7 posts tagged “health”
As someone who follows cancer developments closely for various reasons, I must admit that I am amazed by the sheer volume of promising research being done. Last month for example, I tracked 21 promising developments by researchers over the 30 day period. It seems that every day that goes by, science is learning something new, or has devised a way to combat the illness in some new, often radical fashion. Therein lies the rub. Many of these discoveries, while promising, are years away from any sort of clinical trial, let alone potential cure for the malady. Sadly, it is far too late for some people…
Let me share some of my discoveries for today:
Researchers Develop Method to Deliver Drugs Inside Cells
Researchers working at Queen Mary, University of London have made a breakthrough with a process called "Micro Shuttle" drug delivery. The new process could one day mean an end to traditional methods of delivering drugs and allow doctors to deliver medications directly inside the cells of the body.
The technique is described as a way to shrink wrap medications to be buried under the skin or inside the body. These shrink wrap micro shuttles can be loaded with doses of specific medications and then opened remotely.
The capsules are about two micrometers in size, making them roughly the size of bacterium. They are constructed by wrapping strands of a metabolism-resistant material around spherical particles. These spherical particles are then dissolved in acid leaving behind an empty container.
To get medications into the empty container the capsules are heated in a solution that contains the desired medication. The heating process causes the capsules to shrink and traps some of the medication solution in the process.
The capsules make their way inside live cells using a technique called electroportation that administers a tiny shock to make the cell walls permeable for the tiny capsules. The researchers say that the cells are not harmed by the process.
Micro Shuttle Drug Delivery Research
This is very promising for those who have to endure the hell that is chemotherapy. I am certain that such a method will be used in the near future, but it may substitute nanobots as the means for the medicine as there is promising research being done in that area as well.
Social Isolation Worsens Cancer
The researchers then turned their attention to how the chronic social environment affected the biology of cancer growth. In other words, they sought to discover the precise molecular consequences of the stressful environment.
To do this, they studied gene expression in the mouse mammary tissue over time. Conzen and her colleagues found altered expression levels of metabolic pathway genes (which are expected to favor increased tumor growth) in the isolated mice. This was the case even before tumor size differences were measurable.
These altered gene expression patterns suggest potential molecular biomarkers and/or targets for preventive intervention in human breast cancer.
These findings do suggest novel targets for chemoprevention, according to Caryn Lerman, PhD, Scientific Director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Deputy Editor of Cancer Prevention Research. "Future studies should evaluate whether these molecular processes can be reversed by chemopreventive agents."
The findings also support previous epidemiologic studies suggesting that social isolation increases the mortality of chronic diseases, as well as clinical studies revealing that social support improves the outcomes of cancer patients.
Social Isolation Worsens Cancer
Cancer is an interesting ailment because as it worsens, it debilitates the patient both mentally and physically to the point that they don’t have the desire or ability to associate with other people. In effect, it becomes just the person and cancer. This study shows that this phenomenon is detrimental to recovery. This isn’t limited to cancer however, as this affects many, if not all, diseases. People are social creatures, and being around others helps us to heal. I apologize for my lack of cognizance, as I currently lack much energy myself. Perhaps a nap is in order…
A new Harvard study estimates that nearly 45,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance — and that’s after other factors like income and unhealthy behaviors are taken into account.
"Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease," an article by the Cambridge Health Alliance reports.
The study says the uninsured have a 40% higher risk of death than people who have private health insurance — like the insurance you get through your job. Or, to put it another way, a person dies because of a lack of insurance every 12 minutes.
Of course, some people neglect their health. But many, we suspect, don’t see a doctor because they’re afraid of the cost. Doctor visits and tests can add up to an intimidating amount, even if you’re uninsured but have a good income. A CNN story put a human face on some of these avoidable deaths — a freelance cameraman, a self-employed mother of two, and a 25-year-old woman who worked in a movie theater.
Let me explain my stance on the matter. I am not a fan of insurance in principle. The idea of paying for something in the case that something “might” happen is a similar model to what the mafia used during its protection racket heyday. The sad truth is that healthcare costs have become so astronomical that the “necessity” of insurance has become a prominent concern for everyone. I happen to believe that insurance is one of the leading contributors to the rising costs, but that is merely my opinion.
I happened to have an enormous amount of medical bills, and don’t have insurance. While I won’t get into the fact that if you ever do get sick insurance companies will do ANYTHING they can to get rid of you, I will admit that having insurance initially could have saved me a lot of money. With that being said, there is no doubt that my overall costs would be unaffected because I would have been dropped from any policy that I may have been on.
Last night, I was notified that DeVry and Keller School of Management students HAVE TO have insurance through the school. This really pisses me off, and screams of a cash grab by the university. We don’t have an option and the minimum cost of $280 will automatically be applied to our accounts. I am all for healthcare for everyone, but I don’t want the private sector making it mandatory! This is especially true when the policy is something that I have no control over!
