December 23, 2012

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Genetically Altering Unborn Babies Personalities A Moral Obligation says Oxford Professor

September 18, 2012 By 5 Comments

Genetically screening our offspring to make them better people is just “responsible parenting”, claims an eminent Oxford academic, The Telegraph reports.

Professor Julian Savulescu, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a “moral obligation” as it makes them grow up into “ethically better children”, this based on a few genetic links to ‘personality disorders’.

He said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to “harm themselves and others”.

Studies show that the child’s upbringing, including parenthood and
schooling methods are the root causes of many ‘personality flaws’. Other studies give strong evidence that nutrition, meditation and exercise greatly influence behavioural patterns and emotional well-being. This entire theory is also blind to the side effects of many medicines, vaccines, food additives and (some) GMO foods that have been proven to affect psychological behaviour, and this isn’t even touching on the possible beneficial use of marijuana and other substances for those with undesired personality traits.

“Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?” wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics. Clearly without thinking of the potentially worse side effects of this theoretical treatment.

Professor Savulescu goes on to say that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality — with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.

In the end, he said, “rational design” would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future. Definitely something westernised nations will be pushing for - obedience.

Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children. They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others.

He said that “we already routinely screen embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes. Rational design is just a natural extension of this”. ”Natural extension” he said.

He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favour when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.

Many human genes have also been patented which raises huge ethical questions, as explained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):

A 2005 study found that 4,382 of the 23,688 human genes in the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s gene database are explicitly claimed as intellectual property. This means that nearly 20% of human genes are patented.

Prof Savulescu:

Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.

This type of genetic modification, called cytoplasmic transfer already results in a slightly higher chance of death and some have already been diagnosed with autism.

It seems that while we do not have freedom to smoke a plant or to gain access to effective cancer treating drugs such as DCA due to insufficient testing, the modification of the human species is taken lightly. Who knows what purposeful and accidental modifications will come from this.

Sources:

Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor - https://www.kurzweilai.net/genetically-engineering-ethical-babies-is-a-moral-obligation-says-oxford-professor

Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9480372/Genetically-engineering-ethical-babies-is-a-moral-obligation-says-Oxford-professor.html

DNA From Three Parents Okay, Genetically Modified Babies Are Ethical Says British Council - https://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/07/07/dna-from-three-parents-okay-genetically-modified-babies-are-ethical-says-british-council

Mitochondrial DNA disorders Introduction - https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/mitochondrial-dna-disorders/mitochondrial-dna-disorders-introduction

Julian Savulescu - https://www.neuroethics.ox.ac.uk/our_members/julian_savulescu

Preventing mitochondrial disease - an explanation - Newcastle University - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za6pTxcFdvg

Fertility breakthrough for inherited mitochondrial disease (HD) | A film by the Wellcome Trust - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wFn9Oj4u2E

9 Ways Exercise Can Make You Feel Better - https://www.fitwatch.com/weight-loss/9-ways-exercise-can-make-you-feel-better-605.html

Exercise and Stress Relief - https://exercise.about.com/od/healthinjuries/a/stressrelief.htm

Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity - https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/HQ01676

Depression and anxiety: Exercise eases symptoms - https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/depression-and-exercise/MH00043

Personality Development - https://www.indiaparenting.net/person-develop.asp

Effects of parent personality, upbringing, and marijuana use on the parent-child attachment relationship. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10673836

Nutritional Influences on Aggressive Behavior - https://orthomolecular.org/library/articles/webach.shtml

Dr Russell Blaylock Nutrition and Behavior Aspartame MSG - https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2963728494205235281

Dr. Russell Blaylock: Fluoride’s Deadly Secret - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie6gJHqkSgc

The Links Between Diet and Behaviour - https://www.foodforthebrain.org/content.asp?id_Content=1767

The Links Between Diet and Behaviour. (PDF) - https://www.foodforthebrain.org/download.asp?id_Doc=96

Vaccines Will Soon Be Used to Control Behavior - https://www.gaia-health.com/articles451/000478-vaccines-behavior.shtml

Leaked Pentagon Video - Flu Vaccine Use to Modify Human Behavior - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MuXgpl2Sxg

Vaccination and Social Violence - https://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter5.html

Vaccination and Violent Crime - https://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter6.html

THE BRAINS OF THE INOCULATED - https://www.whale.to/vaccines/loat1.html

BEHAVIOURAL FACTORS IN IMMUNIZATION (PDF) - https://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/28.pdf

GM Foods are Harming our Kids - https://healthandwealthcentre.com/gm-foods-are-harming-our-kids.html

Removing junk food (and GMOs) improved children’s behavior - https://www.naturalhealth365.com/food/junk-food-and-gmo.html

World’s first genetically modified babies born - https://weirdworldnews.org/2012/07/13/worlds-first-genetically-modified-babies-born/

Dozens of Genetically Modified Babies Already Born - How Will They Alter Human Species? - https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/17/first-genetically-modified-babies-born.aspx

Meditation improves emotional behaviour - https://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-13/fitness/31254064_1_meditation-practices-behaviour

DCA - Cancer Cure Discovered - But YOU can’t have it…. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LXH-TJYS5w

Filed Under: Biotechnology, Featured, Fluoride, Food, Genetics, Marijuana, Mental Health, Neuroscience, Psychology, Vaccines and Medicine

New nanoparticles shrink tumors in mice

August 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Nanoparticles that shut off cancer genes could also allow researchers to screen potential drug targets more rapidly

MIT researchers have developed RNA-delivering nanoparticles that

Short strands of RNA can be used to selectively turn off cancer genes (credit: MIT)

allow for rapid screening of new drug targets in mice.

