The Libertarian Republic | Top 5 Most Libertarian Ways to Celebrate Independence Day The Libertarian Republic Independence Day on July 4th of each calendar year may be among the most libertarian holidays. It is a celebration of rebellion against an oppressive... |
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Top 5 Most Libertarian Ways to Celebrate Independence Day - The Libertarian Republic
wbur CLIMATE CHANGE IN MASS.
July 05, 2017 Updated July 05, 2017 4:58 PM
Part of aseriesexamining the effects of climate change here in Massachusetts
CHELSEA, Mass. As coastlines recede withglobal warming, so-called heat islands are growing. These are dense urban areas where cement or asphalt cover most of the ground, where multi-story buildings often brick bake in the sun, and where there are few trees.
Daily temperatures in these spotscan be 20 to 50 degrees hotter than in leafy suburbs. For residents of these islands, health risks rise with the heat.
A Summertime Spike In Medical Issues
At 11 a.m. one early summer morning, it's a humid 80 degrees inside Fausto Alvarado's third-floor apartment in Chelsea. When it's hot, the 88-year-old from Honduras struggles with every breath.
"I cant get enough oxygen, and I'm very tired," says Alvarado. "I almost can't breathe."
Alvarado is just back from a week in the hospital and still on antibiotics. He has a lung condition: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. When it's hot, Alvarado says he sometimes feels like he's drowning.
Two ceiling fans whir and the windows in Alvarado's combined kitchen/living room are wide opento release steam and odors. His landlord, Trinity Management Co., supplies an air conditioner, but artificially cold air is hard on his lungs, too.
Alvarado is alarmed to learn he lives within a heat island, one of the hottest areas in Greater Boston. His daughter, Cruz Romero, worries about the future of her community.
"More and more people are going to get sick more often," she says.
Thats the prediction of doctors who study climate change: more dehydration and kidney failure, more difficulty with emphysema, asthma and other lung conditions, more heart problems and heat stroke.
Some research showsolder Americans are adapting to the heat, learning to stay indoors near air conditioners, but Chelsea Deputy Fire Chief John Quatieri isnt seeing it.
"Usually in the summer months we see a spike in medical calls, whether its dehydration or people just passing out," Quatierisays.
Chelsea firefighters also get more fire calls, when fans and air conditioners plugged into extension cords short out or grills spark a blaze. But Quatierididnt realize that parts of his hometown are hotter than others and more likely to see heat-related problems.
Most of Chelsea is a heat island, meaning temperatures are consistently hotter than average. Quatierilooks at a heat map of Chelsea. Inside the red patches, one of which includes the fire station where he is standing, the surface temperature high will reach 140 degrees later that day.
"This area thats marked in red, this is where wed see the spike in calls during the summer," says Quatieri, shaking his head as he remembers the past weekend. "We were very busy, and most of the calls were in this Broadway area right here."
Satellite data shows temperatures in the hottest parts of Chelsea, Everett, Somerville and Boston are 10, 20, sometimes 40 degrees higher than in the tree-lined, spacious neighborhoods of Melrose, Arlington, Newton and Brookline. As global temperatures rise, Chelsea is partnering with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute to determine the extent and magnitude of heat island effects. Some of the challenges are already clear.
Chelsea, with 35,080 residents, is the smallest city in Massachusetts, but it is the second most densely settled (after Somerville). In Chelsea, most residents are low to moderate income. Seventy-two percent of residents rent, and Chelsea senior planner Alex Train says many spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.The housing stock is older.
Infrastructure That Keeps The Heat
Train looks down Broadway, toward Fausto Alvarados subsidized apartment. Theres a line of 80- to 90-year-old buildings made of brick and stone.
"Those materials retain heat," Train says. "So, for example, youll have a 90-degree day here in Chelsea and while that evening, it may drop down to the 50s and 60s, those buildings are still retaining the heat it collected during the afternoon."
During heat waves, Chelsea opens schools, the senior center and City Hall buildings that have central air. Theres a back-up micro-grid power plan in the works to make sure these buildings stay cool during brown-outs. Alerting all residents about the dangers of heat and poor air quality is difficult because thereare at least 35 different languages spoken in this 1.8-square-mile city.
The city is investing in a longer term cooling plan. With help from the state, Chelsea has planted 2,000 trees since 2013. But again, inside this dense, urban heat island, there are setbacks. Roughly 30 percent of the trees have died.
"Part of that is from gas leaks underground that are killing off the trees, methane gas leaks," says Roseann Bongiovanni, executive director at the nonprofit GreenRoots. "Thats a cost to the city; its time and effort."
GreenRoots, working with the city of Chelsea, has built two playgrounds and gardens, places that aim to provide refuge.
"Here you can feel a lot less of that heat," says Bongiovanni in one of those gardens, dwarfed by a flowering bush. "You can hear the birds chirping. You feel the wind. There are lots of opportunities to recreate, to be calm, to be in some shaded areas. Were trying to replicate that throughout the entire city."
But in Chelsea, as in many cities, the heat menace emerges in surprising places, like school playgrounds.
"These days, the good news is we dont have asphalt on the ground, but weve replaced that with rubberized surfaces," says Dr. Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital. He looks at the ground beneath slides and a jungle gym at a school within one of Chelsea's heat islands. "In this case, its pitch-black, which will expose those kids to more heat than if they were standing on this concrete, which is a lighter color."
How much more heat on this partly sunny, mid-70-degree day? A handheld temperature gun shows concrete at the entrance to the playground is 82 degrees. The black rubberized surface is 96 degrees.
"That's crazy, right?" Bernstein says. He worries about how kids with asthma would fare on this overheated playground.
All the kids who live within heat islands may be at risk for more stress at home. In the emerging world of climate science, research shows heatinterferes with sleep,increases aggression,and contributes tosome mental health problems.
Bernstein, who is the program director for climate, energy and health at Harvards Chan School of Public Health, has advice for anyone in or outside a heat island who takes medicine thatcauses a patient to retain water and not sweat, or, on the other hand, to pee a lot. Ask your doctor, he says, if you need to do anything different when it's hot to make sure you don't get dehydrated and that your body can cool itself.
"Because we do see higher rates of hospitalization in heat waves," Bernstein says. "It's not clear if it's the disease itself or these medications, but some of these medications do make us get dehydrated, and they can impair our ability to sweat."
Patients in the Northeast appear to be more vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures. But high temperatures are usually not the only reason for this.
"The risk is higher when we see a more drastic change in temperature," says Francesca Dominici, co-director of Harvard's Data Science Initiative. "Our body tends to be more susceptible and at a higher risk for disease when you have days jumping, as an example, from 40 to 80 degrees," which happens more often in the Northeast than in other parts of the country.
Residents Seek Doctors' Notes To Stay Cool
As temperatures rise, especially inside heat islands, many doctors encourage patients to stay close to or have access to air-conditioners. But are air-conditioners a medical necessity? That question has launched a battle in Chelsea this summer. Heres the deal:
The citys housing authority is telling residents they must remove the AC in any room with just one window, often a bedroom, because it blocks an escape route. The authority says this is a building code requirement. Residents are flooding their doctors with requests for letters, hoping to prove they need to keep air-conditioners in their bedrooms.
"The clinic has been barraged with a whole bunch of people requesting this very same letter,"Dr. Lisa Carr, a primary care physician at the MGH Chelsea HealthCareCenter.
Carr says there are no guidelines about air-conditioners for medical use. Sodoctors at this clinic created a policy. Theyve agreed to write letters that say air conditioning is needed for children who use a daily asthma medication. For adults, doctors are left to decide: Would the patient have fewer migraines or less depression? Would that rash go away with air conditioning?
