Phil Patterson on bug-host, and t cell survey

Phil Patterson commented insightfully on the role the immune system plays in keeping us health.

First, medical research should add consideration of the bug-host interactions to their myopia on bug-drug pharmaceuticals. The host (you and me) has a lot to do in fending off disease.

Particularly, our T4 cells help fight off bugs. The level of T4 cells declines with age, so therapies that reverse the decline or supplement them would be helpful. Phil suspects that globally, T4 cell levels are declining (controlled for age and circumstance), so that a helpful research project would survey these levels and report.

Bill and Peggy are moving to Chestnut Square

Book links from 3 Dec 2005 discussion

Lots of books get mentioned in the discussion. The best I can, here are Amazon links for each of them. Oh, Jim Wallis and Sojourners . But hey, you don't have to buy them, you could get them from the Wilmette Library At our January meeting we will discuss Collapse - get reading!

Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems

This group came up in discussion, here's the home page
http://www.schumacherinstitute.org.uk/home.htm

Sierra Club and sustainable what not

It came up in the discussion - sustainable agriculture and particularly Sierra Club programs in support of it. Here are some links.
The main sustainable consumption page http://www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption/
Sierra Club Chicago chapter http://illinois.sierraclub.org/Chicago/ They've got a potluck on Dec. 10 and an afternoon at the Botanic Garden Dec. 11 (2005)

Chicago Green Tech Campus

Joanne said she visited this impressive site - Chicago Green Tech Campus. Here's the link: http://www.cityofchicago.org/Environment/GreenTech/

Topic - Crossroads for Planet Earth

Here's the basic link to the Scientific American issue (September 2005) we discussed today.
http://www.sciam.com/issue.cfm?issueDate=Sep-05

There was a conference at Columbia University on the same topic. Here are on-line videos of some of it
http://www.scientificamerican.com/page.cfm?section=crossroads2005