Monthly Archives: March 2012

Angiogenesis and Stem Cell Therapy Key to Treating Heart Patients: Dr Mukesh Hariawala

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Cardiac cellular therapies are undergoing global clinical trials with "encouraging early results" and these economical options will soon be available in India which could bring relief to patients who cannot afford the currently available expensive surgical treatments, says Indian American cardiac surgeon Dr Mukesh Hariawala.

Delivering a special invited plenary lecture on the "Novel Cellular Therapies for Heart Disease" at the recently concluded Healthcare India 2012 convention in New Delhi, the renowned cardiac surgeon asserted that the new developments in cardiac cellular therapies would bring down the alarming healthcare costs globally.

Dr Hariawala is internationally acclaimed as a pioneer of cardiovascular surgical techniques using Therapeutic Angiogenesis. He said Therapeutic Angiogenesis is a fast emerging science of stimulating growth of new blood vessels in the heart which acts as natural bypasses to areas lacking in blood supply.

Dr Hariawala demonstrated angiogenesis along with bypass surgery, lasers and stem cell injections as a novel "Combo Therapy."

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The laser energy acts by creating channels in the diseased heart muscle which also triggers Angiogenesis. Stem cells are then injected directly into coronary arteries feeding the diseased territory or in the stimulated lasered muscle during the open heart surgery. This option could be very helpful in Indian patients with diffused distal small caliber coronary arteries and diabetes, who are not amicable to routinely offered current interventions, he said.

Dr Hariawala acknowledged that only a combination of these four therapies could give it the "Therapeutic Threshold Power" and bring about optimum results and relief of patients symptoms. Standalone, each of these therapies is weak to treat a large muscular pumping organ like the heart.

Stem cells have a therapeutic role and hold enormous promise for the future as they are harvested from the patient's own tissues. Currently, adult stem cell extraction is done from one's own hip bone and patients do not have to worry about rejection phenomenon occurring as they are native cells unlike transplanted from another donor. In the future, stem cell banks could proliferate allowing donors to freeze and store cells for family members who could be treated for many diseases, he added.

Harvard-trained Dr Hariawala's studies have been published in several scientific surgical journals and medical text books.

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Angiogenesis and Stem Cell Therapy Key to Treating Heart Patients: Dr Mukesh Hariawala

Stem-cell pawns

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To read Hard Cell by Mayrav Saar (PostScript, Feb. 26), one would think the only form of stem-cell therapy is the embryo-destroying kind. There wasnt a single mention of non-embryonic adult stem cells.

One attraction of embryonic versus non-embryonic research for some is political the chance to stick it to pro-lifers. But it grieves me to see ailing people used as pawns in this culture war and being denied the possible benefits of adult stem-cell research.

Flushing such an idea down the memory hole, as you help do with this article, is against the spirit of scientific inquiry.

Bob Hunt, Hillsborough, NJ

Wrong on the right

If social conservatives had won out in history, women would not be able to vote and we would still have slavery (Why Social Issues Matter, Jeffrey Bell, PostScript, Feb. 26).

Their thinking denigrates the role of science and promotes antiquated religious beliefs. Many of the causes taken up by social conservatives have been seen to be wrong in light of later progressive thought.

While social conservatives say some good things, history has shown that their views work against American freedoms an obscurantism that continues today.

Jeffrey Bell should balance his thought with facts and not be led blindly by evangelicals.

Eduardo Rodriguez, Corona

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Stem-cell pawns

NY weighs expanding DNA bank to all criminals

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) New York is again debating expanding its DNA database, this time to include samples from every person convicted of a crime. The debate pits what backers say is solid science and more solved cases against critics who raise the possibility of tainted evidence and a secret stash of information that favors prosecutors.

The scientist running New Yorks DNA crime laboratory said he cannot recall a single instance in 16 years when the lab produced bad genetic information that linked an innocent person to a crime. Instead, the work has helped police identify suspects in 12,000 cases, many of them previously unsolved, and exonerate 27 people wrongfully convicted.

Every step in the process is associated with scientific controls to assure the accuracy of the results, said Barry Duceman, a former Yale genetics researcher who was hired two decades ago to launch the state program. The lab repeatedly meets accreditation standards that require strict quality controls, he said.

Critics point to the potential for contaminated crime scene evidence and some processing errors in other states. They say the databank should at least be open to defense lawyers and at best be open to individuals who want to know if their DNA profiles are kept by police.

