I sympathise to a degree, such money would be better spent fighting disease rather than wars against fellow humans. However, it might be worth a look at the history books. See The War on Cancer
I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal. America has long been the wealthiest nation in the world. Now it is time we became the healthiest nation in the world.--President Richard M. Nixon in his 1971 State of the Union address.
The sad fact is that finding a cure for anything, and cancer in particular, is really, really hard.
Acutally, I think you are underestimating the risk involved for the pharmaceutical companies. When you say 'Most of the research is done in academia' it depends on how you qualify 'most'. If it's in terms of cost, then I suspect that is not the case, if it is in terms of time spent identifying targets, then you may be right, if it is in terms of generating compounds and doing pre-clinical development, then I suspect you are wrong.
Again, where you say 'Then some drug company buys the rights to something that it considers promissing, after most of the risk is gone. It then runs the final trials, etc., and gets the patents.' I think you are wrong. Look at the attrition rate for late stage compounds (The Current Odds) and you see that a lot of the risk is in late stage trials. 11% success rate through the clinic != low risk.
Vitamin B17, also known as Laetrile. The evidence is in and it doesn't work. It's not approved by the FDA and those that push it can face jail time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetrile
At worst, the 'mainstream' herb lore is ineffective. It's been used for generations without ill effect.. Fringe stuff.. That's another matter.. So I'm not so sure I buy into the 'wait until we prove it is safe' argument. What medical science does for that is fine tune the dosage to get the minimum substance for effect, and isolate the active component.
Actually, at worst I think it's dangerous. Some herbs, St Johns Wort included, have been shown to cause liver toxicity, and/or interactions with prescrition medicine.
What science does is to standardise the dosage (cardiac glycosides in foxgloves being highly variable according to a number of factors) so that you don't poison the patient, improve the potency through medicinal chemistry, and make it cheaper by making it mass-producable and last but not least, actually prove it works.
That's a very interesting idea, I don't have sufficient knowledge of vanilloid receptors to judge entirely.
However, beyond their powerful spice effect, chillis (modern ones at least) don't pose a 'specific chemical threat'. So, a receptor inducing pain is unlikely to have offered a selective benefit for its carrier.
In the case of a spider, they certainly wouldn't need to 'know' of the existence of a specific receptor. Those that were able to induce pain in a predator would be more likely to have a reproductive advantage than those that don't, resulting in the survival and reproduction of pain causing spiders. This would suggest that the ligand evolved to fit the receptor rather than the other way around.
Well that would depend. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited down the maternal line. A male neanderthal could have paired with a female homo sapiens more recently than 500 000 years and still have shared mtDNA from 500 000 yrs ago.
The Mercury hypothesis for autism is the vaccination equivalent of Intelligent Design. The Geiers are not credible scientists, their statistical analysis is questionable and they appear to be exploiting concern over autism for personal gain.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/06/mercury_ and_autism_well_look_a.php
I think some people have misunderstood the central dogma of molecular biology. I'm happy to be corrected but I always understood that it referred to the flow of information rather than relative amounts. From wikipedia, Francis Crick's definition of the Central dogma:
The central dogma of molecular biology deals with the detailed residue-by-residue transfer of sequential information. It states that such information cannot be transferred from protein to either protein or nucleic acid.
Also, it is not hard to find a published paper that does not use the technique. I've just scanned the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (oct 6, 2006), and of the first twenty experimental reports only one mentions RNAi in the Experimental Procedures section. I stopped at twenty because I got bored.
I agree that RNAi is important work and probably deserving of a Nobel, but some information here is just misleading.
The thought of highly trained terrorists running around shouting 'BOOOOM Headshot' whilst shooting or stabbing randomly at the scenery or team mates, does not fill me with fear.
Hopefully with this mapping, we'll be able to better understand mice (and, in turn humans and optimistically eukaryotes in general). And perhaps we'll be able to settle the dispute as to whether or not junk DNA has functions beyond our insight.
Actually, it won't tell us that. The mapping was performed against mRNA, a chemically distinct copy of protein-coding regions that is used to translate to the protein amino acid sequence. Since it was directed against coding regions, it won't tell us anything about non-doing regions.
I love HL2&ep1 but I have had a lot of problems with it (but not HL2 oddly) and I live in the hope of an update that will sort it. I would love to buy ep2 but I will wait a month or so and see if others have the same problem before I cough up.
Maurice Wilkins, his autobiography is excellent, very readable and gives an insight into the career of a scientist. It also shows the human side of someone who was rather glossed over in the story of the double helix.
It's worth noting that this same company had the drug PBT1 already being trialed in human Alzhimer's patients in 2003, but for some reason (*cough* probably toxic as hell *cough*) the trials were canceled, and this new drugs was rolled out.
It's also worth noting the report (linked at their homepage http://www.pranabio.com/index.asp/) of the phase II trial of PBT1. This report shows that there were no statistical differences in adverse event rates between placebo and PBT1. So PBT1 wasn't cancelled for safety reasons.