"Its really tough to try to sort these things out," Carr says. "Im sure theres lots of people that would benefit from having air conditioning in the really hot summers here."
Prescribing air-conditioners might make sense as health care payments shift and doctors are encouraged to spend money upfront to help keep patients healthy and out of the hospital. But more use of air-conditioners will alsocompound the problem of rising energy use and climate change.
Beyond Chelsea
The maps below show daytime and nighttime heat islands as measured by changes in land surface temperature across Boston. The dots show concentrations of populations vulnerable to heat. Click to enlarge the images.
The graph below shows projected annual heat-related deaths in Boston.
This segment aired on July 5, 2017.
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No Tropical Paradise: Urban 'Heat Islands' Are Hotbeds For Health Problems - WBUR
Irish Repertory Theatre has announced plans to extend Joe OByrnes one-actor adaptation of John Millington Synges The Aran Islands through August 6.
The Aran Islands began performances June 15 prior to a June 19 official opening in the W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre. OByrne also directs the play that captures the spirit of Synge, when, in 1898, Millington went to live and explore the mystical land on the west coast of Europe. In the great history of Irish storytelling, The Aran Islands is a haunting and transporting experience built around an incredible performance, read production notes from Irish Rep.
Bendan Conroy stars.
The staging has set design by Margaret Nolan (Borstal Boy), lighting design by Joe OByrne (The Big Fellow), costume design by Marie Tierney (Departed), and original music by Kieran Duddy (Hada to Hada). The Aran Islands is supported by Culture Ireland.
Tickets are available by calling 212-727-2737, or online at Irishrep.org. Irish Rep is located at 132 West 22nd Street, New York City.
LOVE BROADWAY? CHECK OUT THE NEW ARRIVALS AT THE PLAYBILL STORE!
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Irish Rep Extends The Aran Islands Off-Broadway | Playbill - Playbill.com
The photograph suggested to be of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in the Marshall Islands, found in the US national archives. Photograph: Photograph Courtesy of Les Kinney/US national archives
A newly unearthed picture from the US national archives has given new credence to a popular theory about the disappearance of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart.
Some experts say the image shows the pilot, her navigator Fred Noonan and her airplane in the Marshall Islands in 1937, when the archipelago was occupied by Japan proving that she died in Japanese custody, rather than during a crash landing in the Pacific.
When you pull out, and when you see the analysis thats been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that thats Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, Shawn Henry told NBC News. Henry is the former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst.
Kent Gibson, a forensic analyst who specializes in facial recognition, told the History Channel that was very likely the individuals pictured are Earhart and Noonan, in a programme on the Earhart mystery scheduled to air this Sunday.
Not everyone is so convinced, however. There is such an appetite for anything related to Amelia Earhart that even something this ridiculous will get everybody talking about it, said Ric Gillespie, author of Finding Amelia and the executive director of the The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (Tighar).
This is just a picture of a wharf at Jaluit [in the Marshall Islands], with a bunch of people, Gillespie said. Its just silly. And this is coming from a guy who has spent the last 28 years doing genuine research into the Earhart disappearance and led 11 expeditions into the South Pacific.
The picture was discovered by retired federal agent Les Kinney, who scoured the national archives for records that may have been overlooked in the now 80-year-old mystery of Earharts last flight.
It was 2 July 1937, toward the end of her history-making flight around the world, when the 40-year-old Earhart vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. The crash has long been blamed on poor weather conditions and a technical failure with the planes radio system. Most historians believe that Earhart ran out of fuel, crashed into the Pacific Ocean and sunk to the oceans darkest depths.
But since no trace of Earhart, Noonan or her Lockheed Electra airplane have ever been confirmed, alternate theories have abounded for decades. This past November, another forensic breakthrough supported an alternate theory that Earhart may have died a castaway on an island in modern-day Kiribati.
Gillespie is an exponent of this account and believes there is copious evidence to support it, including the timing of radio transmissions received after the plane was no longer airborne, the location of human remains on the then uninhabited island, and items he and his team have recovered including a popular US womens moisturizer, a zipper from a jacket and a makeup case.
We found the site, weve done three excavations there and were finding artifacts that speak of an American woman of the 1930s, Gillespie said.
The Marshall Island theory, which the photograph is alleged to support, has been around since at least the 1960s and fueled by accounts from Marshall Islanders who claimed they saw the aircraft land and saw Earhart and Noonan in Japanese custody.
Kinney found the most recent photograph stamped with official Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) markings reading Marshall Islands, Jaluit Atoll, Jaluit Island, Jaluit Harbor. The photograph has been credited to a US spy.
In the photo, a ship can be seen towing a barge with an airplane on the back, and on a nearby dock what appears to be a woman with a short haircut can be seen sitting, facing away from the camera. Gillespie notes, for what its worth, that the womans hair is far too long to be that of Earhart, of whom pictures exist from just a few days earlier.
It wasnt that long [a period of time] and hair doesnt grow that fast, Gillespie said.
Also visible is the face of a man who several experts told the History Channel is Noonan. The picture clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese, Kinney said in Historys investigation.
Japanese officials have stated on more than one occasion that they have no records of Earhart or Noonan ever having been in their custody, but many of the nations records did not survive the second world war.
Read more here:
Newly discovered photo reignites Amelia Earhart conspiracy theory - The Guardian
Samuel T Herring of Future Islands performing at the Electric Picnic in 2015. Photograph: Dave Meehan
Theres no show like a Future Islands show and were not just saying that because frontman Samuel T Herring bears a certain je ne sais quoi akin to Mullingars finest. Theres something life-affirming and joyous about a Future Islands gig; theyre the perfect remedy to a bad day.
The Iveagh Gardens show will be the last night of the Baltimore acts four-night Irish run. Theyve already rattled up Limerick and Cork and are set to make the people of Galway feel reborn tonight, all in the build up to their biggest Irish date so far.
Their fifth album, The Far Field, released in April, isthe latest in a string of well-loved albums and with support coming from Sacred Paws, a duo who know how to lay down a groove, you better do your warm-up lunges for the shows . . . you shall dance.
Are tickets still available? This is a sold out show but follow the band on Twitter (@futureislands). Before their Cork and Limerick shows, they hid pairs of tickets in different locations across the cities so if youre quick enough to see the tweet, drop everything and run, you might be in with a chance.
What time does it kick off at? Gates open at 6.30pm and Sacred Paws will kick things off at 7.30pm and Future Islands are expected onstage at 8.45pm. The curfew for this gig is 10.30pm. How do I get there? The entrance to the venue is located on Clonmel Street, just off Harcourt Street. The closest Luas stops are Harcourt or Stephens Green and its just a short stroll from St Stephens Green, Leeson Street, Georges Street and Wexford Street, where the closest Dublin Bus stops are.
But really, youre best bet is to walk. Meet your pals in a Wexford Street pub for a pint and take it from there.
What will the weather be like? Its set to be 21 degrees tomorrow evening and more importantly, its going to be dry. Hallelujah.
And security? Guests will be searched upon entry and only bags that are A4-size or smaller will be permitted.
What are they likely to play? Their set list from previous shows were using their recent Cambridge Corn Exchange show on July 1st as a guide , below is a celebration of their career but their no slaves to a rigid set list.
There will be an element of surprise to the order of their songs and as Herring said to Jim Carroll in April, they dont tire of the big songs: We try not to overthink what we do and that translates into the shows. For some people, their big song becomes the bane of their existence, but Seasons is a song we love and not only because it has done amazing things for us. Because its honest, we can take that song onstage, I can pull myself apart and we can move people with the music.