The problem, in my judgment, is that the library is secret, said Edward Blake, a genetic researcher who has produced DNA evidence that overturned several convictions. That secrecy of the contents of that library is contrary to the principles of a democratic society.

The Republican-controlled New York Senate recently approved and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is advocating the so-called clean bill to expand collections to lesser crimes, citing experience that shows many small-timers move on to robberies, rapes and murders that could be solved or prevented.

Since the addition of petit larceny to the databank more than five years ago, DNA collected from this minor crime produced leads in cases involving nearly 1,000 other crimes, including 53 murders.

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Pending legislation repeatedly passed by the Democrat-run Assembly would expand DNA collection while increasing database access. That bill also includes mandates to prevent coerced confessions and witness errors by requiring videotaped police interrogations and a system of looking at photo arrays where neither the officer nor the witness knows if the suspect is included, a technique known as double-blind.

Last year, both bills died with no negotiated compromise.

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NY weighs expanding DNA bank to all criminals

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Should all criminals go into DNA bank?

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York is again debating expanding its DNA database, this time to include samples from every person convicted of a crime. The debate pits what backers say is solid science and more solved cases against critics who raise the possibility of tainted evidence and a secret stash of information that favors prosecutors.

The scientist running New York's DNA crime laboratory said he cannot recall a single instance in 16 years when the lab produced bad genetic information that linked an innocent person to a crime. Instead, the work has helped police identify suspects in 12,000 cases, many of them previously unsolved, and exonerate 27 people wrongfully convicted.

"Every step in the process is associated with scientific controls to assure the accuracy of the results," said Barry Duceman, a former Yale genetics researcher who was hired two decades ago to launch the state program. The lab repeatedly meets accreditation standards that require strict quality controls, he said.

Critics point to the potential for contaminated crime scene evidence and some processing errors in other states. They say the databank should at least be open to defense lawyers and at best be open to individuals who want to know if their DNA profiles are kept by police.

"The problem, in my judgment, is that the library is secret," said Edward Blake, a genetic researcher who has produced DNA evidence that overturned several convictions. "That secrecy of the contents of that library is contrary to the principles of a democratic society."

The Republican-controlled New York Senate recently approved and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is advocating the so-called clean bill to expand collections to lesser crimes, citing experience that shows many small-timers move on to robberies, rapes and murders that could be solved or prevented.

Since the addition of petit larceny to the databank more than five years ago, DNA collected from this minor crime produced leads in cases involving nearly 1,000 other crimes, including 53 murders.

Pending legislation repeatedly passed by the Democrat-run Assembly would expand DNA collection while increasing database access. That bill also includes mandates to prevent coerced confessions and witness errors by requiring videotaped police interrogations and a system of looking at photo arrays where neither the officer nor the witness knows if the suspect is included, a technique known as double-blind.

Last year, both bills died with no negotiated compromise.

Cuomo said last week he will consider changes to the clean bill, but only if they are strictly DNA-related, telling supportive prosecutors and police he is optimistic about getting that measure passed this year. He said he doesn't want the bill freighted with the other criminal justice issues.

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Should all criminals go into DNA bank?

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Utah students put KSL technologists to the test

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SALT LAKE CITY -- Several weeks from now, March 26- 29, will be a demanding time for 900 junior high school and high school students from across Central Utah, who have been selected to compete in the prestigious Central Utah Science & Engineering Fair at BYU.

Students were chosen from more 100,000 eligible project submissions across Central Utah territories including Alpine, Jordan, Nebo, Provo, Wasatch and private and charter schools.

David van Dijk, lead science instructor for Pleasant Grove High School and moderator for the Alpine School District Science Fair held at Pleasant Grove High School for the past nine years, said that only 75 out of more than 200 project submissions at the district level were selected to receive a medal, certificate of recognition and the opportunity to go on to compete at the regional level.

Winter Wester and Mina Park, both Willow Creek Middle School 9th graders in Lehi, Utah, were selected as a group project to move on to Central Utah Science & Engineering Fair, after winning over several other high caliber projects from competing 9th-12th graders.

Their project, The Impact in Spatial Recognition Between Virtual and Physical Environmental Dimensions, competed for the category of Behavioral Science, and was lauded by judges at the district level for their ingenuity in devising a research study around a problem that had not been previously evaluated at the academic scholarly level.

