(The title of the note is borrowed from a Soviet joke.)

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. OUR INTERESTS are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.»  Henry John  Temple, 3rd Viscount  Palmerston

The same motto have all the cells of multi-cellular organism. Each cell follows only it’s own “personal” interests! When it is “profitable” — it collaborates with other cells. But it is always  “on standby” to fight with others if, again, it’s interests urge it!

“We don’t have eternal friends. We don’t have eternal enemies. Our interests and only interests are eternal and unchangeable, and it is our duty to follow them!” Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.
Exactly the same is the “motto” of the cells of a multicellular organism. Everyone cooperates with others if it is beneficial to her, but she is always ready to fight with them if her personal interests require it!

This is not a continuation of my previous record “I Want to Eat”, dedicated to enlightened cannibals. Although, perhaps, there is something in common.
About one hundred and fifty years ago, the outstanding German physiologist and cytologist Theodor Schwann described some strange cells, which later became known as “Schwann cells”. On the periphery of the body, they are also called neurolemma, and in the center – neuroglia.
Cytologist is the name of the scientific field of Cytology, which means “Cell Science”.
He also had an interesting (at that time) idea:
“Cells are organisms, and animals, like plants, are “Aggregates” (Aggregates), that is, aggregates, conglomerates of these organisms, connected together in accordance with certain laws.”
The idea is interesting to me personally, because I suggested something similar, having no idea about this statement by Schwann 150 years before me.
However, my idea is somewhat different:
“All multicellular organisms are a conglomerate, or rather, a DUMP of heterogeneous cells that sometimes cooperate with each other (when it is “beneficial” for them),
and mostly they are at war with each other, waging a deadly struggle for the best “piece of bread”.”
Bellum omnium in omnis! The war of all against all. Thomas Hobbes.

This is what this note is about. I will make a reservation right away, I am not a cytologist and I have not occupied a single minute in the classrooms of medical or biological faculties and institutes!
An ignoramus in cytology, simply,
I return to Schwann and his mysterious cells. “Mysterious” because to this day cytologists do not have a clear opinion about WHAT they are. The fact is that neurons, nerve cells, usually consist of a cell body (“soma”) and several appendages. One is long and branching, usually at the very end called an axon. Others branch off from the cell body and are called dendrites, respectively. There are three types of axons: Fleshy or otherwise myelinated, weakly myelinated and limpid, non-myelinated. So, Schwann cells are satellite cells of axons, they are “wound” on the axon and are still covered with lipid, a fat–like substance, myelin, which has a white color. Therefore, all brain nerve structures have two types of coloring – white (myelinated fibers) and gray, that is, actually VERY gray nerve cells.
Until now, as already mentioned, cytologists do not know the purpose of Schwann cells!
Some claim that they nourish axons
 Others claim that they serve as electrical insulation of the axon fiber for better conduction of nerve impulses. Mielin is an insulator fat!
Still others say that they “activate” the transmission of electrochemical nerve impulses.
Fourth, they serve as some kind of immune formations that protect and treat axons.
The fifth claim that they provide “cellular memory”. To this, the famous neurologist Bernard Katz ironically remarks: “This idea is not without some appeal, but currently memory and glia (Schwann cells) have only one really common feature:We know almost nothing about either of them!”
Sixth, some other crazy idea of cytologists, tired of listing all the nonsense.

It is also known that in vitro tissue culture, that is, in a Petri dish, it is possible to artificially grow “Naked axons” without Schwann cells wrapping around them, but in normal embryonic development, these satellite cells are always present!

Please note that all these “explanations” implicitly contain a certain postulate, teleology, that is, the initial purposefulness, the originally set task: All cells must serve the unity and preservation of the organism.
(Like the Soviet People, who are amicably building (under the wise leadership of the CPSU) communism or something else beautiful.)

