I was looking over the enhanced copy of the blast door map (http://sky.prohosting.com/karnod/imgs/mapTranscription.jpg) and something interesting caught my eye. If you look to the right of the numbers (below the swan station at the bottom of the map), there's a line written vertically, with text going from bottom to top. The letters E.E.P. appear at the start of the third line.

E.E.P apparently stands for "Exponentially Enhanced Pulse," which is a waveform that can be utilized to accomplish "In vivo electroporation." In vivo electroporation is a type of gene therapy accomplished through the use of electric pulses. I did a further search into this term and found a very interesting nugget of information:

In vivo electroporation is a fascinating new approach by which gene expression, regulation, and function can be studied in developmental systems. This technique offers new opportunities for manipulations in animal models that lack genetic approaches, including avians. Furthermore, this approach is applicable to other embryo populations including mice, ascidians, zebrafish, Xenopus, and Drosophila.

And also this:

Cells exposed to short and intense electric pulses become permeable to a number of various ionic molecules. This phenomenon was termed electroporation or electropermeabilization and is widely used for in vitro drug delivery into the cells and gene transfection. Tissues can also be permeabilized. These new approaches based on electroporation are used for cancer treatment, i.e., electrochemotherapy, and in vivo gene transfection. In vivo electroporation is thus gaining even wider interest.

That might very well tie into DHARMA's studies with animals on the island. Have they managed to take embryonic gene manipulation and research a step further? Is that why they're so interested in procuring children (in vitro drug delivery is mentioned - Is this what Ethan was doing with Claire?)? Were those that have been brought to the island experimented on as embryos? How might any of this tie into the sickness?

Ideas? Comments?


DLKD-

Interesting KarnoDan. Awhile back, I started a thread about Gene Therapy and the Sickness. (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=27737&highlight=gene+therapy) One way that scientists experiment with Gene therapy is through introducing gene mutations through viruses. The EEP that you describe above could go hand and hand with Gene Therapy experiments happening on the island...

KD: You might also want to check out Punky's Transhumanism thread (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=30126&highlight=transhumanism). Some intriguing ideas in there, which might correlate to what you've posted. (In fact I may link this thread to that one to make sure the folks that are interested see this...)

These new approaches based on electroporation are used for cancer treatment, i.e., electrochemotherapy, and in vivo gene transfection. In some respects, I found the mention of cancer to be most interesting. (Of course, I am a firm believer (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showpost.php?p=531689&postcount=1) that the Losties have all been experimented upon, and barely need any convincing of that, or that they were brought to the island deliberately.) But when you take all the cancer references on the show in total, it becomes a bigger question, as cmcd has been following int he gene therapy thread she mentioned above. Diane is dying of cancer, Thomas' uncle was misdiagnosed with prostate cancer, Sawyer's uncle died of a brain tumor, Angelo is seeing Jack because of a spinal tumor, and so on and so on...of course, most people have some experience with cancer--we all know someone who has survived cancer, or has been a victim to it. So perhaps looking at the cancer connection is a little bit of a stretch...still, I can't shake the feeling that it is a small piece of the larger puzzle.

Anyway, great find!

Karno,

Interesting stuff here. It almost reminds me of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation(rTMS), which is something I stumbled upon while working on this thread (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=12343&highlight=rTMS) and which has been useful for discussions in this thread (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=19854&highlight=rTMS) as well as cm's Gene Therapy thread mentioned above.

Karno,

Interesting stuff here. It almost reminds me of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation(rTMS), which is something I stumbled upon while working on this thread (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=12343&highlight=rTMS) and which has been useful for discussions in this thread (http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=19854&highlight=rTMS) as well as cm's Gene Therapy thread mentioned above.

LOL, I remember having those discussions with you last season. Funny how it all comes back around. Of course last time my thinking was centered more around Black Rock being some sort of magnetic thing, ha ha.

LOL, I remember having those discussions with you last season. Funny how it all comes back around. Of course last time my thinking was centered more around Black Rock being some sort of magnetic thing, ha ha.

*lol* We had a blast, didn't we?

KD - great eye! Todell posted a link to this thread in the Transhumanism thread - thanks Todell!

This is interesting stuff. Embryonic gene manipulation - Awesome! This could explain how the polar bears are surviving in a tropical climate.

I know what I'm going to be researching on my lunch hour! :smile:

Great find KD!

This is interesting stuff. Embryonic gene manipulation - Awesome! This could explain how the polar bears are surviving in a tropical climate.

It actually says on the map (as I'm sure everyone knows)

Stated Goal Repatriation
Accelerated De-Territorialization
Of Ursus Maritus through
Gene Therapy and Extreme Climate Change

It actually says on the map (as I'm sure everyone knows)

Stated Goal Repatriation
Accelerated De-Territorialization
Of Ursus Maritus through
Gene Therapy and Extreme Climate Change

Thanks for posting that Richard.

I found this interesting bit on Accelerated De-Territorialization
at: http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/bookinfo.asp?ReviewID=77&BookID=78

Laying the groundwork, Lévy begins with the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. "What was Sodom's crime?" he asks rhetorically. "The refusal of hospitality. Rather than welcome the strangers, the Sodomites wanted to rape them. Hospitality is the perfect representation of the maintenance of the social bond, one conceived in accordance with the formula of reciprocity . . . " (26). This reciprocity is indicative of the collective ethic's reliance on a deterritorialization which, in turn, will give birth to an industry of new identities and communities: "Accelerated deterritorialization will spawn an industry for reconstructing the social bond, the rehabilitation of the outcast, the recasting of identities for individuals and communities without structure" (33). Deterritorialization encourages participation in the collective intelligence, an equitable involvement encouraging the proletariat to decategorize and form alliances "by bringing to the foreground the activities they have been practicing in shadow, by assuming responsibility -- globally, centrally, explicitly -- for the production of collective intelligence, by investing in research on engineering the social bond in order to equip, to the fullest extent possible, those who fashion humanity with their bare hands" (36-7).

Central to this ethical endeavor are molecular technologies that allow members to influence the ongoing evolution of the collective intelligence. Unlike molar technologies operating at a top-down macroscopic level, molecular technologies avoid mass production and work at a finer level of detail, influencing the whole structure from the bottom-up. As an example, Lévy identifies the molar space of media (e.g., television) as that which reproduces and distributes messages in a decontextualized form while molecular spaces (e.g., digital technologies) allow the user to create and modify messages and, in essence, control the microstructure. As a molecular system, collective intelligence inaugurates an era of demodynamics that "comes into being from the cycle of listening, expressing, evaluation, organization, lateral connection, and emerging vision" (88). Unlike molar politics, demodynamics is not a unified system of thought superimposed on the networks, nor does it "imply a sovereign people, one that is reified, fetishized, attached to a territory, identified by soil or blood, but a strong people, one perpetually engaged in the process of self-knowing and self-creation, a people in labor, a people yet to come" (88-9).