More particularly, their research study showed the effects of two dimensional top-down maps when used in a three- dimensional virtual environment by a sample population of 30 individuals who either had experience playing video games and/or board games, or had no experience with gaming.

The girls developed their own custom virtual 3D maze that users could navigate while being timed and tracked. Their sample population was selected from a group of top-tiered male and female technologists and sales/marketing/accounting executives for Deseret Digital Media, the technology group responsible for operating KSL.com and DeseretNews.com, among other high profile web sites.

While celebrating their hard-won victory over double scoops of ice cream from JCWs near Thanksgiving Point, Winter and Mina described how their science fair project enabled them to interact with professionals in an active workplace with whom they would otherwise never have the opportunity.

Winter said she and Mina were scared and nervous to test so many adults. However, after conducting the first couple of tests, they said they realized how enjoyable a process it was to perform scientific testing and discover new findings from the data.

Eric Bright

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Light bulbs go off for science students

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By JUDY SHERARD

jsherard@dailynews.net

Some students proved their hypotheses, others didn't.

However, all of them discussed their findings with the judges Saturday at the Fort Hays State University Regional Science and Engineering Fair.

Each project is judged by three judges who are FHSU faculty, students and community members.

Project categories are biochemistry, medicine and health, botany, chemistry, consumer science, Earth and space science, engineering and inventions, environmental science, mathematics and computer science, physics and physical science, social science and behavioral science, and zoology.

There were 68 entries this year from students in fourth through 12th grade, said Ann Noble, director of the fair.

That number is the largest to date, said Paul Adams, FHSU physics professor.

"In the younger students, it's really exciting to see their interest," Noble said. "In the high school students, it's just amazing what they can do, and what they research. They're our next leaders, and I really like to see their ideas."

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Anatomy of a Murdered Show: Creators of Carrie Talk About Musical's Second Coming

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Anatomy of a Murdered Show: Creators of Carrie Talk About Musical's Second Coming

By Harry Haun 04 Mar 2012

Carrie writers Lawrence D. Cohen, Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford look back at their notorious musical's past and revel in its present revised revival.

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Kelly and Moose Murders, which ran a total of two performances (collectively), and Breakfast at Tiffany's, which closed in previews at minus-2, were infinitely more infamous but poor Carrie is the one forever cursed as the bedrock of bad Broadway shows, no small thanks to theatre historian Ken Mandelbaum, who called his chronicle on 40 years of flops "Not Since Carrie."

One thing that has happened since Carrie might just warrant a re-titling: namely, her comeback easily the greatest since Nixon and, before that, Lazarus. Officially, this came to pass at Off-Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre on March 1 in like a lion, as they say, and mostly because of its own legendary, marinated awfulness.

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Yes, after three years in the remaking and a full month of intensive, all-hands-on surgery in previews, Stephen King's telekinetic teen killer pounces anew, as vivid (and patched-up) as The Creature in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory alive!

Still, there's something different about her like, say, the times: in the light of current events, Carrie White looms like a pioneer crusader against high-school bullying. So what if her strike-back has enough zeal and overkill to wipe out a whole student body? Much of that must be laid at the door of her religious-wacko mom, Margaret, who, too, is brought up to contemporary speed with her fanatical fundamentalism.

Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek were the original mother-daughter act in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror-cult flick. Lawrence D. Cohen, who adapted King's 1974 novel into that movie, also wrote the book for the musical version, which premiered with Barbara Cook and Linzi Hateley in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in February 1988.

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Governor says he won’t back UCR medical school

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California Gov. Jerry Brown said Friday hes not prepared to support funding the UC Riverside medical school at a time when the state still faces a $9 billion deficit.

Brown asserted that position during a talk at The Press-Enterprise that ranged from his tax proposal to high-speed rail, pension reform and drivers licenses for illegal immigrants.

Im not ruling it out, but Im not ruling it in right now, Brown said of funding for the medical school. Weve got to get our house in order before we expand.

While acknowledging he hasnt looked at the schools merits, Brown said he is less inclined to fund it when the University of California regents havent committed any of the systems state funding to the school.

The medical school has been in the works for years and originally was set to open this year. But so far, UCR officials have not been able to secure ongoing state funding.