The press release also on the Prana website states that:
Rodent pharmacokinetic studies have shown that the brain concentration of PBT2 is about 50-fold greater than clioquinol for an IV equivalent dose.
which is probably why they selected it over PBT1(aka clioquinol).
Urgh, it was early I hadn't had my coffee. Look at the thread, I had to correct myself. Oh well.
On the other hand they could have used something like Alzheimer's Plaques Imaged in Living Brains. Yeah, alright, I suck.
Aargh, sorry, was looking at PBT-01 not PBT2 which had positive reports. pdf attempt 2: URL:http://www.pranabio.com/downloads/PBT_adex.pdf
Maybe that's how reporters got confused too.
On the other hand if you take a look at the pdf linked on the homepage (pdf warning), you will see that it is a clinical trial designed to assess both safety and efficacy. It's pretty small numbers though (18 completers) and the efficacy is assesed by cognition tests. There's certainly no mention of amyloid reduction so that may well refer to the animal studies.
The criticisms of quackwatch were pretty much 'we don't like what he says' rather than any attempt to dismiss the information posted.
If the dark matter/energy is so difficult to detect and measure then it is going to have no bearing on health. There is an excellent critque of WR here: http://members.dslextreme.com/users/rogermw/Reich/. He was onto nothing but his percieved victimhood
Does modern medicine lack a guiding philosophy? Eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, exercise a little, don't smoke and don't drink too much. Sounds good to me.
Whatever the constituent of tobacco smoke, it has a material based carcinogenic effect, contrary to Hamer's claims.
There is good evidence for the benefit of thalidomide in multiple myeloma:
Promising findings were reported today showing that the combination of thalidomide and dexamethasone (Thal/Dex) when used as initial therapy for multiple myeloma, slowed disease progression almost two-fold compared to dexamethasone alone.
It is intereseting that you criticise the cost of thalidomide and yet consider Wilhelm Reich a suppressed healer, when his wooden boxes cost $250 a month in 1940. http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/reich.html
I won't try to defend the high prices of drugs, merely point out that is a problem of politics, specifically capitalism and private medical care, not medicine or science.
Well, that is of course tragic about your grandmother, I won't go into my personal experiences as it has no bearing on this discussion and because anecdotal evidence isn't evidence.
Hamer's approach has been shown to lack effect, consider reports by German medical authorities:
No case of a cure of a cancer patient by Hamer.s method has yet been published in medical literature. Neither have any studies to this effect been published in the specialised press.
The Hamer foci on the CT images in Hamer.s books have been identified by radiological experts as typical artefacts produced by the radiological device which can appear in a poor-quality CT scan.
Spiegel magazine reports an investigation by the authorities in Germany, stating that out of 50 cancer patients who have passed through Hamer.s care only seven have survived.
The numerous case reports in Hamer.s books, often described in highly empathetic fashion, lack the additional data that are essential for medical assessment, and the cures described must therefore be subject to doubt.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean 'HIV has never been seen...'? That's just not true
Acutally, I think you are underestimating the risk involved for the pharmaceutical companies. When you say 'Most of the research is done in academia' it depends on how you qualify 'most'. If it's in terms of cost, then I suspect that is not the case, if it is in terms of time spent identifying targets, then you may be right, if it is in terms of generating compounds and doing pre-clinical development, then I suspect you are wrong.
Again, where you say 'Then some drug company buys the rights to something that it considers promissing, after most of the risk is gone. It then runs the final trials, etc., and gets the patents.' I think you are wrong. Look at the attrition rate for late stage compounds (The Current Odds) and you see that a lot of the risk is in late stage trials. 11% success rate through the clinic != low risk.
Well, I disagree with the statement about the FDA, but that's an argument for another time. Other sources include: MHRA http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/idcplg?IdcService=SS_G ET_PAGE&nodeId=433&within=Yes&keywords=laetrile/, Cancer Research UK: http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page =21859/ and the USA National Cancer Research Institute http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/laetril e/Patient/page2/.
The wikipedia article linked previously also has a good summary.
Vitamin B17, also known as Laetrile. The evidence is in and it doesn't work. It's not approved by the FDA and those that push it can face jail time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetrile
Actually, at worst I think it's dangerous. Some herbs, St Johns Wort included, have been shown to cause liver toxicity, and/or interactions with prescrition medicine.
What science does is to standardise the dosage (cardiac glycosides in foxgloves being highly variable according to a number of factors) so that you don't poison the patient, improve the potency through medicinal chemistry, and make it cheaper by making it mass-producable and last but not least, actually prove it works.
No, no, it's the stuff that tells you 'you look great in that shirt'.
That's a very interesting idea, I don't have sufficient knowledge of vanilloid receptors to judge entirely.
