Health care law: Most states lag in insurance sign-ups

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WASHINGTON Most states are lagging when it comes to sign-ups under President Barack Obama's health care law, but an Associated Press analysis of numbers reported Wednesday finds a dozen high-achievers are ahead of the game.

Huge disparities are emerging in how well states are living up to federal enrollment targets. That will help determine whether the White House reaches its goal of having 7 million signed up by the end of March, six weeks away.

Connecticut is the nation's top performer, signing up more than twice the number of residents it had been projected to enroll by the end of January. Massachusetts, which pioneered the approach Obama took in his law, is at the bottom of the list having met 5 percent of its target.

Six Republican-led states Florida, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are on pace or better. Residents are signing up despite strong political opposition to the health care law in some of those states.

Surprisingly, the worst performers include four jurisdictions where Obama's law has strong support: Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and the District of Columbia.

The administration said Wednesday about 1 million people signed up for private insurance under the health law in January, extending a turnaround from early days when a dysfunctional website frustrated consumers.

January marked the first time since new health insurance markets opened last fall that a national monthly enrollment target was met.

All in all, from Oct. 1 through Feb. 1, nearly 3.3 million people have signed up.

"It's very, very encouraging news," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "We're seeing a healthy growth in enrollment."

Still, the goal of 7 million by the end of March seems like a stretch.

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Health care law: Most states lag in insurance sign-ups

Colorado health exchange officials say indicted employee was vetted

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State health care exchange officials said they had thoroughly vetted Christa Ann McClure, the Connect for Health Colorado director they placed on paid administrative leave Tuesday after learning she had been indicted for stealing from her last employer.

McClure, 51, pleaded not guilty Feb. 6 in federal District Court in Montana to eight counts of theft and fraud from a nonprofit housing agency in Billings.

She was indicted Jan. 16 and notified her current Denver employer, the state-sponsored health exchange, on Monday, a few days after the story broke in Montana media, Connect for Health spokesman Ben Davis said in a telephone interview.

Connect for Health performed a criminal background check and checked references before hiring McClure in March, Davis said.

"She was completely clean," he said. Her position as executive director of Housing Montana of Billings, he said, made her well-qualified for her post as Connect for Health's director of partner engagement she was liaison with state and federal partners, such as Medicaid officials. The job pays $130,000 a year.

"Integrity and public trust are paramount to the mission of Connect for Health Colorado," Davis said in a statement released Wednesday. "We take extensive measures to protect consumer information and technology systems."

Connect for Health Colorado, a new health insurance marketplace, was established by a state law in 2011 and opened for business in October. Its official name is the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange.

In her job with the exchange, McClure doesn't have access to any of the exchange's finances, Davis said.

McClure, who has not been convicted of any charges, should have informed Connect for Health much earlier of the accusations she was facing, Davis said.

The charges against her are "very serious, and we are taking this very seriously," he said.

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Colorado health exchange officials say indicted employee was vetted

Soaring CEO pay and fear rock health-care sector: Hepburn

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Ontarios long-revered health-care system is a mess, with huge executive pay raises, growing use of lobbying firms paid with tax dollars and a mounting culture of fear that pervades all parts of the system.

But despite a volatile cocktail of bureaucratic waste and questionable use of tax dollars, Health Minister Deb Matthews has failed to address these issues that threaten the integrity and effectiveness of the health-care system.

Importantly, since Matthews was named health minister in 2009, Ontarios health-care system has displayed disturbing signs of decay, particularly in community care which Matthews boasts as one of her big successes.

Evidence of trouble is rampant.

First, executive salaries at Community Care Access Centres, which govern home care in Ontario, have skyrocketed while low-paid workers who actually deliver services to patients havent seen their incomes rise in a decade and in many cases have actually suffered significant drops.

Second, the 14 CCACs are now using tax dollars meant for patient care to pay for lobbying firms that advise the CCACs on how to sell their message to politicians at Queens Park.

Third, barely 40 to 50 cents of every tax dollar earmarked for home care actually reaches the health-care professionals who deliver services to patients. Stunningly, the rest goes to executive salaries, rent, administrative costs, care coordination and corporate profits.

Fourth, a reign of fear and intimidation imposed by CCAC bureaucrats has effectively shut up critics of the system, especially those employed by private companies that have contracts with CCACs to provide the workers who actually deliver services to patients.