UCR leaders are pushing ahead with private fundraising the goal is $10 million a year for the next decade and hope to open the school next year, but with only 50 students to start. To be viable long term, though, the school must have ongoing state support, UCR officials have said.

The money has yet to be included in any of the governors budget proposals.

Browns comments about the medical school go against what Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said during a visit to Riverside last week.

Feinstein sent a letter to Brown urging him to support the medical school, and during a speech before the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, she urged local officials to contact the governors office on the issue.

I am going to need your help to call on our great governor and say, Jerry, youve got to find $15 million, she said. It can be found.

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Flowers are plants’ shot at immortality

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Posted: Friday, March 2, 2012 7:32 pm | Updated: 7:53 pm, Fri Mar 2, 2012.

YUCCA VALLEY Hes a little nerdy about flowers, Stefanie Ritter, Hi-Desert Nature Museum biologist said as she introduced the speaker at Wednesdays lecture.

The unorthodox intro drew titters of laughter from the audience. Most of the crowd knew Mark Wheeler and his knowledge and affinity for botany. They also knew Ritter and Wheeler are married and the biologists German-accented ebullience provides the perfect foil to Wheelers low-key, fact-filled delivery style.

The plant expert provided a primer on spring wildflowers and how to read the desert bloom from the big picture overview with its miles and miles of color to the beauty of the smallest bloom, best appreciated through a magnifying glass.

The beauty is there, Wheeler said as he projected an image of a colorful carpet of annual blooms, accompanied by oohs and aahs of the people present. The intensely vivid photo was from the bloom of 1998, reverently referred to as a 100-year bloom.

As a contrast to the image showing the sea of colors, Wheeler projected a shot of a gilia plant with 35 blooms. For scale, the botanist had placed his pocket knife in the photo. The plant easily fit within the length of the closed-blade knife.

Famously low tech, Wheeler briefly attempted to operate a laser pointer to highlight the points on a chia bloom before declaring, I dont like all this high-tech stuff, and used his finger to make his point on the screen.

Among the many mind-bogglers of desert bloomology are how many seeds are produced. A very patient scientist counted 63,800 seeds in a square meter of sand in the Colorado Desert.

These guys produce a lot of seeds, Wheeler said with obvious understatement as he worked through his slide show.

Annuals make the big blooms, filling the space between shrubs each spring, Wheeler explained. Annual blooms are more affected by heat, wind, floods and other environmental extremes than the perennial blooms of shrubs and trees.

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Flowers are plants’ shot at immortality

Harman flirts with immortality

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Golf tends to toss up great out-of-nowhere stories about once a month, and March's version arrived on the second day: Brian Harman, the second alternate coming into this week's Honda Classic, stood on the tee at 18 with a chance at achieving golf nirvana: the fabled sub-60 round.

Brian Harman of the US tees off at the Honda Classic

Alas, it wasn't to be; he needed an eagle to pull off a 59, and "only" managed a par. Still, Harman's 61, a 9-under round, was good enough to set the course record at PGA National by three strokes. He sat just two strokes off the lead with players still on the course Friday afternoon.

"I walked off 16 and I was like, man, if I birdie these last two holes, I'm going to shoot 59," he said afterwards. "I hit a great drive on 18 and had a chance I mean, I had a chance." His approach on 18 found the bunker, he wasn't able to get up and down, and he missed a 5-footer that would have left him at 60. Still, not a bad afternoon's work.

Making Harman's achievement far more impressive is the difficulty of the PGA National course. "This is probably one of the hardest golf courses we play all year, and just to have a chance to do something special like that is really humbling and it's really cool," he said. "I saw where Davis [Love III] had shot 64 yesterday ... I'm like, How did he shoot 64 out here? This place is so hard."

He got some key advice from a former U.S. Open champ that may well have helped. "I really tried to slow myself down," he said. "Exchanged some text messages with Lucas Glover last night. He's been a really good friend to me, and every time that I've needed any help, he's always given me some advice. I asked him, I said, 'Man, how do you get out there and take your time?' He goes, 'Well, try to walk a little slower.' I did that today."

While we hope for the best for Mr. Harman in his future endeavours, we can say with authority that if this leads to even slower play on the course? Apocalypse.

Jay Busbee, Yahoo! Sports

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Unlocking The Mysteries Of Single Gene Mutations

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Yale researchers recently received a DNA sample from Turkey of twin newborns whose brains weren't developing properly. The physician figured it was a genetic problem, but had no way of analyzing it further.