Set: Grease Aladdin Ran A Dream of You and Me Beauty of the Road Time on Her Side Walking Through That Door Balance Before the Bridge Light House Doves North Star A Song for Our Grandfathers Through the Roses Seasons (Waiting on You) Cave Inch of Dust Long Flight Tin Man Spirit
Encore: Black Rose Beach Foam Vireos Eye Little Dreamer
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Future Islands at Iveagh Gardens: everything you need to know - Irish Times
Children and young people on the Dutch Caribbean islands have too few possibilities "to develop their talents", Children OmbudsmanMargrite Kalverboersaid in a new report published on Wednesday. On paper the kids on Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius have the same rights as other children in the Netherlands. "But in practice, we see that the bar for children in the Dutch Caribbean is much lower", Kalverboer said, according to the Volkskrant. "We have two standards. That can and must not be."
For the report the Children's Ombudsman spoke to about 200 children on the three "special Dutch municipalities". Another 264 kids filled out a questionnaire. The report states that, for all three islands, children in difficult situations did not complete the questionnaire, so the results may be "somewhat more positive" than the reality.
The biggest problem for children on Bonaire, Saba and SintEustatiusis education. The children are not challenged enough. Especially young people in high school complain about inadequate teachers and missed lessons. Parents aren't always capable, or don't have the time, to help in this area.
Adults on the three islands often say that the cost of living is too high, and the level of salaries and benefits too low. For children this translates to "poverty" problems at home, resulting in them sometimes eating too little or too unhealthy. Despite this, children and young people give their own lives a high score of 8 out of 10. This mainly has to do with their life at home with parents and relatives. The majority of kids are very happy about this part of their lives.
In the introduction to the report, Kalverboer praises the "great optimism and resilience" of the young people on the Dutch Caribbean islands. More than other kids in the Netherlands, the kids on these three islands know how to make the best of situations that children on mainland Netherlands experience as difficult or unfair.
Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatiusare considered "special municipalities" of the Netherlands. While the islands of Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten are autonomously countries within the kingdom.
See the article here:
Kids on Dutch Caribbean islands get too few opportunities to shine: Netherlands advocate - NL Times
For many women particularly those who are older, pregnant or overweighta sudden sneeze or laugh can trigger a squirt of urine. And forget about jumping jacks.
Thanks to a genome-wide association study (GWAS) that identifies a gene that may contribute to stress urinary incontinence (the sneezing kind) or even the less common urge incontinence(aka overactive bladder), women may be able to add a re-purposed drug or two to the list of gadgets, medications, and procedures that can lower leak frequency.
The best way to minimize stress incontinence, is to do Kegel exercises, which contract the pelvic floor muscles. Also helpful is the bridge pose in Pilates (head and feet down, abdomen up). Wearing absorbent pads may work, as can losing weight and avoiding foods and drinks that promote peeing.
Of course, there are appsfor leaks. iDry, BladderPal, and Kegel Kat chart trips to the bathroom, schedule Kegel reminders,or, in one app that Charmin sponsors, locate the nearest restroom.
Devices to treat urinary incontinence are held in the vagina to keep things in place, and resemble certain sexual aids that somewhat rhyme with mildew. Advertisements for one FDA-approved product that signals the bladder not to spasm proclaims itselfa trip to the gym for your pelvic floor.
Clinicaltrials.gov, my go-to site for upcoming treatments, lists suchinterventionsas a rectal balloon, a hydrogel shot into the urethra, electrical stimulation, and various single-incision devices. I was excited to see one study coaxing human induced pluripotent stem cells to become skeletal muscle progenitor cells, which presumably can be implanted into the muscles failing at supporting the offending organ.
Related approaches to treat urinary incontinence are already available: Electrodesin the vagina or rectum. Various meshes, slings, hammocks, tapes, and ribbons Drugs(the old antidepressant imipramine, estrogen gel, anticholinergics, and antimuscarinics) Designer vagina surgery that in one unfortunate woman triggered a lasting sensation akin to an internal invasion of fire ants
The non-surgical Nu-Vseemed promising until I noticed the spelling errors on the website, at the literary level of a Trump tweet.
At the recent European Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in Copenhagen, Rufus Cartwright,a visiting researcher at Imperial College, London, reported that his team genotyped 8,979 women, consulted six additional studies, and sampled bladder cells in some participants to identify expressed genes.
The idea behind a GWAS is to narrow down parts of the genome that include specific gene variants that are found nearly exclusively among people with a particular condition in this case, urinary incontinence. Complementing that analysis is cataloguing which genes are active in those with incontinence but not others the transcriptome.
Three genes of interest emerged:
CHRM3 encodes a cholinergic receptor. Its already the main drug target for urge incontinence. SULF2 encodes a signaling enzyme and Im not sure how its connected to incontinence. Maybe the published paper will eventually explain it. EDN1 specifies endothelin 1, a protein produced on the interior surfaces of blood vessels that is the most potent smooth muscle vasoconstrictor known. Its expressed differently in bladders of women with stress incontinence. Bingo!
Implicating endothelin 1 is exciting, because drugs that target its pathway are already used to treat pulmonary hypertensionand Raynauds syndrome, both of which arise from constricted blood vessels.
Cartwright described the work:
Previous studies had failed to confirm any genetic causes for incontinence. Although I was always hopeful that we would find something significant, there were major challenges involved in finding enough women to participate, and then collecting the information about incontinence. It has taken more than five years of work, and has only been possible thanks to the existence of high quality cohort studies with participants who were keen to help. Clearly this will need further debate and an analysis, not just of the cost to healthcare systems, but also of the benefit to women who may be spared the distress of urinary incontinence.
Finding a gene variant that could be behind urinary incontinence is more than a possible route to a repurposed new treatment. It is also a shout-out to the value of basic biomedical research something threatened in the proposed federal budget.
The awkwardly-acronymed genome-wide association study GWAS was at first more or less a fishing expedition, directing attention to a vast swath of genomic territory that might harbor a gene that could explain why a bunch of people with the same trait or condition share it significantly more often than do others. The roots of the technique go back to the earliest days of human genome sequencing, as researchers identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) single DNA base differences in a population at specific sites among the 3.2 billion A, T, G, and C nitrogenous bases.
A GWAS is especially helpful to understand the causes of more common conditions, the ones that arise from interactions of more than one gene and the environment and that dont exhibit the simple inheritance patterns of rare, single-gene diseases. A GWAS result can often be articulated in just a sentence or two, but it represents an incredible amount of work.
Now, with so many human genome sequences annotated since thefirst GWASwas published a dozen years ago, the technologys time has truly come. Find enough participants, and a GWAS can zero in on important, possibly causative, genes. The evolution of GWAS is a little like that of Google maps, from imaging a town to highlighting a specific house.
The idea for a GWAS was hatched long before genome analysis became fast enough and deep enough to reveal enough information to dissect the molecular underpinnings of common conditions like incontinence. A short-sighted federal budget that slashes funding for the type of basic research that led to this and other biotechnologies is not in anyones best interest.