Many of us in the community have been very frustrated for some time, the president of a private service provider wrote this week in an email. We are not able to speak out on any of these issues in fear of jeopardizing our contracts.

How, indeed, does Matthews justify huge CEO wage increases and wage inequalities? Why does she overlook a culture of fear thats so pervasive among those under her portfolio?

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Soaring CEO pay and fear rock health-care sector: Hepburn

Denver's Welltok raises $22 million for Watson-powered health-care app

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Denver-based health care app developer Welltok announced Wednesday that it has raised $22.1 million in Series C funding, a round led by New Enterprise Associates with new participation from tech giant IBM.

It is IBM's first direct investment from the recently formed Watson Group. IBM created the group named after its supercomputer "to advance new cognitive computing capabilities," with plans to invest $100 million.

In November, IBM selected Welltok as one of three early-stage partners to develop Watson-powered apps. Under the partnership, IBM said Welltok would leverage Watson's supercomputing capabilities for its social health-management app, called CafWell Concierge.

The CafWell platform will use Watson's computing power to read millions of pages of data within seconds to deliver health-care-related reports tailored to individual needs. The app will also reward users for engaging in healthy behaviors. For example, as individuals take actions to lower their Body Mass Index, their health-care premiums would be reduced.

"Watson is one of IBM's most prized innovations, and by sharing it with organizations like Welltok, we aim to fuel a new ecosystem that accelerates creativity and entrepreneurial spirit," IBM Watson Group senior vice president Mike Rhodin said in a release.

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How Alternative Medicine Has Infiltrated U.S. Medical Schools – Steve Salzberg – Video

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How Alternative Medicine Has Infiltrated U.S. Medical Schools - Steve Salzberg
Presented by the National Capital Area Skeptics - http://www.ncas.org. Alternative medicine has become very popular over the past two decades, thanks to relentless ...

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The Genetics of Drug Tolerance

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Newswise Put yourself in the shoes of a psychiatrist. You just diagnosed a person with schizophrenia, and you can prescribe any number of antipsychotic drugs, all of which can cause serious side effects. You know that older drugs, such as haloperidol, work well, but a third of all schizophrenia patients who take it suffer from Parkinsonian-like symptoms, such as tremors, involuntary spasms, and uncontrollable facial movements. You also know that those side effects are permanent in about half the people who experience them. In other words, you could be prescribed a drug that causes permanent brain damage.

So you consider prescribing a newer drug, such as clozapine, which also helps a large portion of patients. But clozapine causes severe weight gain and diabetes in many people. You check your patients history. He smokes, as do 90 percent of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. He weighs a lot for his height. Taking clozapine will substantially increase his risk of heart disease, and the drug costs much more than haloperidol. Your patient cant afford it.

Choosing the right drug is difficult, but you have to choose one. Letting the patient go without medication is not an option; untreated schizophrenia is much worse than even the most serious side effects.

What do you do?

You know what youd like to do: run a blood test to figure out your patients genetic susceptibility to the permanent side effects of haloperidol. But that genetic screen doesnt exist. In fact, the genetic underpinnings of drug side effects, in general, are not well understood.

Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine are trying to change that.

Two labs headed by statistical geneticist William Valdar, PhD, and psychiatric geneticist Patrick Sullivan, MD, have developed a new statistical model that scientists can use to parse the complex genetics of side effect susceptibility.

In a paper featured in the journal Genetics, their teams describe how theyve begun to strip away the mystery behind haloperidol. Their findings represent the first quantitative description of the genetic architecture of haloperidol response.

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Potential route to bladder cancer diagnostics, treatments

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Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine conducted a comprehensive genetic analysis of invasive bladder cancer tumors to discover that the disease shares genetic similarities with two forms of breast cancer. The finding is significant because a greater understanding of the genetic basis of cancers, such as breast cancers, has in the recent past led to the development of new therapies and diagnostic aids.

Bladder cancer, which is the fourth most common malignancy in men and ninth in women in the United States, claimed more than 15,000 lives last year.

The analysis of 262 bladder cancer tumors, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that the invasive form of the disease can be classified into two distinct genetic subtypes -- basal-like and luminal -- which were shown to be highly similar to the basal and luminal subtypes of breast cancer first described by Charles Perou, PhD, the May Goldman Shaw Distinguished Professor of Molecular Oncology at UNC Lineberger.

"It will be particularly interesting to see whether the bladder subtypes, like the breast subtypes, are useful in stratification for therapy," said lead author William Kim, MD, a researcher at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate professor in the departments of genetics and medicine at UNC.