"We identified a mutation in the folic acid receptor of the brain," said Murat Gunel, professor of genetics and neurobiology, adding that it's a very rare abnormality that forms during pregnancy. Most problems with brain development, he said, don't have an easy cure. In this case, though, Gunel and his fellow researchers at Yale immediately called the physician in Turkey and instructed him to give the babies very high doses of folic acid, which reverses the problem.

It was one of the first cases handled in a four-university project designed to solve the mysteries of thousands of disorders caused by inherited single-gene mutations, known as Mendelian diseases, named for the Austrian botanist and monk Gregor Mendel. The four-year project is funded by a $48 million grant from National Institutes of Health grant awarded in December. The other recipients are researchers at the University of Washington and a collaborative team of researches from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Yale's share of the grant -- $11.2 million goes to the university's new Center for Mendelian Disorders.

By collecting and analyzing DNA samples of these disorders from around of the world, the researchers hope to shed some light on how to treat them. To coordinate, the researchers talk by phone every weeks and will meet in person three or four times a year.

"We're identifying the disease-causing mutations in as many genes and as many diseases as possible," Gunel said.

Single gene mutations cause thousands of diseases, about 3,000 of which are still unexplained. Individually, the diseases are fairly rare, but together affect some 25 million people in the U.S.

James Lupski, professor of molecular genetics at Baylor, said many of these diseases are more common in parts of the world where more children are born to parents who are related, which increases the risk of recessive genetic disorders.

This kind of work would have been nearly impossible just a few years ago, when it could take months and millions of dollars to map a human genome. Today, new technology can get the job done in days, and the next generation of machines promises to map an entire genome within 24 hours for $1,000. But there's still a matter of analyzing the data.

"It takes a couple of months to do analysis," said Shrikant Mane, who runs the Center for Genome Analysis at Yale. "It's one thing to generate the data, but then the rest of it is analysis."

The Yale researchers will make use of exome sequencing, a process developed at Yale that selectively sequences the region of the genome that contains genes that code for proteins.

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Biotechnology and Bioengineering: Biological n-butyrate to n-butanol conversion – Video

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28-02-2012 14:28 Video Abstract from author Hanno Richter on his recently published B&B paper entitled "Prolonged conversion of n-butyrate to n-butanol with Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum in a two-stage continuous culture with in-situ product removal." Read the paper online: onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Off to Italy in Search of the Material History of the Human Corpus with Evan Michelson

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I have some very exciting news to report! This evening, my very good friend--and Morbid Anatomy Scholar in residence/Oddities star--Evan Michelson and are absconding to Italy to collect images and data related to a long term project which has long obsessed us both. In Evan's (very eloquent) words:

We will be exploring the social, spiritual, philosophical and material history of the human corpus from the Early Christian period, through the Enlightenment and into the Early Modern Era. This trip will take us to medical museums, ossuaries, cathedrals and burial grounds in several different cities, and it is the culmination of a lifelong obsession on both our parts.

Italy seems like the logical place to start: home of the Roman Catholic Church and the greatest of the early anatomical artists, it is also the home of the Renaissance - the historical pivot point that brought us from the Dark Ages into the Age of Science. Death in all its mystery has the most profound lessons to impart, and the religious attempt to transcend decay through myth transmuted the body into an object of sensual luxury and splendor. Science reclaimed the corpse, and in doing so gave rise to a different kind of purely mechanical beauty. That transitional moment is the object of our pilgrimage.

So please excuse some predicted silences, and look for reports and updates here! And please, feel free to send suggestions for sites to visit, things to eat, etc. to morbidanatomy[ag]gmail.com.

Ciao for now!

Image: Ercole Lelli's anatomical waxworks, Bologna, Italy; photo by Joanna Ebenstein

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Pat was Diagnosed with “CMT” Disease and was Given a Second Chance with a Stem Cell Treatment

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Pat receive a life altering Stem Cell Treatment with the help of World Stem Cells, LLC. Pat went from couch bound to walking 1.5 miles on country dirt road, climbing stairs, gardening and playing piano all thanks to a stem cell treatment.

