcohol were required because the smoke killed him. Perhaps the next Christopher Hitchens can use better drugs.

Listening to Carol Blue talk one wonders about the second hand smoke.

Graydon Carter sounded like an elitist Bozo the Clown when he made his comment about bloggers. He had the hair to seal the deal.

caucazhin  10/25/2012 01:34 PM Report

" that they are endowed by (( their Creator )) with certain unalienable rights "

It boggles the mind how people can honor a man like Hitchens who soaked up all the beauty, goodness and benefits of a society that has or at least began with a very deep belief in God and then at his own PATHETIC whim say its all man made poppy cock and responsible for every evil on earth.

As it says in book of JAMES

17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is

no variablenes.

The truth is Hitchens was an arrogant, bitter, ungrateful, pompous, self centered, self aggrandizing, scowling taker and usurper of everything that is good and kind in this world.

So let the story be told from the roof tops

as Nietzsche once said " God is dead ".

Then God said " Nietzsche is dead "

Christopher Hitchens said " God is not great "

Then God said " Christopher Hitchens is not great "

PSALM 14:1

" The (( FOOL )) says in his heart there is no God "