Twenty-five years ago scientists found an elderly man with high cholesterol whose arteries showed no sign of plague build up. It was the same way with his entire family. Such things make you wonder and thankfully it was scientists doing the wondering. Why?
Because they now appear on the verge of (once again) screwing with God’s perfect design.
It was the Italians’ mutant HDL that was grabbing all the fatty plaque from the arteries and safely dumping it into the body’s liver, which then cleans it out. Without clogged arteries, there was no heart disease, and fewer strokes. Shah’s first test is on animals.
“We showed that giving the synthetic HDL could not only reduce plaque, but actually reverse it,” he said. Then, six years ago, Cleveland cardiologist Steven Nissen began injecting the HDL into a small group of humans.
“Lo and behold, within five weeks there was already evidence of significant shrinkage of plaque,” said Nissen. It’s just a 1 percent shrinkage, but if that adds up to 1 percent a month, there would be a huge benefit in just one year.
This is good news on two fronts. The greatest is that pulmonary heart disease may eventually be eradicated (PDF). The other is that this is also an example of evolution in action where the mutation proves beneficial which flies in the face of creationist claims that all mutations are catastrophic.
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