Mapping genetic signaling pathways of breast cancer subtypes has led to the development of drugs to treat patients and diagnostic aids that help physicians determine the best course of therapy for patients. Because the identified bladder cancer subtypes share many of the same genetic signaling pathways of breast cancer, researchers hope that the identification of the genetic subtypes can lead to similar advances.

"Currently there are no approved targeted therapies for bladder cancer," said lead author Jeffrey Damrauer, graduate student in the Curriculum of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the UNC School of Medicine. "Our hope is that the identification of these subtypes will aid in the discovery of targetable pathways that will advance bladder cancer treatment."

The study also revealed a possible answer to why women diagnosed with bladder cancer have overall poorer outcomes compared to males. Analysis showed that female patients had a significantly higher incidence of the deadlier basal-like tumors. But researchers said that more research is needed before a definite link between the subtype and survival rate can be confirmed.

Dr. Kim's lab has developed a gene map -- BASE47 -- that proved successful as a prognostic aid when applied to the tumor samples in the study. The PAM50 genetic test, a similar genetic map developed in the Perou lab, was recently approved as a clinical diagnostic tool by the FDA.

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of North Carolina Health Care. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Potential route to bladder cancer diagnostics, treatments

Ghanas GMO debates: beyond the sticking points (1)

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Feature Article of Thursday, 13 February 2014

Columnist: Agorsor, Yafetto, Otwe, Galyuon

Israel D. K. Agorsor, Levi Yafetto, Emmanuel P. Otwe and Isaac K. A. Galyuon

1. Introduction

At the turn of the last decade, Ghana signaled its intention to adopt plant genetic engineering as part of the efforts towards modernizing its agriculture when it established the National Biosafety Committee. This committee would, among others, activate the processes for the formulation of a Biosafety Bill. In 2011, a draft Biosafety Bill was passed into law by Ghanas Parliament, and is known as Biosafety Act 2011 or Act 831. Genetic engineering techniques enable scientists to modify the genetic make-up of an organism, otherwise known as its genome, by inserting into the genome pieces of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) ? the genetic material ? that condition specific desirable traits from other organisms. These modifications result in what are known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or transgenic organisms (transgenics).

To say that the debates on GMOs are, perhaps, the fiercest of all debates that have ever engulfed any human endeavour and, for that matter, any scientific discipline in living memory may be an understatement. Why the GMO wars have been so fiercely fought is clear only to the extent that people and cultures have significant emotional attachment to food and food products, and thus anything that appears an aberration to these would always be fiercely resisted. However, the evidence, as we have it, is that these debates have at times gone beyond the science, and have assumed moral and speculative dimensions. The result is that quite often, moral questions are also asked to proponents of genetic engineering, questions whose answers may not be readily available.

Some of these moral questions include: Are scientists now playing God? Why do scientists interfere in nature and the natural order? Speculative ones include the myriad of diseases, such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes and fibroid, that genetically modified (GM) food causes. Of course we are aware of some published reports which suggest GM foods could have adverse effects on human and animal health. But we are also aware that some of these reports have either been challenged or retracted from the scientific journals in which they were published after follow-up studies showed that the experiments leading to those conclusions were flawed. You may read, for example, Sralini affair at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair, as well as the widely-referenced Pusztai study which although hailed by some scientists, has been challenged by others including the UK Royal Society. See the Pusztai affair at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pusztai_affair.

We have noticed, too, that in an opinion piece that appeared in the Daily Graphic of Monday, December 23, 2013, and titled GM Foods: Mass genocide, studies by Australian scientist Judy Carman and her colleague Jack Heinemann have been cited as evidence of health risks of GMOs. In fact, Carman and co-authors studies have been disputed. Many scientists, including the food regulator for Australia/New Zealand known as Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) have rejected Carman and colleagues claim that GM foods have health risks as reported in one study. See FSANZs response to Carman and colleagues claims at http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/gmfood/Pages/Response-to-Dr-Carman's-study.aspx. Basically, the charge is that it was flawed science that led to their claims.

For an example of a publication that discusses the health implications of GM foods, see the article (not an original research paper, but a review article) Health risks of genetically modified foods by Dona and Arvanitoyannis published in the journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition in 2009 (Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 49(2): 164-175) at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18989835 (click on View full text). For a challenge to the views expressed in Dona and Arvanitoyannis, see the article Response to Health risks of genetically modified foods by Craig Rickard in the same journal at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408390903467787#tabModule.