Ricki Lewis is a long-time science writer with a PhD in genetics. She writes the DNA Science blog at PLOS and contributes regularly to Rare Disease Report and Medscape Medical News. Ricki is the author of the textbook Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications (McGraw-Hill, 12thedition out late summer); The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It (St. Martins Press, 2013) and the just-published second edition of Human Genetics: The Basics (Routledge Press, 2017). She teaches Genethics online for the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College and is a genetic counselor at CareNet Medical Group in Schenectady, NY. You can find her at her website or on Twitter at @rickilewis
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Bladder control: Is there a genetic treatment for urinary incontinence? - Genetic Literacy Project
Approaches to Unity
Over the millennia, people have found many different ways to solve coordination problems. Broadly speaking, there was a shift from a more cooperative hunter-gatherer toward a more coercive world after the agricultural revolution (which began around 9500 B.C. in the Middle East) followed by a shift back toward more cooperative versions in the last few hundred years. Between about 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1500, most people in the world lived in empires in which a small elite monopolizing military, administrative, religious and sometimes commercial functions used state power to integrate the activities of vast numbers of people in villages and towns. The Roman and Han Chinese empires coordinated tens of millions of subjects; the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties in China ruled over 100 million.
These empires tried to lower the costs of obtaining their subjects' obedience by promoting shared identities, but local, kin-based loyalties typically retained more appeal than the center. This became a fatal flaw when, in the last 200 years, empires had to compete with nation-states, which fused politics and ethnicity by insisting that the citizens of each state all shared a common ethnicity. Nation-states were, on the whole, much better than empires at persuading their citizens to make sacrifices for the common good, and the strains of competing against nation-states brought about the collapse of all the great traditional empires between 1911 (Qing China) and 1922 (Ottoman Turkey).
In reality, of course, the populations of nation-states were anything but homogeneous, and so their leaders always had to struggle to find ways to override genetic imperatives and make different people feel similar. We might range their responses along a spectrum from the illiberal to the liberal. Illiberal responses aimed to create homogeneity by destroying difference, in extreme cases by expelling or killing people who did not conform to the ideal. Communist Russia and China defined the ideal in terms of class and killed tens of millions of non-proletarians; fascist Germany defined it in terms of race and killed six million Jews.
Liberal responses, by contrast, aimed to create homogeneity by arguing that difference just did not matter. Two hundred years ago, even the most liberal societies excluded the bulk of their populations from full membership on the basis of race, sex, class, religion or some other variable. Since then, legislation and changing attitudes have steadily rolled back the exclusions. Thanks particularly to the defeat of fascism in World War II and Soviet communism in the Cold War, the illiberal vision of the nation-state was broadly discredited in the West, and for seventy years its democracies not only leaned toward liberal solutions but even pursued equality of outcome through aggressive programs of affirmative action.
For a good fifty years, anyone such as Barry Goldwater in the United States in 1964 and Enoch Powell in Britain in 1968 who emphasized racial differences between citizens courted political suicide. But that is now changing. Enough of the liberal consensus survives that politicians still have to treat race carefully, but in 2016 almost half of American voters supported a presidential candidate who promised to spend between $4 billion (his own lowest estimate) and $21.6 billion (the Department of Homeland Security's estimate) to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, and slightly more than half of the British electorate said it was ready to accept the major economic costs of leaving the European single market in order to limit immigration to 100,000 people per year. Something important is happening in politics.
Something important is happening in the scientific study of race too. In June 2000, in a speech celebrating the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome, President Bill Clinton announced that "one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition inside the human genome is that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same." This remains true; however, it is also true that humans and chimpanzees are genetically more than 98.8 percent the same. The 1.2 percent, however, makes all the difference in the world; and as they map genetic distributions in increasing detail, scientists have increasingly asked whether the 0.1 percent difference separating human genomes might not also matter.
As yet there is no clear answer to this question, as I learned in June at a conference at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. There, a group of distinguished economists, biologists, evolutionary anthropologists and psychologists debated the causes of institutional change, and several of the speakers discussed cross-country correlations between genetic differences and institutional differences. This is controversial stuff; any scientist who raises the possibility that genetic distance might have institutional and cultural consequences runs the risk of being dismissed as a Goldwater/Powell kind of crank, not fit for civilized company. However, at a time when racial arguments seem to be on the rise in Western politics, there can surely be few questions more important than this, and I was delighted to learn that scholars of this caliber were willing to take the risks.
However, not everyone is ready to do so. From Toulouse, I went directly to a conference at the British Academy in London, where another distinguished gathering, this time of historians, sociologists and experts in cultural studies were debating the concept of the "Anglosphere." This is a new name for the old idea that something vitally important connects Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In a famous book, Winston Churchill called this group The English-Speaking Peoples; other scholars since the late 19th century have preferred to speak of the Anglo-Saxon Race.
The newest term, "Anglosphere," leaves the question of whether we are investigating a racial or a linguistic category deliberately ambiguous. Speakers who thought "Anglosphere" was a useful concept tended to emphasize linguistic ties, arguing that these had created cultural and institutional similarities, which, in the wake of Brexit, should be deepened. Some even argued for that the time is ripe for a formal political union of Canzuk (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom). Other speakers, however, insisted that the "Anglosphere" is a deeply racist idea, designed merely to legitimate White Anglo-Saxon Protestant oppression of minorities within these countries.
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Going into this week's holiday recess, activists were already planning to target public events and festivities on July 4 in anticipation of appearances by elected officials.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who opposes the current plan, said she was still a "no" while talking to reporters at a parade in Eastport, Maine, which is known as the biggest Fourth of July event in the state.
"What I've been hearing the entire recess is people telling me to be strong, that they have a lot of concerns about the health care bill in the senate, they want me to keep working on it, but they don't want me to support it in its current form," she told reporters.
Collins, a center-right Republican, argued the bill would be too harmful to her constituents because of the impact of Medicaid cuts on rural populations and the elderly.
"I've found that Mainers are very well informed about the legislation, and they're deeply concerned about what it's going to mean for themselves and their neighbors," she said.
Collins added that she'll remain against the bill unless it's "dramatically changed."
Heller participated Tuesday in a parade in the small town of Ely, Nevada, with a population of about 4,200 people. One man urged Heller to "vote yes on that health bill" as the senator rode by on a horse.
Another Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz, faced a large group of protesters at a parade in McAllen, Texas. Speaking to CNN affiliate KVEO, Cruz said the demonstrators were an illustration of democracy at work.
"One of the great things about freedom in America is even people who disagree can speak out, and there is a small group of people on the left who, right now, are very angry," he said. "We can engage in cordial and civil debate -- that's how democracy works and that's how it's meant to work."
Cruz was one of four senators who opposed the Senate bill as written before McConnell decided to delay a vote on the legislation. He joined three other conservative Republican senators who argued the bill did not go far enough in repealing Obamacare
Meanwhile, more moderate Republicans, like Heller and Collins, opposed the bill's Medicaid cuts. By the time the Senate went into recess, the total tally of "no" Republican votes inched up to nine. McConnell can only afford to lose two Republican votes in order for his legislation to pass the chamber.
Outside Sen. Pat Toomey's office in Philadelphia, demonstrators gathered for a "Tuesdays with Toomey" protest, where several people laid down on a sidewalk holding signs in the shape of tombstones. (Toomey was largely supportive the bill when heading into recess.)
Left-leaning groups will continue to hold events, rallies, and sit-ins across the country during the remainder of the week.
Activists associated with the Health Care for America Now coalition are gathering Thursday, for example, on the Williamstown Bridge that connects Ohio and West Virginia to target two senators from the two different states -- Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. The two senators announced their opposition in a joint statement last week after the Senate decided to delay its vote.
Portman's office sent out photos of the senator meeting with constituents during the recess, as well as a description of his efforts on health care.
"In his discussions with his colleagues, Rob is working to ensure that those on expanded Medicaid continue to have good health care options under a new system, whether it's under the current Medicaid structure or affordable health care options on the private market," Portman spokeswoman Emily Benavides wrote in a statement.