Are you familiar with Dean Kamen? No? Well, perhaps you should be. He is an inventor, whose inventions have typically been in the area of robotics (he invented the Segway, the Luke robotic arm, and the F.I.R.S.T. robotics competition), but he has really created something that has the potential to alter life on this planet. He has created something called the Slingshot which is capable of filtering 97% of the Earth’s undrinkable water.
I must state that this device isn’t new, but rather something that he has been developing for 10 years and he has had working prototypes in Honduras in 2006.
The crux of the invention is the "vapor compression distiller" which sits between the tank of dirty liquid and the tank of clean drinking water. This device operates at low power and boils, distills, and vaporizes liquid water from the dirty mix, leaving behind impurities in the water. The device requires little maintenance.
The device produces 250 gallons a day, enough to support 100 people.
Slingshot Can Clean 97% of Earth's Undrinkable Water
Of course there is a catch right? Well, there is at this point and it is the one you are most likely to suspect: cost. Currently the device costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but keep in mind that this is without any sort of mass production plan. Kamen states that he would like to get the cost down to around $2000 per device, and he is actively seeking humanitarian groups and individuals to become involved in bringing this device to those in need.
Why is this important? Currently, there are roughly 900 million people who don’t have access to clean drinking water. In terms of intellectual coherency, the idea passes muster. Water’s just as essential to life as food, which makes an appearance in Article 25 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As of now, the World Health Organization estimates that inadequate water is responsible for nearly one-tenth of the world’s disease burden, and that six percent of all deaths could be prevented by universal access to safe drinking water and better sanitation. According to the UN, 2.8 billion people won’t have enough water to meet their basic needs by 2025.
I can’t believe that I am even writing that sentence. There is currently a “pandemic response bill” making its way through the Massachusetts state legislature that allows authorities to forcefully quarantine citizens in the event of a health emergency, compel health providers to vaccinate citizens, authorize forceful entry into private dwellings and destruction of citizen property and impose fines on citizens for noncompliance.
Refusal to comply carries penalties of imprisonment of up to 30 days and fines of $1000 per day. Here is the bill for those that want to read it:
Here are some of the highlights:
- to require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises;
- to close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated any building or facility, and to allow the reopening of the building or facility when the danger has ended
- to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated, or to destroy any material;
- to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;
- to require a health care facility to provide services or the use of its facility, or to transfer the management and supervision of the health care facility to the department or to a local public health authority;
- to control ingress to and egress from any stricken or threatened public area, and the movement of persons and materials within the area;
- to adopt and enforce measures to provide for the safe disposal of infectious waste and human remains, provided that religious, cultural, family, and individual beliefs of the deceased person shall be followed to the extent possible when disposing of human remains, whenever that may be done without endangering the public health;
- to procure, take immediate possession from any source, store, or distribute any anti-toxins, serums, vaccines, immunizing agents, antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical agents or medical supplies located within the commonwealth as may be necessary to respond to the emergency;
- to require in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of any individual as a condition of licensure, authorization, or the ability to continue to function as a health care provider in the commonwealth;
- to waive the commonwealth's licensing requirements for health care professionals with a valid license from another state in the United States or whose professional training would otherwise qualify them for an appropriate professional license in the commonwealth;
- to allow for the dispensing of controlled substance by appropriate personnel consistent with federal statutes as necessary for the prevention or treatment of illness;
- to authorize the chief medical examiner to appoint and prescribe the duties of such emergency assistant medical examiners as may be required for the proper performance of the duties of office;
- to collect specimens and perform tests on any animal, living or deceased;
- to exercise authority under sections 95 and 96 of chapter 111;
- to care for any emerging mental health or crisis counseling needs that individuals may exhibit, with the consent of the individuals
I encourage you to read the full article as it discusses the unreasonable power grab by government, the risks of getting vaccinated, and the fact that immunity from a vaccination doesn’t last nearly as long as immunity from natural exposure. Does anyone remember a few months ago when they were saying H1N1 was not a big deal?
That is the part that really bothers me. We were told, and still are by the CDC, that H1N1 isn’t much worse than normal influenza strains. There is some growing evidence that this may not be the case as deaths are up: Swine Flu Kills 625 Last Week. I wish that there could be some consensus on the matter. I believe that there will be a lot of sick people, and that there will be a lot of deaths, but that the deaths are merely the result of scale. I am all for voluntary immunization for those that want it, but I am very leery of forced immunization.
Well, my good buddy, Steve Jobs, (NOT! I hate the man...) recently emerged from a liver transplant procedure and he is doing very well all things considered. While I hate the man with a passion that can't be comprehended by mortals, even I will admit that I am glad that he is doing well. I know that going through such a thing is hell, its risky, and it can destroy a person. I know that many people aren't aware of how the organ transplant process works in how it finds and matches donors, so I figured that I would shine some light on this subject.
Livers are a scarce resource. In any given year, only about one-third of the people on the national transplant waiting list receive one, and as of late June, more than 16,000 people were on the list.
Yet it sometimes seems that celebrities in need end up at the front of the line when they need a transplant, and people often assume they get preferential treatment. (Rumors about special treatment circulated after baseball player Mickey Mantle's liver transplant in 1995, for example.)