(PRWEB) March 03, 2012

Pats neurological disorder is hereditary, and the official position of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke is that CMT has no cure. Decades ago, Pat had gone to a neurologist for electromyography, or EMG. The purpose of the procedure was to evaluate her muscle function, and it involved painful needles and days of muscle soreness after each session. Pats neurologist had refused to tell her the results because he said that she would just give up if she knew how bad they were. At this point, Pats symptoms were so crippling and unbearable that she contacted World Stem Cells, LLC worldstemcells.com to explore stem cell treatment as an option. She knew that the procedures were still being developed and experimental, and that they came with no guarantees. She remained interested in learning more and becoming educated on the options presented. At the time, she was unable to walk without a four-leg quad cane, and air and car travel were exhausting and caused unbearable pain. Pat has a long history of surgeries and was told that further surgeries would not assist her. She decided that she was not interested in any treatment that involved surgery with incisions, which is an aggressive approach and would demand recovery time. Stem cell therapy met her requirements of being minimally uncomfortable, requiring only hours for recovery and having a high level of safety, along with a good potential for changing her health quotient for the better.

Pat arrived in Cancun, Mexico, to the treatment site of World Stem Cells, LLC contract clinics, doctors, and hospitals. The first day, she met with physicians to be evaluated, discuss her course of treatment and learn what to expect. She had been corresponding with Dr. Alan Kadish, the President of World Stem Cells, LLC. worldstemcells.com

Dr. Kadish is an unusual physician as he has training and practiced integrated primary care medicine combining conventional and naturopathic diagnostics and therapeutics for 27 years. He has been recognized as one of the leading quality physicians, in his field. Dr. Kadish is an American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine diplomat and completed numerous training programs in Achieving Clinical Excellence, or ACE, which provided opportunities to improve his practical skills in diagnosing and treating people based on their individual needs, using functional medical testing and treatment. He has been an advanced level practitioner (Autistic Research Institute) for autistic spectral disorder children and adults, since early 2000 and is certified in chelation therapy. As a naturopathic medical physician he lecturers frequently and is a host and guest on radio and internet outlets along with appearing in a number of print media publications. At World Stem Cells , LLC in addition to his management duties, he is a primary investigator engaged in research and designs of stem cell therapeutic protocols.

In Cancun, Pat met with specialists at Advanced Cellular Medicine Clinic. The clinic is headed by Dr. Sylvia Abblitt, who has the exclusive distinction of being among the few physicians who are licensed to perform autologous and allogeneic stem cell transplants in Mexico. Dr. Abblitt is a board-certified hematologist and oncologist. She has 11 years of expertise as a laboratory director and head of the hematology department at the Fernando Quiroz Hospital. She is a member of the American Association of Blood Banks and the International Cellular Medicine Society (ICMS). The Cancun clinic that Pat visited is a contract clinic of World Stem Cells, LLC. It houses the state-of-the-art Advanced Cellular Engineering Lab. The high-tech lab is suited for providing patients with the most up to date stem cell treatments and for conducting stem cell research to improve future opportunities for health.

After her evaluation and discussion of treatment options, Pat decided to go ahead with the stem cell therapy. The procedure involved a needle puncture to harvest her bone marrow utilizing her own stem cells. Only a local anesthesia was necessary and though she described the procedure as uncomfortable, she added that it was livable. The procedure took less than half an hour, and she experienced no side effects.

Pats improvement was remarkable and rapid. In fact, she did not feel fatigued and overwhelmed with pain, as she had in the past, when she traveled back home from Cancun by airplane and car. Within days, she had regained her ability to play piano. Playing at church concerts had always been a passion of hers, but she had been unable to play before her stem cell treatment because of a lack of coordination. She had much more energy after treatment, and was able to garden, run errands and work, without feeling exhausted. Her sleep was more restful. Her husband and friends noticed that her agility and balance were better. She could climb up and down stairs more easily and walk around the house without clutching the walls. Her speed on the treadmill was increasing gradually and she now walks a mile and a half on country roads.

Pat is extremely grateful to World Stem Cells, LLC for changing her life and giving her hope. For the first time, she has reversed many of the negative changes that she had been experiencing for years due to her CMT and lack of effective treatment. Now, Pat and her husband are experiencing a bright future and thankful that Pat was given this second opportunity, following stem cell therapy. worldstemcells.com.

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Heather Yakin: DNA databank bill good move for justice

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Published: 2:00 AM - 03/03/12

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to require DNA samples from people convicted of a broader range of offenses is a little closer to becoming law.