There's still time for activists and voters alike to see at least a few of their senators before they head back to Washington. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, who expressed reservations against the bill, is hosting three town-hall style events at the end of the week.
Democratic senators last week retorted saying Republican leaders in the Senate never solicited Democratic input during the behind-the-scenes crafting of the bill.
This story has been updated.
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Republicans opposing GOP health care plan hear from voters during recess - CNN
As Republicans on Capitol Hill struggle to find common ground on a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and as Democrats criticize their plans as too expensive for the neediest in society, one subject is absent from the debate -- why is health care so expensive to begin with?
Medical care prices increased 4 percent in 2016 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and premiums under Obamacare's second-lowest costing "silver" plans rose 7.5 percent in 2015. Plus, the U.S. spends far more per capita on health care -- $9,892 in 2016 -- than any other nation. That's a trend that doesn't show any sign of changing, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Meanwhile, health care costs wereoutpacing the general rate of inflationlong before the theACA or Obamacarebecame law, and are projected to continue to do so.
"The encouraging part, if you will, is that the U.S. is much more expensive than other countries -- and there's no reason why we need to be," said David Cutler, an economist at Harvard University who specializes in the health care industry.
So, what are some of the factors contributing to the high costs of health care -- factors that will seemingly continue to increase Americans' health care bills, no matter what version of health care legislation passes?
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Administrative costs contribute to 25.3 percent of all health care spending in the U.S., the highest of eight nations analyzed in a 2014 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs. Cutler says that's partly because the U.S. has so many payers -- from a slew of private health insurance companies to government programs like Medicare and Medicaid -- that hospitals and physicians have to negotiate with in the regular course of business.
Duke University Hospital, for instance, has roughly 900 beds and 1,500 billing clerks, Cutler noted.
"That's how many they need to get the bills paid," Cutler said.
There's little ability -- or incentive -- to cut those administrative costs.
"So the system keeps on being inefficient and just grows in inefficiency," Cutler added.
In some ways, health care costs continue to soar for the same reason people spend lots of money on electronics, said Robert Graboyes, a senior research fellow and health care scholar at George Mason University's free markets-focused Mercatus Center.
"Because we really like the stuff, and it's getting better and better," Graboyes said.
Americans want the newest and latest technology available, and the American health care system can often provide that quickly. But, that quality and speed comes at a cost, Graboyes said.
In some cases, medical experts point out that newer or more expensive treatments aren't necessarily better for patients.
It's generally easier to sue doctors in the U.S. than in most other countries. So, doctors often employ what's known as defensive medicine -- the practice of ordering as many tests and exploring as many options as possible so a patient would have a more difficult time to sue a doctor for missing some possible solution.
A 2010 study published in the peer-reviewed Archives of Internal Medicine found 90 percent of the 1,231 physicians surveyed said doctors order more tests and procedures than patients actually need to preemptively protect themselves from litigation.
More than 30 states have certificate of need laws -- laws that require health care providers or would-be providers to first obtain permission from the government and often their competition like nearby hospitals to establish or expand a facility. The laws are intended to reduce health care costs, but Graboyes and other researchers at the Mercatus Center argue the laws do just the opposite by limiting the supply of medical care and limiting competition, thus allowing existing providers to make more.
State governments also place too many restrictions on nurse practitioners, Graboyes said. In most states, nurse practitioners cannot practice medicine without a physician's supervision, although an increasing number of states are adopting laws to allow nurse practitioners -- who require less education and can charge patients less -- to practice on their own.
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In most industries, the consumer knows what the price tag will be up front. That isn't the case with health care, where the full cost of the tab may not be clear for weeks or months, and even then, the consumer isn't charged the actual cost of the service. In the meantime, the patient's insurance company negotiates the price of procedures with the provider until the parties reach an agreement.
In some ways, health care is comparable to higher education, another sector with rising costs easily outpacing inflation rates, Graboyes said. When something is partially subsidized by a third party like the government through grants in the case of college or private insurance companies or the government in the case of health care, Graboyes explained, the service provider has little incentive to lower costs.
"Both (are) heavily subsidized," Graboyes said. "We have insulated both consumers and producers from real prices, real costs and increasingly we've left the burden on taxpayers to fill the gap. And what you've got in both cases is enormously increasing costs in both industries."
Perhaps the biggest driver in high medical costs, Graboyes believes, is a Medicare reimbursement framework that doesn't incentivize providers to lower costs to stay competitive, and private insurers are highly unlikely to reimburse at rates lower than Medicare.
A few providers in the U.S. and abroad are experimenting with a more direct approach to patients paying for primary care, in which patients pay a monthly fee to the office as they would pay a premium, then pay directly for visits and procedures.
But for now, the U.S. has a "deeply irrational system of pricing that drives things towards the more expensive," Graboyes said.
"These are the things that are not being talked about really by either party," Graboyes said.
Cutler believes it would be much easier to begin lowering health care costs once everyone or at least the vast majority of the population is insured.
"When countries cover everybody, they then turn to saving money," Cutler said.
The underlying reasons why health care costs continue to soar aren't that complicated, Cutler said. But Republicans and Democrats alike have to be willing to take a step back to look at the system as a whole, and identify common goals.
"The point that I'm trying to make is exactly that, is if (the Senate bill) fails, we should focus on things with mutual agreement," Cutler said.
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Why is health care so expensive in the first place? - CBS News - CBS News
Sen. Susan CollinsSusan CollinsKey GOP senator: Healthcare was only topic constituents talked about Constituents lobby GOP senators on healthcare at July Fourth celebrations Five changes GOP might make to healthcare bill MORE (R-Maine) says healthcare was the only thing on the minds of constituents she met with on the Fourth of July.
Collins on Wednesday told the Washington Post that while she usually hears people's thoughts on a wide range of issues when she meets constituents, all she heard this year was reaction to the GOP's push to repeal ObamaCare.
Shesaid her constituents at the parade overwhelmingly supported her position against the Senate GOP healthcare bill, the vote for which was delayed until after Congresss Fourth of July recess.
I heard, over and over again, encouragement for my stand against the current version of the Senate and House healthcare bills. People were thanking me, over and over again. Thank you, Susan! Stay strong, Susan!
Collins was a key Republican whose early resistance to the healthcare billcontributed to Senate GOP leaderships decision to delay votes on the bill.
She was one of the four Republicans in the senate who announced public appearances in Fourth of July parades after the issue took center stage in Congress.
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Key GOP senator: Healthcare was only topic constituents talked about - The Hill
The Republican National Committee (RNC)on Wednesday released an ad attacking Democrats for being unwilling to work with the GOP to repeal and replace ObamaCare while not offering their own plan
The ad features video footage of Democrats such asSen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenWhy Trump should renominate Inga Bernstein for the District of Massachusetts Dems try new slogan: Have you seen the other guys? Clinton responds to GOP request for healthcare plan with campaign page MORE (Mass.) and Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonVoter fraud commission may have violated law Budowsky: Will Trump appease Putin? Clinton responds to GOP request for healthcare plan with campaign page MORE attacking the House and Senate plans to repeal ObamaCare.
Weve got to fix whats broken. Where's your plan, @HillaryClinton? pic.twitter.com/CmRB4mCsZd
Itopens with Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersClinton responds to GOP request for healthcare plan with campaign page Dem challenging Paul Ryan raises 0K in campaign's first 12 days Republicans ask Dems: Where's your healthcare plan? MORE (I-Vt.) and Democrats admitting that ObamaCare is fraught with problems, as well as footage of Democrats being questioned about their own replacement plan. The lawmakers' answers are not included.