This idea is INHERENTLY FALSE!
But let’s say that fellow neurophysiologists are right and Schwann cells are friends and allies of neurons and, especially, their long processes – axons.
Let’s see how these friends behave in their hour of need.
The axon is injured! Cut, crumpled, flattened. One part of it remained connected to the mother cell by a neuron, the other lost physical contact with it.
If Schwann cells are axon’s fellow friends, then WHAT will they do in such a tragic case?
Grow towards the rupture as soon as possible, create a “winding tunnel” around the rupture site with your bodies, intensively nourish the severed axon and stimulate its retrograde germination to connect with the main cell. Resuscitate the cut-off area!
Reasonable behavior of friends, isn’t it???
What is really going on and what is known to all cytologists!!!
Schwann cells really begin to grow in the direction of rupture, but not for the noble purposes of friendship and help. The axon is cut off, dies safely in a few days! And Schwann cells, “friends”, together begin to DEVOUR his body, actively MULTIPLYING at the same time and filling the entire channel of the former axon! That is, they behave like typical parasitic predators. Vultures.  CANNIBALS!

THIS PHENOMENON HAS BEEN KNOWN TO ALL NEUROPHYSIOLOGISTS of the world for many decades!!!
They know perfectly well, but they don’T seem to UNDERSTAND the MEANING of this fact!
Why? After all, they are not idiots! Serious scientists, intelligent and knowledgeable! Yes, because the original preset that dominates in their minds is incorrect: All cells of a multicellular organism are friend, comrade and brother to each other!
They are not friends, but egocentrists programmed in their cores!
“Their unity is relative, their struggle is absolute!”

So, my assumption (without a number): Schwann cells are nothing more than PARASITES of the axon, which wrap it in order to, adjacent to its body, suck juices from it, which the mother cell, the neuron, transports through it, as through a tube for its nutrition! That’s why they begin to grow towards the point of rupture. A severed axon does NOT provide them with food, so they grow to the remaining intact part of the axon!
BITE VERY HOT! And they eat well! They FATTEN on the axon; fat is the mentioned mielin!

“Cells don’t have permanent friends or permanent enemies. And there are only permanent interests!”
To paraphrase a well-known saying, not Lord Gladstone, as I mistakenly thought, but Henry John Temple, the Third Viscount Palmerston, who was also Prime Minister of Great Britain in the nineteenth century.

I have already mentioned more than once about “betrayal at the cellular level”, when syncytium cells (a conglomerate of closely located and interconnected cells), under normal conditions connected to each other by thin cytoplasmic processes, that is, microchannels, close them if a part of the cells becomes ill or is affected by something. They are fenced off from the affected cells, instead of helping, leaving them to their fate, that is, to certain death!!! And then they themselves become victims of an aggressive scourge!

Interestingly, ALL cytologists consider this vile and suicidal betrayal of some cells by others, quite approvingly, as a manifestation of a certain “mind”!!! Like, how smart the cells are!!! A very characteristic assessment for the psychology of the descendants of cannibals!!! That’s right, people almost always do the same thing and pay for it with tens of millions of lives! (Let’s recall the recent thirties of the last century, when the whole world cowardly and meanly tried to appease Hitler. Churchill then said: “A pleaser is a man who feeds a crocodile in the hope that he will eat it last!” Everyone betrayed everyone. How did it end? Peace and prosperity? The Second World War, which claimed the lives of sixty million people! And now? Isn’t the same thing happening?)
The above is another example of such betrayal!

Now the question is: How does a complete analphabete in cytology dare to come up with all sorts of hypotheses (which explain many “mysterious” phenomena well), and highly intelligent specialists have been puzzling over an obvious “mystery” for a hundred and fifty years? This ignoramus, is he what? The homegrown genius of all time??? The luminary of all sciences???
Absolutely not. Average, quite “normal” abilities of an individual.

Yes, because their minds are blinded by certain dogmas and inherently incorrect presets:
“A multicellular organism is a conglomerate of trillions of cells, all working as one for the benefit of a single organism!” That’s why “riddles and mysteries” arise. The original, fundamental idea of a kind of unified and indestructible friendship of peoples, I’m sorry, cells, is false and dogmatic! And, if we proceed from the definition of the ignoramus Esprit – everything falls into place and fits perfectly!

The moral: No abundance of “knowledge” can overcome the dominant attitude, which is
processes any incoming knowledge “from its bell tower!” To please itself!
The same Psychological Law of Archimedes: Any unpleasant or unusual thought immersed in consciousness is pushed out of it with a force proportional to the volume of its unpleasantness or strangeness!
There are no mysteries of Nature!
There is a degenerative dogmatism in our minds!
4  IX  2017