The state Senate has passed S 5560-A, a bill which mandates that people convicted of a felony under any New York law or any Penal Law misdemeanor (Class A and Class B) submit a DNA sample for the state databank.

The law wouldn't include youthful offenders or juvenile cases handled in Family Court. The estimated cost is $700,000 in 2012-2013 and $1.4 million annually.

The bill, which would expand the current requirement to collect DNA samples from people convicted of Penal Law felonies and any of 36 specified misdemeanors, must still pass in the Assembly.

Supporters of the measure as of this week that includes all 62 district attorneys, all 58 county sheriffs and more than 400 police chiefs as well as crime victim advocates note that DNA collected at crime scenes since New York's database started in 1999 has contributed to almost 2,900 convictions, as well as to the exonerations of 27 innocent people.

Crime survivors who've already gotten justice because of the DNA databank have spoken out for Cuomo's proposal, sharing heart-wrenching stories.

They include a mother whose 12-year-old daughter was raped in her bed by a stranger who broke into the family's home. The man went on to rape others, and was only caught a decade later, after he stole money from an employer and was required to give a DNA sample for the resulting petty larceny conviction.

The stats for petty larceny, added to DNA offenses in 2006, are worth noting: DNA samples from petty larceny convictions have been linked to 998 crimes, including 53 murders and 223 sexual assaults.

DNA hits have also helped solve local homicides. The 1986 slaying of John Roe in Bloomingburg, solved in 2004 by a cold hit; the murder of Town of Newburgh restaurateur Cosimo DiBrizzi was solved by a DNA match to a man who'd been convicted of grand larceny; the 1990 slaying of Elaine Ackerman in Deerpark, solved in 2009 after a match to a man who'd given a sample for an unrelated conviction.

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Heather Yakin: DNA databank bill good move for justice

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Will PCORI's Patient-Centered Comparative Effectiveness Research Track with Personalized Rx?

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By Turna Ray

After the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute held a meeting this week to gather public input on its comparative effectiveness research priorities, personalized medicine stakeholders are still uncertain to what degree the institute will fund studies that aim to define how well drugs work in molecularly distinct patient groups or if it will mostly fund research to gauge how interventions work in the general population.

Another unknown as PCORI further defines its CER framework is whether "patient-centered research" a term the institute has been working to define with public input will explicitly mention personalized medicine principles. Whether it does or not could signal whether comparisons of genomic medicine to the standard of care will be a major focus of PCORI's CER efforts.

PCORI, a non-profit organization formed by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, has issued a draft document outlining the research areas in which it wants to conduct studies comparing the safety and efficacy of medical interventions, healthcare delivery models, and infrastructure. The findings from such CER, PCORI hopes, will help drive informed healthcare decision making, improve patient outcomes, and reduce unnecessary spending in healthcare.

The public was invited to discuss the preliminary research agenda with PCORI and key stakeholders at a meeting this week. PCORI is also accepting written comments on its draft research agenda until March 15.

PCORI is planning to spend $122 million for research activities in 2012, and it's possible that some of this money may go toward funding CER on molecularly targeted personalized medicine products. According to PCORIs statutory purpose, the research the institute supports must consider how disease can be prevented, diagnosed, and treated in patient subpopulations, which could include groups defined by molecular subtypes.

Regardless, some believe that the focus areas outlined in PCORI's draft research agenda are too broad, and personalized medicine principles, which are still new and evolving, can very easily get lost in the mix.

"PCORI was designed to address specific, practical questions of national importance," Amy Miller, vice president of public policy for the advocacy organization Personalized Medicine Coalition, said at the meeting according to prepared comments provided to PGx Reporter. "However, the broad and vague drafting of the research priorities is more appropriate for traditional, investigator-driven research, which may or may not address the types of questions PCORI must answer."

In addition, "since broad drafting does not allow for an examination of individual research proposals, topics, or research questions, it is not possible to say whether PCORIs work will support personalized medicine or not," Miller said.

Since PCORI was formed, the PMC has been trying to remind the institute's leaders that their charge isn't just to look at whether most people respond better to one drug over another, but to investigate how and why treatments work best in some people with a unique set of characteristics. "It is not enough, in the PMCs opinion, to say that one therapy works for most people in the aggregate," Miller said. "To enable personalized medicine, research must explain why a therapy works and for what types of patients."