The adalso features footage of former President Bill ClintonBill ClintonRepublicans ask Dems: Where's your healthcare plan? Puerto Rico faces off with bondholders over statehood Poll: Trump disapproval at 57 percent MOREcalling ObamaCare the "craziest thing" and hittingit for rising premiums and coverage gaps.
"Democrats know ObamaCare is broken," the ad concludes. "We have a plan to fix it."
"Where's their plan?" it asks.
RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel in a statement demanded Democrats put aside "political games" and work to fix America's broken healthcare system.
Everyone agrees Obamacare has been a disaster for the American people," McDanielwrote.
"While Republicans work to fix our broken healthcare system, Democrats have dug in their heels in the name of partisanship, instead focused on obstruction and resistance," she added. Its past time do-nothing Democrats in Washington put aside their political games and work together with Republicans to provide affordable and accessible healthcare to all Americans.
Several Senate Republicans have criticized their own party for negotiating and writing a healthcare bill largely behind closed doors and without input from Democrats.
Healthcare is such an important thing. I think we should have debated it in open, in committee hearings, have both sides bring in witnesses, Sen. Rand PaulRand PaulTime to pass National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Republicans ask Dems: Where's your healthcare plan? Pressure on McConnell to deliver ObamaCare repeal MORE (R-Ky.) said last month.
I would like a more open process, that's for sure, saidSen. Lisa MurkowskiLisa MurkowskiRepublicans ask Dems: Where's your healthcare plan? Constituents lobby GOP senators on healthcare at July Fourth celebrations Senate GOP pressures budget refs for better score on ObamaCare replacement MORE (R-Alaska), another key vote on the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Charles SchumerCharles SchumerSessions condemns 'cowardly, unprovoked attack' on NYPD officer Schumer: 'Baffling' Trump doesn't have specific agenda for Putin meeting Schumer mourns slain NYPD cop MORE (D-N.Y.) late last month pushed President Trump to meet with Senate Democrats to discuss a bipartisan healthcare deal.
"I repeat the offer I made to President Trump and my Republican friends yesterday: Let's start over. Drop this fundamentally flawed approach ... and we can discuss the problems that our Americans are actually concerned about: the cost, the quality and availability on healthcare," Schumer said from the Senate floor.
Schumer stressed that Democrats were ready to talk about improving healthcare when lawmakers return from the July Fourthholiday recess.
Continue reading here:
Republicans ask Dems: Where's your healthcare plan? - The Hill
Chris Christie, at right, uses the beach with his family and friends at the governors summer house at Island Beach State Park on Sunday.
The now-infamous photo of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and family enjoying a beach closed to the public said a lot about Christies hugely inflated sense of entitlement.
But it also said something about the current state of health care politics. Christie was holding up the New Jersey state budget and shutting down state beaches over his demand that Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, the states largest insurer, put $300 million of its reserves into a state opioid treatment program. With that, Christie was championing the one health care cause that has become safe for everyone, including conservative Republicans.
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But he wanted to fund it with money from Blue Cross rather than through a state budget appropriation. With no political capital going into this budget battle, and less after the beach expose, the unpopular New Jersey governor failed in that effort. But his willingness to go to the mat over it shows how the opioid epidemic has become not just a scourge, but also a big political bargaining chip.
In Washington, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is working to win votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act by adding $43 billion in special funds to treat opioid addiction. At the same time, the Senates health care bill would dramatically slash Medicaid funding, to the detriment of the poor, the elderly, and children. While senators seeking more money for treatment as part of the health care bill are sincere, their leaders are blatantly open to using the extra opioid money to pay them off.
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The toll of opioid abuse is undisputed: According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, drug overdose due to opioid addiction is the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. Its also a heartbreaking everywhere problem, class-blind and colorblind. That makes it popular with politicians of all persuasions, including Republicans.
If you ask people of color about it, youll hear a lot of anger about their contention that their kids were dying from opioid and similar addictions for a long time, but it was not addressed by the political power structure until it hit white neighborhoods, said Philip W. Johnston, the former head of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and a federal health care administrator during the Clinton presidency who now runs a health care consulting company. Maybe the gun issue will become popular if the killing begins to invade white areas, he added.
Whether or not you believe there would be less interest in opioid addiction if it didnt cut across income lines and affect many whites, fighting it comes down to money and how much public funding is committed to it. What states are willing to kick into it is an important piece of it. In New Jersey, where Christie made the opioid fight a personal cause, he wanted an insurer to pick up the costs. Meanwhile, you cant separate the battle against opioid addiction from federal Medicaid funding, which Christie is also trying to do.
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Christie heads the bipartisan opioid commission created by President Trump, where at the commissions first meeting, some appointees decried the Senates effort to cut Medicaid. Were kidding ourselves if we dont think whats happening over in Congress regarding issues of health care matters to this issue, said Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a Democrat. If we make it harder and more expensive for people to get health care coverage, its going to make this crisis worse. But as of last week, Christie was unwilling to lobby against the GOP proposal to reduce Medicaid funding. Taking a wait-and-see approach about a cut in funding that could seriously harm New Jersey residents, he said, Im not going to go down to Capitol Hill and pour gasoline on myself and set myself on fire.
As it turned out, he got burned even more badly just by sitting on that beach.
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Christie feels the heat from the beach and health care politics - The Boston Globe
An announcement is expected on Thursday, and the companies hope to complete the transaction by the end of the year. Ambry Genetics declined to comment.
The Japanese government is helping to drive the diversification efforts. A state-backed investment fund, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, is teaming up with Konica Minolta in the Ambry acquisition. According to the people familiar with the deal, Konica Minolta would take a 60 percent share in Ambry, with the rest to be acquired by the fund.
Ambry, which is privately held, would retain its current leadership, these people said. The management team includes the company founder and chairman, Charles L. M. Dunlop, who has said his own experience with prostate cancer now in remission influenced his decision to make public anonymized information from Ambrys database.
Pooling data from many people is considered crucial to finding genetic elements that contribute to illnesses.
For Konica Minolta, the acquisition would confirm the acceleration of efforts to diversify beyond photocopiers and printers, areas where revenue and profit have been shrinking.
The Japanese company has identified health care, and cancer screening in particular, as a possible mainstay of business. It has been developing its own cancer-detecting technology using light-emitting nanoparticles to mark proteins that are drawn to cancer cells.
Other Japanese businesses have tried similar expansions. Fujifilm, for instance which, like Konica Minolta, built a name decades ago in photography has established a profitable health care and cosmetics division, helping it survive the end of the analog film era.
Other Japanese groups health care ventures have been less successful, however.
Follow Jonathan Soble on Twitter @jonathan_soble.
Chad Bray contributed reporting from London.
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Konica Minolta, With Eye on Health Care, Nears Deal for U.S. ... - New York Times
Rep. Trent Franks said Wednesday that if Planned Parenthood funding is added to the GOP health care bill, numerousRepublican senators will no longer support it.
I think a lot of us are no votes, the Arizona Republican said. We cant continue to subsidize abortion as part of health care. Its just something thats not American. Mr. Franks said.
Some GOP senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, have said they were unlikely to support the bill without funds for Planned Parenthood. Ms. Collins intends on offering an amendment to allow the funding for Planned Parenthood to continue with the existing prohibition of funds being used for abortion procedures.
