223
memories of Italy’s Sarno, India’s Ganga, and the Buriganga in Bangladesh, of
Brazil’s Doce and China’s Yellow River. And they harken to that ugly outflow of the
Mississippi, the pollution visible from space.
39
But they also portend what Brazil’s notorious Cubatao River,
40
not to mention the
Thames,
41
might yet signal: significant ecological restoration. Somehow, on a cold
late afternoon, these thoughts serve up a fitting metaphor for yet another fundamental, if odd, biological paradox, the evolution of which occurred in water, before
transmigrating to land, good for some species, fatal to others, namely, oxygen
herself.
23.4 The Oxygen Paradox
The oxygen paradox pertains to its “conversion into oxygen radicals, and other reactive oxygen species, that cause damage to cells, organs, and organisms.”
42
A substance eukaryotes cannot live without, and, in many cases, cannot live with. Whether
liquid, gas, or solid, there are scores of explanations within the evolutionary biochemical canons for the realities of oxygen and dissolved oxygen, as well as all
those untidy reactions to O 2 which create potentially lethal “oxygen-based free radicals.” Despite the apparent fundamental dialectic, life herself, with all the seemingly
contradictory behavioral norms, provides for what we primates take to be a predictable lifespan, in an aggregate of multiples, and a confusion of senseless inflictions.
Is this merely one more example, among an infinitude, of the ecological paradox we
simply must accept? It was Galileo Galilei who said that “By denying scientific
principles, one may maintain any paradox.”
43
39 See http://1mississippi.org/mississippi-river-makes-most-endangered-list/, Accessed April 21,
2019.
40 See “Cubatao Journal; Signs of Life in Brazil’s Industrial Valley of Death, by James Brooke,
June 15, 1991, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/15/world/cubatao-journalsigns-of-life-in-brazil-s-industrial-valley-of-death.html, Accessed April 21, 2019.
41 See Restoration of the Tidal Thames, by Leslie B. Wood, Adam Hilger Publishers, Briston, UK,
1982; and the Thames River Trust, http://www.thamesriverstrust.org.uk/thames-restoration-fund/,
Accessed April 21, 2019.
42 See SpringerLink, GeroScience, “The Oxygen Paradox, the French Paradox, and age-related
diseases,” quoted from the Abstract, by Joanna M. S. Davies, Josiane Cillard, Bertrand Friguet,
Enrique Cadenas, Jean Cadet, Rachael Cayce, Andrew Fishmann, David Liao, Anne-Laure
Bulteau, Frédéric Derbré, Amélie Rébillard, Steven Burstein, Etienne Hirsch, Robert A. Kloner,
Michael Jakowec et al., December 2017, Volume 39, Issue 5–6, pp. 499–550, first online: December
21, 2017, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-017-0002-y, Accessed April 21, 2019.
43 Cited in “The Oxygen Paradox,” by Monica Butnariu, Journal of Pharmacogenomics and
Pharmacoproteomics, 2012, 3:1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4172/2153-0645.1000e104, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838776/, https://www.omicsonline.org/the-oxygen-paradox2153-0645.1000e104.php?aid=3762, https://www.longdom.org/open-access/the-oxygen-paradox23.4 The Oxygen Paradox
memories of Italy’s Sarno, India’s Ganga, and the Buriganga in Bangladesh, of
Brazil’s Doce and China’s Yellow River. And they harken to that ugly outflow of the
Mississippi, the pollution visible from space.
39
But they also portend what Brazil’s notorious Cubatao River,
40
not to mention the
Thames,
41
might yet signal: significant ecological restoration. Somehow, on a cold
late afternoon, these thoughts serve up a fitting metaphor for yet another fundamental, if odd, biological paradox, the evolution of which occurred in water, before
transmigrating to land, good for some species, fatal to others, namely, oxygen
herself.
23.4 The Oxygen Paradox
The oxygen paradox pertains to its “conversion into oxygen radicals, and other reactive oxygen species, that cause damage to cells, organs, and organisms.”
42
A substance eukaryotes cannot live without, and, in many cases, cannot live with. Whether
liquid, gas, or solid, there are scores of explanations within the evolutionary biochemical canons for the realities of oxygen and dissolved oxygen, as well as all
those untidy reactions to O 2 which create potentially lethal “oxygen-based free radicals.” Despite the apparent fundamental dialectic, life herself, with all the seemingly
contradictory behavioral norms, provides for what we primates take to be a predictable lifespan, in an aggregate of multiples, and a confusion of senseless inflictions.
Is this merely one more example, among an infinitude, of the ecological paradox we
simply must accept? It was Galileo Galilei who said that “By denying scientific
principles, one may maintain any paradox.”
43
39 See http://1mississippi.org/mississippi-river-makes-most-endangered-list/, Accessed April 21,
2019.
40 See “Cubatao Journal; Signs of Life in Brazil’s Industrial Valley of Death, by James Brooke,
June 15, 1991, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/15/world/cubatao-journalsigns-of-life-in-brazil-s-industrial-valley-of-death.html, Accessed April 21, 2019.
41 See Restoration of the Tidal Thames, by Leslie B. Wood, Adam Hilger Publishers, Briston, UK,
1982; and the Thames River Trust, http://www.thamesriverstrust.org.uk/thames-restoration-fund/,
Accessed April 21, 2019.
42 See SpringerLink, GeroScience, “The Oxygen Paradox, the French Paradox, and age-related
diseases,” quoted from the Abstract, by Joanna M. S. Davies, Josiane Cillard, Bertrand Friguet,
Enrique Cadenas, Jean Cadet, Rachael Cayce, Andrew Fishmann, David Liao, Anne-Laure
Bulteau, Frédéric Derbré, Amélie Rébillard, Steven Burstein, Etienne Hirsch, Robert A. Kloner,
Michael Jakowec et al., December 2017, Volume 39, Issue 5–6, pp. 499–550, first online: December
21, 2017, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-017-0002-y, Accessed April 21, 2019.
43 Cited in “The Oxygen Paradox,” by Monica Butnariu, Journal of Pharmacogenomics and
Pharmacoproteomics, 2012, 3:1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4172/2153-0645.1000e104, https://www.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838776/, https://www.omicsonline.org/the-oxygen-paradox2153-0645.1000e104.php?aid=3762, https://www.longdom.org/open-access/the-oxygen-paradox23.4 The Oxygen Paradox