Unfortunately, the independence of the authors of some of the pro- and anti-GMO articles and research papers have been questioned at times; the authors have been accused of doing the bidding of either biotechnology giants or anti-GMO movements because they have been receiving, allegedly, research funding from these groups. These accusations have also added to the complexity of the GMO debates.

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Cuba, France Agree To Develop Hepatitis B Vaccine

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PARIS, Feb 13 (BERNAMA-NNN-PRENSA LATINA) -- French company Abivax and the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in Cuba announced an agreement here Wednesday to partner in the development and commercialisation of vaccines with one against the Hepatitis B virus.

The CIGB, Cuba's leading biotechnology institution, has more than 50 research-development projects, while Abivax, based in Paris, is a product of the merger of the Wittycell, Splicos and Zophis firms. Their objective is to fight infectious diseases and cancer.

"Cuba is known for the excellence of its physicians and the quality of its vaccines. This is a project of international importance to put France foremost in this matter," Philippe Pouletty, president of the Administrative Council of the French firm, said.

Norkis Arteaga, head of Biocubafarma business department, said that the complementary nature of both companies in research and production will allow for the distribution of many products in the future.

Arteaga cited in a statement a licensing agreement between the CIGB and Abivax for the development and commercialisation of the therapeutic vaccine against Hepatitis B.

Cuba will provide the clinical results and capacity, while the French firm financial resources to complete other clinical trials in Europe and Asia along with the experience to register it in these markets and commercialise it later.

-- BERNAMA-NNN-PRENSA LATINA

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Cuba, France Agree To Develop Hepatitis B Vaccine

ASGCT Announces 2014 Award Series for Contributions to the Field of Genetic and Cellular Therapy

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Milwaukee, WI (PRWEB) February 13, 2014

The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) has announced its 2014 Award Series as part of its 17th Annual Meeting held May 21-24, 2014 at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC.

ASGCT is honored to recognize Dr. Luigi Naldini from the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele as the recipient of the 2014 Outstanding Achievement Award (OAA). The OAA recognizes an ASGCT Active Member who has achieved a pioneering research success, a specific high impact accomplishment, or a lifetime of significant scientific contributions to the fields of gene and/or cell therapy. Dr. Naldini will present a plenary lecture at the ASGCT 17th Annual Meeting on May 22nd.

Barbara Netter and Edward Netter (deceased) are the recipients of this years Distinguished Service Award. Both will be acknowledged on May 22nd during the ASGCT 17th Annual Meeting for their creation of the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy (ACGT). Since its inception in 2001, the foundation has provided $25 million in funding to sponsor medical institutions and researchers dedicated to focusing genetic therapeutics for the treatment of Cancer.

The Outstanding New Investigator Awards are given in recognition of scientists conducting original research in basic science, technology development or clinical translation. Each of the following recipients will present a retrospective of his work on May 23rd during the ASGCT Annual Meeting:

o Brian Brown, PhD - Mt. Sinai School of Medicine o Charles Gersbach, PhD Duke University o Scott Harper, PhD - Ohio State University & Nationwide Children's Hospital o Daniel Powell, PhD - University of Pennsylvania

ASGCT congratulates each of its award winners and is appreciative for their continued contributions to the field of gene and cell therapy.

The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) is a professional nonprofit medical and scientific organization dedicated to the understanding, development and application of genetic and cellular therapies and the promotion of professional and public education in the field. For more information on ASGCT, visit its website, http://www.asgct.org.

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ASGCT Announces 2014 Award Series for Contributions to the Field of Genetic and Cellular Therapy

How to Lead a Profitable, Sustainable Business – Futurist Lecture / Keynote Speaker – Video

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How to Lead a Profitable, Sustainable Business - Futurist Lecture / Keynote Speaker
Keynote Presentation by Patrick Dixon on leading a profitable, sustainable business, building a better world and caring for the planet for future generations...

By: Patrick Dixon Futurist Keynote Speaker for Industry Conference

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MOOCS: The next big thing? A futurist’s opinion (Learning World S4E20, 3/3) – Video

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MOOCS: The next big thing? A futurist #39;s opinion (Learning World S4E20, 3/3)
Euronews reporter Maha Barada talks to #39;futurist #39; John Mahaffie, (a futurist is a social scientist who predicts trends and developments in society). He expla...

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