Unfortunately, in the Senate right now, under reconciliation, theyre constrained under this Byrd rule that doesnt give them any latitude for negotiation, Mr. Franks said. And so when theres any differences whatsoever, we really dont have the ability to put something in that would mollify people like Senator Collins and gain her vote.
Mr. Franks said that any funding for abortions would take away support of many in the party, but that House members are willing to negotiate.
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House Republican says health care bill in jeopardy over Planned Parenthood - Washington Times
Legislation is like an old Roman city, says Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan. The original is on the bottom and amendments are layered on top. To understand legislation, you have to know how it's changed, he says. Above, House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks to the media in March.-Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Congress is still off for its Fourth of July recess. They're back next week which means, at least on the Senate side of the Capitol, healthcare. Majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he's re-working his bill. But here's the thing, if you actually sit down and read the actual text in the 145-page draft of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, it's really hard to understand. So, we called in an expert to help us read it.
Nicholas Bagley is a professor of Law at the University of Michigan, he talked Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal through some of the legalese in the Senate healthcare bill. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: Let me, first of all, ask you how you think about reading these bills. Because you are not a lay person in this field, you have some expertise. So how do you go about it?
Nicholas Bagley: Well, it's hard. These bills are the latest layers that are added on top of many, many other bills that have come before in the health care space. And so when you read a bill, what you have to do is have all the bills that came before at hand so you understand when they say, "We're amending subsection A of subparagraph one," you know what that's referring to.
Ryssdal: All right, so let's dive in here. I want to get you to section 134 of this bill. The block title is "Flexible Block Brant Options for States" and it says, and I got a quote the law here because I need you to take this apart for me, "Title 19 of the Social Security Act as amended by section 133 is further amended by inserting after section 103 the following new section" and then it goes on. So first of all, are we going back to the Social Security Act of 1930 or whatever it was here?
Bagley: Yep, we're going right back to when the Social Security Act was first adopted. ... Title 19 of the Social Security Act, however, was added in 1965 and it refers to the Medicaid program, which is the joint federal-state program of health insurance for poor people. Section 134 says, "Hey, states, you traditionally will cover health care for your residents. We've decided to put a cap on how much we're going to help you spend, but we're going to come up with another option for you, too: If you want to take federal money and use it however you see fit to provide health care for your citizens, we'll give you a block grant." And that Section 134 of the act, which you've been talking about, is this block grant option. Some states will take it. Some states won't. But it's one of the things that has opponents of the Senate bill up in arms.
Ryssdal: And you have to sit there with all those bills back to the Social Security Act to figure out what's going on?
Bagley: You have to know what it's targeting. You have to pull up the U.S. Code. I mean, all legislation is kind of like an old Roman city, right? The lowest layers are the things that happened first, and then over time, amendments and changes are layered on top. And to understand it, you really have to read how the statue has been shaped and reshaped over time.
Ryssdal:All right, let me dig into another slice of this, which is that not only do you have to peel back the layers, you have to know your dates and your details. Section 119, "repeal of net investment tax subparagraph A in general, subtitle A of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by striking Chapter 2A" blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. And then it gets to effective date, "The amendment made by this section shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31st, 2016." So obviously a year or something in the past, what does this mean? What is the net investment tax and what does that date have to do with reality?
Bagley: Yeah. This provision is relatively straightforward as statutory draft goes.
Ryssdal:Sorry, I apologize for laughing.
Bagley: No, it doesn't look it, but it really is. It wipes out a 3.8 percent tax that Obamacare imposed on the capital gains of people who make more than $200,000 a year. The point of repealing this tax on capital gains is to encourage people to invest more of their capital. And whatever you think about that goal, all the action is really in the effective date of this statute, because the provision is retroactive to the beginning of this year. And it can't possibly affect investment decisions that have already been made. So what we're seeing is the Senate bill offering a pure giveaway to some of the wealthiest Americans kind of lodged in a very technical, dry provision of their health care legislation. You know, reading statutes is all about the details. And when members of Congress want to hide something or don't want the public to notice, they will use squirrelly language, they will use anodyne language to make it seem like they're not doing very much. But the devil is always going to be in the details.
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How to understand health care, one subparagraph at a time - Marketplace.org
July 5, 2017 Credit: Cancer Research UK
Cancer patients should have routine access to genetic testing to improve diagnosis and treatment, according to England's chief medical officer.
Despite the UK being a world leader in genomic medicine its full potential is still not being realised, Professor Dame Sally Davies said in a new report.
Davies urged clinicians and the Government to work together and make wider use of new genetic techniques in an attempt to improve cancer survival rates.
Genetic testing can pinpoint the faults in DNA that have led to a cancer forming. Different cancers have different faults, and these determine which treatments may or may not work.
Such testing could lead to patients being diagnosed faster and receiving more targeted or precise treatments.
Davies said that "the age of precision medicine is now" and that the NHS must act quickly to remain world class.
"This technology has the potential to change medicine forever but we need all NHS staff, patients and the public to recognise and embrace its huge potential." said Davies.
Sir Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK's chief executive, agreed, saying that it would be a disservice to patients if the UK were slow to respond to innovations in this area.
The report recommends that within 5 years training should be available to current and future clinicians and that all patients should be being offered genomic tests just as readily as they're given MRI scans today.
Davies also called for research and international collaboration to be prioritised, along with investment in research and services so that patients across the country have equal access.
However the report recognises potential challenges such as data protection issues and attitudes of clinicians and the public.
"This timely report from the chief medical officer showcases just how much is now possible in genomics research and care within the NHS," added Sir Kumar.
"Cancer Research UK is determined to streamline research, to find the right clinical trial for cancer patients and to ensure laboratory discoveries benefit patients".
And the design of clinical trials are starting to change. A number of trials are underway, like Cancer Research UK's National Lung Matrix Trial with AstraZeneca and Pfizer, where patients with a certain type of lung cancer are assigned a specific treatment based on the genetic makeup of their cancer.
However, Sir Harpal Kumar stressed that to bring the report's vision to life the Government, the NHS, regulators and research funders need to act together.
Explore further: Adding abiraterone to standard treatment improves prostate cancer survival by 40 percent
Cancer Research UK is partnering with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer to create a pioneering clinical trial for patients with advanced lung cancer marking a new era of research into personalised medicines ...
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Greater access to genetic testing needed for cancer diagnosis and treatment - Medical Xpress
We recently had Dr. Craig Venter speak at our Splash Health 2017 event. Dr. Venter is the first person to sequence a human genome, simply put: the instructions and information about human development, physiology, and evolution. In his interview, he points out that 15 years ago, sequencing a human genome would have cost $100 million and take over nine months.
Oh how far weve come. Today, there are a number of companies helping us to analyze our genes, or basically our DNA, which make up genes, to understand our physiology. Advances in sequencing the human genome have been the foundation for this knowledge, and is ultimately paving the path toward personalized medicine - therapies that are personalized to a persons genetic code, and its cousin regenerative medicine - therapies that replace or enable damaged cells, organs to regenerate.
One company, Orig3n, is doing both. Boston-based Orig3n started out in 2014 collecting blood samples to conduct regenerative medicine studies, but later added in the ability to conduct DNA testing to learn more about a persons intelligence, or predisposition to learning languages, to knowing what vitamins theyre deficient in.
Its an interesting an unique funnel the company has created for itself on its way to solve big problems with regenerative medicine, which seems more in its infancy than DNA testing.
To that end, Orig3ns DNA testing business has taken off.
In order to be tested, you take a cotton swab and swab the inside of your cheek to collect DNA samples from the cells inside your mouth. Alternatively, one could spit in a tube, which is how 23andMe collects samples of DNA.
