What a wonderful good news story. I hope the scientists are successful. The poor Devil has had a terrible time,persecuted for years by people “protecting” livestock and now this dreadful DFTD. They deserve a break and any amount of money and research to protect this Tasmanian icon.
Unless 1080 is banned in Tasmania we may have to find a way to vaccinate the Devil against that as well.

Again I read with excitement that “RESEARCHERS believe they may be on the verge of a breakthrough”.  How exciting, I thought for a moment.

Then I stopped to pause … and then the sentence slowly sunk in.  That hey don’t exactly know anything new, they only “believe that they may be on the verge” of something. 

I stopped reading.  What does that actually mean: “may be on the verge”? And more importantly, when and where did I hear this last time.  And I come to realise that this is still just standard PR bull shit stuff about egos and getting more funding or letting us know that they are hard at doing … something … or advertising and selling something else ... maybe … . These reports about the Devils are now verging on ad nauseam. 

Reminds me of announcements about Paul Lennon and his new clothes every week now and somehow I grow even more cynical and resolute not to read any further. 

Scientific types could do well to generate a bit more respect for themselves by ending playing the media game of releasing garbage like this.  This is not what you should be good at, clearly your not.  Let us know when you actually KNOW something about the Devils.

I did go on to peruse the article briefly but found the words “could” and “would” repeated way too many times to bother taking in what it actually says.

As Professor Greg Woods states this is a important discovery. It offers a real hope that there may be sufficient genetic diversity yet left in the devil population - particularly in those devils from the western population - to offer innate immunity and protection from the transfer of cancer cells from an infectious cancerous devil.

The sequencing of the Major Histocompatibility genes in devils plus the immune function research done by Alex Kreiss and Greg Woods has shown that some devils with differing genetics can recognise the tumour as “non-self” and resist its establishment.

What it also tells us also is that the eastern devil population have become extremely inbred;  probably since European colonisation of this island.
 
What this breakthrough research does not tell us is what the trigger (or the primer) that began the first index case (or cases) of this unique infectious cancer in Tasmania’s largest wild marsupial carnivore.

#2 The language used by these scientists is really quite temperate, and the potential implications very exciting. Bravo that they have had the bravery to challenge Devils immune system with the dead tumor cells - I hope they have the numbers to back up the preliminary look. Could provide a very important answer to the question as to whether the Devil population can withstand this tumor.

As far as i am concerned, until the farming community start understanding the folly of wiping out the devils (and that effectively is what they are about and won,t admit it) i can,t see the little buggers surviving.

    I am informed that they take lambs and chooks , so what ! ” great whites ” are protected and they take “Humans”.

    It,s “unthinkable” to erradicate another animal that exists only in Tassie as did the Tiger.

            d.d.

Some potentially interesting results. But I am very wary of reporting of press releases, they usually contain an over-indulgance of positiveness more related to self promotion of one institute or another.

Shame about cedric’s brother Clicky having to die of DFTD, never been a big fan of animal testing.

Now that researchers are prepared to do potentially fatal testing on devils it makes me wonder if they are doing tests on the “potential” sources/origins of DFTD as suggested by some ie chemicals.

It’s great to hear the news about Cedric, even on an extemely tentative basis.

This being Tasmania, however, you have to worry about the ghastly mutations the facts will undergo in the government spin machine. Only days ago we saw the humbug from the machine suggesting that chemicals, including the known mutagens and carcinogins splashed around by the Premier’s big ugly mate, had been cleared of being a potential DFTD trigger. The evidence for that was nowhere evident.

It is hard to imagine Cedric not being used as a pretext for abandoning efforts to isolate disease-free populations, and for loosening threatened species protections in the Easterly bulk of the state. It is the obvious course for a subsidiary such as Mr Lennon’s to take.

David Obendorf’s mischievous suggestion that the original trigger for DFTD be investigated can expect a firm knock on the head.  It would be unlkely to find the actual cause, but it could find potential causes for all sorts of cancers wafting down from the sky.

John Haward

John - ‘the elephant in the corner of the cancerous devils’ living room’ still must be what caused the oncogenesis cascade in the first place.

WHAT CAUSED this amazing infectious cancer to spontaneously develop in the first place?

Could it happen again to this species or another species?

And what does it say about Tasmania’s approach to animal & human health as well as overall ecological health monitoring (water, food systems, soil)?

Big elephant questions!

the species extinction issue goes beyond the next scientific research study since habitat loss due to increasing human population and the consequent development impact will annihilate more and more species regardless.
  how can zero or negative population growth be achieved in tasmania and elsewhere in the face of blindness to this obvious fact?
immigration is definitely the culprit. how can it be stopped with high powered legal and administrative empires making so much money off it and the pervading attitude denial?
tassie devil studies are of course valid but i hear the yangtze river dolphin is now extinct after decades of study after study.
  from: gothicbeach.blogspot.com