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Will PCORI's Patient-Centered Comparative Effectiveness Research Track with Personalized Rx?

Nanotechnology’s Threat to Privacy Over-Hyped

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The field of nanotechnology has been on the defensive for reasonable causes, such as the safety of workers that handle certain nanomaterials. But it also finds itself under attack from the purely fanciful, like charges of nanotechnology compromising our privacy.

The latest misleading screed on this particular avenue of inquiry comes from the International Business Times (IBT) in which we are told that personal privacy is not only "dead but getting deadlier with nanotechnology."

I have noted previously the rather imaginative approach the publication IBT takes to nanotechnology, and I know that I probably should just ignore them. But these stories keep ending up in my hopper and I suppose I am not the only one for whom this occurs. So I am taking it upon myself to call this publication out again for their less than accurate reporting on the subject.

First off, whatever personal privacy people think nanotechnology is taking away from them has long since disappeared with the existing potent combination of information technology, basic telecommunication technology and a video camera at every street corner. But this is ignored because the idea of an invisible nanorobot spying on you is just too seductive for these reporters.

What we get from IBT is: Just imagine a spy invisible to your eye trace out your name, address, passport, driving license, SSN, health conditions, shopping or net surfing habits and just about everything else that governs your life in a day. All this is possible with the use of nanotechnology. UmhI though we got all of that with the Internet?

Then we get this bit that manages to get a number of matters mixed up: For instance, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is pouring funds into nanocomputing because National Security Agency (NSA) is looking for faster ways to break codes. Till now, the NSA could break only up to 140 or so prime number encryptions and each set of decryption needed to be done serially.

My first question when I read this was: What could the reporter possibly be thinking of when he uses the term nanocomputing? I can only guess that they have confused quantum encryption and quantum computing with something they call nanocomputing.

From there it gets even sloppier. We get two ideas brought together in the same paragraph that have absolutely no connection to one another: Scientists from MIT, Carnegie Mellon University have already replicated Quantum Computing with light in 2001 which made computing applications far easier. Nanotubes and nanowires are already developed and are racing to industrial fabrication. I can only guess how these two sentences might be related to one another in the reporters mind, and my guesses scare me.

I suppose I should just dismiss articles like this and not even bring them to peoples attention. But Ive seen before how these fear-mongering articles lead to more ignorance and misunderstanding. And that ignorance and misunderstanding actually can turn deadly as evidenced by the attacks of a terrorist group in Mexico last year.

In that case, the terrorists were attempting to defend the world from "grey goo" by sending letter bombs to researchers they suspected of conducting nanotechnology research. Perhaps they would haven't been motivated to carry out their senseless act if more news stories covered how the theoretical grey goo resulting from nanobots devouring the world around them was a concept that had long been abandoned by the originator of the idea.

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Nanotechnology’s Threat to Privacy Over-Hyped

Mesa doctor new president of Missouri-based university

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by Art Thomason - Mar. 2, 2012 02:11 PM The Republic | azcentral.com

A well-known Valley doctor who helped establish a Missouri-based university's medical school in Mesa will lead the university as its new president.

Dr. Craig Phelps, who also serves as the Phoenix Suns' primary-care physician, was selected for the post at A.T. Still University of Health Sciences in Kirksville, Mo., after an extensive search that included a number of national leaders in health-care education, according to university officials. The appointment becomes effective July 1.

Phelps is provost of the university's Mesa campus and has been a member of the Suns' medical staff for 26 years, providing non-orthopedic care for players and other team employees.

"I am honored and humbled to be selected by the board as ATSU's next president," said the 55-year-old physician and scholar. "I will continue to work closely with President (Jack) Magruder to ensure a smooth transition.

"With everyone's help, we will bring ATSU to the next level and achieve the board's vision of preeminence."

Phelps has been involved in the university's Mesa campus development since 2001 when the university moved its Arizona health sciences programs to Mesa from its first Arizona location at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix.

In 2003, the university opened Arizona's first dental school on the Mesa campus, the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health. In 2007, the campus' four-year college of osteopathic medicine accepted its first class of students.

The 50-acre campus is the only one of its type in the state with a comprehensive curriculum of disciplines in medicine, dentistry and health care.

Phelps said university officials had long supported the idea of opening a medical school in Mesa.

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Mesa doctor new president of Missouri-based university