The truth is more complicated. No one can actually buy an organ in the United States (legally, that is). But getting a liver transplant, it turns out, is a lot like getting into college. Once you're on the waiting list, your chances of getting off it depend largely on your personal circumstances -- how sick you are and whether you are a good donor match. But getting on the list in the first place -- or on more than one list, as the case may be -- requires resources and know-how that most people don't have.
There are 127 centers in the U.S. that perform liver transplants. If you need an organ transplant, your doctor will refer you to one of these centers, where you will be evaluated, given a score based on the severity of illness, and placed on the center's waiting list, if you are indeed a candidate for transplant.
The center's waiting list feeds into a national database managed by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a nonprofit organization that contracts with the federal government to manage the nation's organ transplant system.
UNOS works with 58 organ procurement organizations (OPOs) that coordinate organ distribution in their region of the country. When an organ becomes available, the OPO in that region searches the UNOS database for a local match using blood type (and other biological considerations), the patient's severity score, and the time spent on the waiting list. If a match can't be made within that region, the organization expands its search to neighboring regions.
The problem -- or the advantage for some patients -- is that not all OPOs are created equal. Some regions contain nearly 15 times as many people as others, and their waiting list times vary widely. Patients in the smaller OPOs tend to be less sick and experience shorter wait times before getting an organ. In the Tennessee OPO where Jobs received his transplant, the median wait for a liver between 2002 and 2007 was just over four months. The national average was just over a year, and in some OPOs it was more than three years.
Though there is always the possibility of preferential treatment once a patient is on a waiting list -- UNOS conducts periodic audits of transplant centers for exactly this reason -- it is unlikely that someone like Steve Jobs can "cut the line" of the transplant waiting list.
The reason that some people might be able to get transplants more quickly is that they're standing in more lines. Nothing prevents someone from being evaluated and listed at multiple transplant centers. As long as a patient has the wherewithal to fly around the country -- and be available at the drop of a hat if a liver becomes available (this is where the private jet comes in handy) -- a patient can, in theory, be evaluated by all the transplant centers in the country.
"The system works at two levels," explains Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., the chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "One, who gets in to a center. Two, who gets transplanted off a particular center's list when an organ becomes available. Most of the attention goes to stage two, but the biggest ethical challenges are really at stage one."
Since 2003, UNOS has required that transplant centers inform all candidates that they can be evaluated and listed at more than one center, and that they can also transfer their care from one center to another without losing the time they have accrued on the waiting list. However, not everyone can afford to fly around the country and be evaluated at more than one transplant center. In fact, many people can't afford a liver transplant, period.
According to the most recent estimates, the cost of a liver transplant is $519,600 -- a price tag that excludes roughly one-third of Americans because they don't have sufficient insurance (or any insurance), Caplan estimates. According to data collected for UNOS, only about 5 percent of liver transplants are paid for out of pocket.
"What your insurance covers is very different from everyone else's," says Anne Paschke, a spokesperson for UNOS. Some insurance companies won't cover evaluations at multiple transplant centers, Paschke explains, and in at least one case, an insurance company has restricted its coverage to a single transplant center that the company itself owned.
Obviously, the system is flawed and favors those with the means to work the system. There have been attempts to reform the system, but they have all met their end in Congress. Politicking has left the larger transplant centers against the smaller ones. The larger ones wish to maintain the larger pool of available organs in their region, whereas the smaller ones were concerned that in a national organ allocation system, they would receive fewer transplants and be driven out of business.
There is work to be done in this area. No matter what side you fall on.
Source: CNN Health
Source: Health.com: The real gift of life: How medical donations help
A very intelligent man may have found "the magic bullet" against cancer. He found an existing agent that is cheap and readily available that allows cancer ridden cells to destroy themselves. I won't bore you with the details (mostly because firefox has become a terrible browser...yeah I said it)-(ok, here is why: I am typing this now and firefox is still spelling out "the magic bullet" on my screen...lame as hell...) so here is the link:
Yes ladies and gentlemen, the unbelievable has happened!
Alex P. Keaton is a Democrat! And believe it or not I support him. Alex P. Keaton has always been a sort of hero mind when I was a kid, not because he was a Republican but because he loved money. Who the hell doesn't love money? Anyways, this isn't about Alex P. Keaton, this is about Michael J. Fox.
I'm sure you all know that he suffers from Parkinson's disease, and that's a terrible thing. Someone like him suffers from a terrible disease while idiots like Paris Hilton her free around exposing their crotches to anyone willing to look at their direction. I'm glad to see that he is getting involved in politics in an effort to support stem cell research. Anyone who knows me knows I hate Democrats and Republicans equally. This is in a partisan issue, it's a humanities issue. I believe in stem cell research and I think that there's great potential in this technology. Other annoy thing about the candidates that he is supporting, and I have no idea if I would even vote for them(I know that I wouldn't because I hate all politicians) are like the fact that they are bringing this topic to the forefront of their political campaigns.
While I don't necessarily wish them luck in elections (like I said I don't really know the candidates), I do wish them luck in bringing this important topic in front of the masses.
