Archive for June 23rd, 2007
Shot To Halt Alzheimer’s Could Be Available In A Few Years
June 23rd, 2007
If this drug holds up to it’s promise it’s wonderful news! This is one reason the drug companies need to make money: they use it for R&D on other drugs that can actually save lives.
A revolutionary drug that stops Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks could be available within a few years.
It could prevent people from reaching the devastating final stages of the illness, in which sufferers lose the ability to walk, talk and even swallow, and end up totally dependent on others.
The jab, which is now being tested on patients, could be in widespread use in as little as six years.
The most common cause of dementia, Alzheimer’s affects around 500,000 Britons, with about 500 new cases diagnosed every day as people live longer.
Treatment costs the NHS up to £14billion a year – more than it spends on strokes, heart disease and cancer combined.
Existing drugs can delay the progress of the symptoms, but their effect wears off relatively quickly, allowing the disease to take its devastating course. In contrast, the new vaccine may be able to hold the disease at bay indefinitely.
Professor Clive Ballard, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “A successful vaccine would be a groundbreaking treatment advance for the 25million people with Alzheimer’s disease worldwide.”
Vaccines are typically used to provide immunity to a disease as a preventive measure before it can develop, but this is an example of a therapeutic vaccine, used to treat a disease which has already developed.
Known as CAD106, it is the brainchild of scientists at Zurich-based biotechnology firm Cytos, which is also developing anti-smoking, obesity and flu vaccines.
Cytos chief executive Dr Wolfgang Renner said: “If it could prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s, it would be fantastic.”
Early tests showed the vaccine is highly effective at breaking up the sticky protein that clogs the brain in Alzheimer’s, destroying vital connections between brain cells.
When the jab was given to mice suffering from a disease similar to Alzheimer’s, 80 per cent of the patches of amyloid protein were broken up.
The vaccine is now being tried out on 60 elderly Swedish patients in the early and middle stages of Alzheimer’s. Half of the men and women are being given the vaccine while half are being given dummy jabs.
Although the year-long trial is designed to show that the treatment is safe, the researchers will also look at its effect on the patients’ symptoms.
While the results are not due until early next year, the initial findings are promising. Dr Renner told a Zurich conference earlier this week: “I am glad to report that the vaccine is very well tolerated.”
If the trial is successful, larger-scale trials will follow, in which researchers will work out the best dose to give and how often it should be given. The finished product is six to eight years from the market.
The vaccine uses a tiny section of the amyloid protein attached to an empty virus shell to trick the immune system into attacking and breaking up deposits of protein clogging the brain.
Scientists at Cytos, who have sold the rights to the vaccine to Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, say the vaccine is likely to be given to those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, to stop the disease from progressing.
The development of tests capable of detecting the disease in its earliest stages would allow the jab to be given at the first possible opportunity.
It could also be used to keep the disease at bay in those with a strong family history of the illness, and even for the mass vaccination of people in late middle age.
However, while the jab may stop the disease in its tracks, it is not expected to repair dead tissue, and so will not be a cure. Nevertheless, preventing the disease’s progression would have an enormous impact on sufferers’ lives.
With the baby boomers getting older now we could expect more cases of Alzheimer’s, so you can see the potential for this drug if it turns out as well as expected.
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Hitchens Book Debunking The Deity Is Surprise Hit
June 23rd, 2007
This is the guy conservatives love to quote when it comes to MM.
Summer beach-reading season is just beginning, and already several books have broken out from the pack, such as Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein, and Conn and Hal Iggulden’s “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”
But the biggest surprise is a blazing attack on God and religion that is flying off bookshelves, even in the Bible Belt. “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” by Christopher Hitchens, wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster. Its publisher, Twelve, a fledgling imprint owned by France’s Lagardère SCA, initially printed a modest 40,000 copies. Today, seven weeks after the book went on sale, there are 296,000 copies in print. Demand has been so strong that booksellers and wholesalers were unable to get copies a short time after it hit stores, creating what the publishing industry calls a “dark week.” One experienced publishing veteran suggests that Mr. Hitchens will likely earn more than $1 million on this book.
A spin-off is already in the works. Rival publisher Da Capo Press, which is owned by Perseus Books LLC, got in touch with Mr. Hitchens and signed him up to edit, “The Portable Atheist,” a compilation of essays by such writers as Mark Twain and Charles Darwin that will be published in the fall.
“This is atheism’s moment,” says David Steinberger, Perseus’s CEO. “Mr. Hitchens has written the category killer, and we’re excited about having the next book.”
Mr. Hitchens, 58 years old, is well-known in media and political circles as an erudite raconteur and essayist; his Vanity Fair columns and frequent TV appearances on political shows have raised his profile. More recently, his loud support for the Iraq war has infuriated many of his former compatriots. His unabashed affection for alcohol and tobacco has been widely chronicled — sometimes by himself. “I smoke, sure, and I can take a drink when offered,” he says. “It’s impolite to decline.”
Now he has turned his caustic gaze on God and organized religion. “A heavenly dictatorship would be like living in a celestial North Korea, except it would be worse because they could read your thoughts even when you were asleep,” said Mr. Hitchens in an interview. “At least when you die you get out of North Korea, which is the most religious state I’ve ever seen.”
Lawmaker urges condoms for border control.
June 23rd, 2007
This is your tax dollar hard at work.
Will someone please tell me, what the hell is wrong with contraception?
How many of you stayed away from sex until you were ready to have a child?
This idea of abstinence is like sticking your head in the sand and hoping the problem will disappear. People have got to get off their moral high ground and really do something about it. Abstinence doesn’t cut it.
If you really want to cut back on abortion, you try anything and everything you can possibly think of to stop the pregnancy in the first place.
Reality tells me that people are just not going to stop having sex so if you want more than just an issue, try being realistic. Just my opinion.
A congressman is pushing a not-so-quick fix in the debate over illegal immigrants from Mexico: free contraceptives.
“A slower rate of growth of Mexico’s population would improve the economy of Mexico. It would also reduce the environmental pressure on Mexico’s ecosystem. But a slower rate of growth would also reduce the long-term illegal immigration pressure on America’s borders,” reasoned Rep. Mark Kirk, who also supports stronger border security in the short-term.
In reality, fertility rates have plunged in Mexico since 1980, when an average couple would have five or more children. Now, the country’s fertility rate has dropped to 2.5 children, compared to 2.1 for the United States, according to United Nations data.
Kirk, an Illinois Republican, made the argument on Thursday during a heated debate in the House of Representatives over whether the U.S. government should be allowed to donate condoms and other contraceptives to family planning agencies abroad that also engage in abortion.
The proposal was narrowly approved by the House, over the protests of anti-abortion lawmakers who prefer sex abstinence education. The measure faces a veto threat from the White House.