From there, Orig3n breaks down the cells to open up the DNA, which is inside the nucleus of the cell. The DNA is then purified and put into a genetic test panel. Your DNA is then analyzed against other DNA that have been collected and studied.
The analysis of the DNA is pretty standard. What differentiates its products, according to Robin Smith, Founder and CEO, is how the analysis is packaged and how quickly the results are turned around. The whole genome sequencing world has been around for 15 years and is fairly commoditized, said Smith. The same thing is happening with DNA detection. The biggest differentiator for Orig3n is that it delivers the data in ways that are understandable, said Smith.
For instance, on Orig3n, tests focus on an analysis of your skin to perfect your skincare routine, or about your strength and intelligence. Tests range from $20 to $100.
On Everlywell, you can take a DNA test to measure your sensitivity to foods. Or for around $239, it appears you can test to see if you have HIV, Herpes Type 2 and other sexual diseases.
On 23andMe, you can pay $199 to learn what proportion of your genes come from 31 populations worldwide, or what your genetic weight predisposes you to weigh vs an average and what are some healthy habits of people with your genetic makeup [though personally these habits seem to be good for anyone regardless of genetic makeup].
But for Orig3n, the DNA tests are just a good business while also a funnel to the bigger problem theyre trying to solve, and for which they recently raised $20 million for: Regenerative medicine.
Before offering the DNA tests, Orig3n was taking and continues to take blood samples, reprogramming cells to go back to a state three days prior. And from there, they can grow certain tissues. The purpose of Orig3n is to create cell therapies for various diseases and disorders.
In the next fives year, there will be real live therapies to repairing the degeneration of your eyes or performing some cardiac repair, Smith predicted. It feels like 1993 when I used a phone line to dial into the Internet, then seven years later we had the boom. We think regenerative medicine - getting your body to induce itself to rejuvenate parts that are broken - is where the Internet was in 1993.
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DNA testing - on the road to regenerative medicine - VatorNews
July 5, 2017 Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Pioneering research using the tropical zebrafish could provide new insights into the genetic basis of myopathy, a type of human muscle disease.
An international research team, led by Professor Philip Ingham FRS, inaugural Director of the University of Exeter's Living Systems Institutehas taken the first steps in determining the central role a specific gene mutation in a poorly characterised human myopathy.
Myopathies are diseases that prevent muscle fibres from functioning properly, causing muscular weakness. At present, there is no single treatment for the disease, as it can develop via a number of different pathways.
One particular type is nemaline myopathy, which primarily affects skeletal muscles and can lead to sufferers experiencing severe feeding and swallowing difficulties as well as limited locomotor activity.
Mutations in a specific gene, called MY018B, have recently been found to be present in people exhibiting symptoms of this disease, but the role these mutations play in muscle fibre integrity has until now been unclear.
In this new research, the Ingham team, based in Singapore and Exeter, has used high-resolution genetic analysis to create a zebrafish model of MYO18B malfunction; this research takes advantage of the remarkable similarity between the genomes of zebrafish and humans,which have more than 70 per cent of their genes in common.
The Singapore/Exeter team found that the MYO18B gene is active specifically in the 'fast-twitch' skeletal muscles of the zebrafish, typically used for powerful bursts of movement. Crucially, by studying fish in which the MYO18B gene is disrupted, they were able to show that it plays an essential role in the assembly of the bundles of actin and myosin filaments that give muscle fibres their contractile properties.
The team believe this new research offers a vital new step towards understanding the cause of myopathy in humans, which in turn could give rise to new, tailored treatments in the future.
The leading research is published in the scientific journal, Genetics.
Professor Ingham, said: "The identification of a MYO18B mutation in zebrafish provides the first direct evidence for its role in human myopathy and gives us a model in which to study the molecular basis of MYO18B function in muscle fibre integrity."
A pioneer in the genetic analysis of development using fruit flies and zebrafish as model systems, Prof Ingham is internationally renowned for his contributions to several influential discoveries in the field of developmental biology over the last century.
This is the latest research by Professor Ingham that has revealed important links between the processes that underpin normal embryonic development and disease.
His co-discovery of the 'Sonic Hedgehog' gene, recognised as one of 24 centennial milestones in the field of developmental biology by Nature, in 2004, led directly to the establishment of a biotechnology company that helped develop the first drug to target non-melanoma skin cancer.
The research comes at the University of Exeter holds the official opening of the Living Systems Institute with an Opening Symposium event, from July 5-6 2017.
Two Nobel Laureates, Sir Paul Nurse FRS and Christiane Nsslein-Volhard ForMemRS, who separately won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, will deliver keynote speeches as part of the opening event.
The high-profile event, held at the University's Streatham Campus marks the official opening of the LSIa 52 million inter-disciplinary research facility designed to bring new, crucial insights into the causes and preventions of some of the most serious diseases facing humanity.
A Zebrafish Model for a Human Myopathy Associated with Mutation of the Unconventional Myosin MYO18B is published in Genetics.
Explore further: Zebrafish help identify mutant gene in rare muscle disease
Journal reference: Genetics
Provided by: University of Exeter
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IARPA seeks tech to ID bioengineered life forms
WHAT: A new bio-detection tech development effort to help defend against human engineered biological threats.
WHY: With advances in genetic engineering and gene editing, the intelligence community is concerned about possible threats from chimerical life forms.
The research arm of the intelligence community is hoping new bio-detection technology can be developed to help defend against human engineered biological threats.
That idea might sound a bit familiar to science fiction buffs.
It is reminiscent of the science fiction film "Blade Runner," an adaptation of Philp K. Dicks classic 1968 novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" In the story, special futuristic cops are charged with defending human civilization from the depredations of genetically engineered android super-soldiers dubbed replicants.
In a June 19 announcement, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity said it is looking for technology that can detect human engineered changes to natural biological systems.
Emerging genetic editing tools have the potential to aid in the development of new vaccines and pharmaceuticals and to create hardy strains of crops. However, in the wrong hands, these tools could also be used to warp organisms into deliberate weapons or be misused in ways that could "accidentally or deliberately" threaten national health, security or the economy, according to the solicitation.
IARPA said its Finding Engineering-Linked Indicators (FELIX) program looks to develop new tech that can spot genetically engineered changes within biological systems to spur "mitigation responses to unlawful or accidental release of organisms." IARPA said it wants to develop a suite of tools to detect a range of engineered bio-organisms from viruses, bacteria, insects, animals and plants that have been developed from natural organisms "that are either purposefully or accidentally developed and/or released with the potential to cause harm."
IARPA plans a proposers' day on July 27 before it sends out a formal solicitation for the technology.
IARPA said technologies it wants to discuss include novel methods and high throughput techniques in genomics, systems biology, bioinformatics and evolutionary biology.
The tools it's aiming to develop could find genetic signatures that haven't been accessible before with previous technologies, using data from multiple interrogation points, increasing sensitivity, improving the quality of the data and leveraging technologies that can increase throughput and reduce the complexity of sample analysis.
IARPA said it envisions FELIX development as a two-phase program. The first phase, it said, is to develop platforms and technologies that can be made general enough to detect "signatures" that would give away engineered biological systems and develop modeling and analysis of those indicators.
The second phase, IARPA said, will optimize the platform, analysis tools and technologies to detect increasingly complex and sophisticated changes in biological systems and find those engineered changes in a variety of organisms and sample types.
Click here to read the full announcement.
Posted by Mark Rockwell on Jul 05, 2017 at 12:33 PM
Link:
IARPA seeks tech to ID bioengineered life forms - FCW.com (blog)