However, beyond their powerful spice effect, chillis (modern ones at least) don't pose a 'specific chemical threat'. So, a receptor inducing pain is unlikely to have offered a selective benefit for its carrier.
In the case of a spider, they certainly wouldn't need to 'know' of the existence of a specific receptor. Those that were able to induce pain in a predator would be more likely to have a reproductive advantage than those that don't, resulting in the survival and reproduction of pain causing spiders. This would suggest that the ligand evolved to fit the receptor rather than the other way around.
Well that would depend. Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited down the maternal line. A male neanderthal could have paired with a female homo sapiens more recently than 500 000 years and still have shared mtDNA from 500 000 yrs ago.
The Mercury hypothesis for autism is the vaccination equivalent of Intelligent Design. The Geiers are not credible scientists, their statistical analysis is questionable and they appear to be exploiting concern over autism for personal gain. http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/06/mercury_ and_autism_well_look_a.php
Also, it is not hard to find a published paper that does not use the technique. I've just scanned the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (oct 6, 2006), and of the first twenty experimental reports only one mentions RNAi in the Experimental Procedures section. I stopped at twenty because I got bored.
I agree that RNAi is important work and probably deserving of a Nobel, but some information here is just misleading.
The thought of highly trained terrorists running around shouting 'BOOOOM Headshot' whilst shooting or stabbing randomly at the scenery or team mates, does not fill me with fear.
Lots of people have had crash/lock-up problems, see this 47 page thread on the problem http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.p hp?s=ba8aabc64afc836e73033b7bd2d1781b&threadid=444 078
I love HL2&ep1 but I have had a lot of problems with it (but not HL2 oddly) and I live in the hope of an update that will sort it. I would love to buy ep2 but I will wait a month or so and see if others have the same problem before I cough up.
Maurice Wilkins, his autobiography is excellent, very readable and gives an insight into the career of a scientist. It also shows the human side of someone who was rather glossed over in the story of the double helix.
- 7368813-0262849?v=glance&n=266239&s=gateway&v=glan ce/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/019280667X/026
It is possible, once you transfer to the blogger beta, edit your old posts and there is a box at the bottom to enter tags.
The trouble with this concept is that its a difficult process. The structures of chemicals from natural sources may be extremely complex, more so than is possible to produce on a large scale. The following links are from a blog by a professional medicinal chemist, who has a lot of experience in the area and offer a good deal of insight into the process of deriving a drug from natural sources.u ngle_rot.php
l l_natural.php
_ natural_wonder_drug_now_what.php
1 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/04/26/j
2 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/04/30/a
3 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/05/08/a
Urgh, it was early I hadn't had my coffee. Look at the thread, I had to correct myself. Oh well. On the other hand they could have used something like Alzheimer's Plaques Imaged in Living Brains. Yeah, alright, I suck.
Aargh, sorry, was looking at PBT-01 not PBT2 which had positive reports. pdf attempt 2: URL:http://www.pranabio.com/downloads/PBT_adex.pdf
Maybe that's how reporters got confused too.
On the other hand if you take a look at the pdf linked on the homepage (pdf warning), you will see that it is a clinical trial designed to assess both safety and efficacy. It's pretty small numbers though (18 completers) and the efficacy is assesed by cognition tests. There's certainly no mention of amyloid reduction so that may well refer to the animal studies.
I loved HL2, loved ep 1 apart from the fact that it crashes avery dman half hour. I would get much more excited about episode 2 if they could get episode 1 to work, so many people have had crashes with ep 1 (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread. php?s=af9613eb805c3b3e392eba8461620be3&threadid=44 3922) it needs sorting before ep 2.
The criticisms of quackwatch were pretty much 'we don't like what he says' rather than any attempt to dismiss the information posted.
/ . He was onto nothing but his percieved victimhood
If the dark matter/energy is so difficult to detect and measure then it is going to have no bearing on health. There is an excellent critque of WR here: http://members.dslextreme.com/users/rogermw/Reich
I assume you refer to Edgar Cayce? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Cayce. You can't seriously quote a supposed psychic on nutrition.
Whatever the constituent of tobacco smoke, it has a material based carcinogenic effect, contrary to Hamer's claims.
There is good evidence for the benefit of thalidomide in multiple myeloma: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/0606
It is intereseting that you criticise the cost of thalidomide and yet consider Wilhelm Reich a suppressed healer, when his wooden boxes cost $250 a month in 1940. http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/reich.html
I won't try to defend the high prices of drugs, merely point out that is a problem of politics, specifically capitalism and private medical care, not medicine or science.
Hamer's approach has been shown to lack effect, consider reports by German medical authorities:
http://www.swisscancer.ch/dt_fr/content/orange/pd
Cancer is clearly materialistic. To deny the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoke, as Hamer does, is ludicrous.
The harm in the choice is that people may reject therapies for which there is evidence of potential benefit for snake oil which will not work.