By sequencing cancer-cell genomes, scientists have discovered vast numbers of genes that are mutated, deleted or copied in cancer cells. This treasure trove is a boon for researchers seeking new drug targets, but it is nearly impossible to test them all in a timely fashion.

In their first mouse study, done with researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute, they showed that nanoparticles that target a protein known as ID4 can shrink ovarian tumors.

The nanoparticle system could relieve a significant bottleneck in cancer-drug development, says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

“What we did was try to set forth a pipeline where you start with all of the targets that are pouring out of genomics, and you sequentially filter them through a mouse model to figure out which ones are important. By doing that, you can prioritize the ones you want to target clinically using RNA interference, or develop drugs against,” says Bhatia, one of the paper’s senior authors.

William Hahn, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the paper’s other senior author, is the leader of Project Achilles, a collaborative effort to identify promising new targets for cancer drugs from the flood of data coming from the National Cancer Institute’s cancer-genome-sequencing project.

Among those potential targets are many considered to be “undruggable,” meaning that the proteins don’t have any pockets where a traditional drug could bind to them. The new nanoparticles, which deliver short strands of RNA that can shut off a particular gene, may help scientists go after those undruggable proteins.

“If we could figure out how to make this work [in humans], it would open up a whole new class of targets that hadn’t been available,” says Hahn, who is also director of the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery at Dana-Farber and a senior associate member of the Broad Institute.

An abundance of targets

Through Project Achilles, Hahn and his colleagues have been testing the functions of many of the genes disrupted in ovarian cancer cells. By revealing genes critical to cancer-cell survival, this approach has narrowed the list of potential targets to several dozen.

Typically, the next step in identifying a good drug target would be to genetically engineer a strain of mice that are missing (or overexpressing) the gene in question, to see how they respond when tumors develop. However, this normally takes two to four years. A much faster way to study these genes would be simply to turn them off after a tumor appears.

RNA interference (RNAi) offers a promising way to do that. During this naturally occurring phenomenon, short strands of RNA bind to the messenger RNA (mRNA) that delivers protein-building instructions from the cell’s nucleus to the rest of the cell. Once bound, the mRNA molecules are destroyed and their corresponding proteins never get made.

Scientists have been pursuing RNAi as a cancer treatment since its discovery in the late 1990s, but have had trouble finding a way to safely and effectively target tumors with this therapy. Of particular difficulty was finding a way to get RNA to penetrate tumors.

Bhatia’s lab, which has been working on RNAi delivery for several years, joined forces with Hahn’s group to identify and test new drug targets. Their goal was to create a “mix and dose” technique that would allow researchers to mix up RNA-delivery particles that target a particular gene, inject them into mice and see what happens.

Shrinking tumors

In their first effort, the researchers decided to focus on the ID4 protein because it is overexpressed in about a third of high-grade ovarian tumors (the most aggressive kind), but not in other cancer types. The gene, which codes for a transcription factor, appears to be involved in embryonic development: It gets shut down early in life, then somehow reactivates in ovarian tumors.

To target ID4, Bhatia and her students designed a new type of RNA-delivering nanoparticle. Their particles can both target and penetrate tumors, something that had never before been achieved with RNA interference.

On their surface, the particles are tagged with a short protein fragment that allows them to enter tumor cells. Those fragments are also drawn to a protein found on tumor cells, known as p32. This fragment and many similar ones were discovered by Erkki Ruoslahti, a professor at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who is also an author of the new paper.

Within the nanoparticles, strands of RNA are mixed with a protein that further helps them along their journey: When the particles enter a cell, they are encapsulated in membranes known as endosomes. The protein-RNA mixture can cross the endosomal membrane, allowing the particles to get into the cell’s main compartment and start breaking down mRNA.

In a study of mice with ovarian tumors, the researchers found that treatment with the RNAi nanoparticles eliminated most of the tumors.

Gordon Mills, chair of the systems biology department at the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center, says the work is an important step toward generating new targets for drugs to treat ovarian cancer, which is the fifth-leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States.

“This approach has the potential to [validate] targets that are deemed ‘undruggable’ using current technologies and to provide sufficient throughput to screen candidates arising from high-throughput sequencing, shRNA and siRNA screens and other screens for novel potential targets,” says Mills, who was not part of the research team.

The researchers are now using the particles to test other potential targets for ovarian cancer as well as other types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer. They are also looking into the possibility of developing the ID4-targeting particles as a treatment for ovarian cancer.

The research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Mary Kay Foundation, the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the H.L. Snyder Medical Foundation.

Filed Under: Biotechnology, Cancer, Drugs, Genetics, Health, Nanoparticles, Positive, Vaccines and Medicine

BPA (and More) Lowering Sperm Counts Across the Board

August 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Elizabeth Renter on naturalsociety.com, on August 21, 2012

If there was a problem with fertility, most men wouldn’t know it until they tried to conceive a child. Everything can seem to be in great working condition, but low sperm counts leading to infertility are more common than we might think. As a matter of fact, contrary to popular belief, about half of all infertility cases involve some problem on the man’s side of the two-person equation.

Sperm Counts Plummeting from Chemicals

According to experts, this usually comes as a surprise to men, who assume everything is working well until their wife doesn’t conceive after a few months of trying. Unlike in women, where symptoms like missed periods of erratic bleeding can signal fertility issues ahead of time, for men the problem is undetectable until the sperm is expected to perform.

Numerous factors can contribute to male infertility, but one—low sperm count—has progressively been getting worse over the past 50 years.

What’s causing the lowered sperm counts in men? Several things can be blamed, says Dr. Paul Turek, a male fertility specialist.

Contributing factors to a low sperm count include:

  • Keeping your cell phone in your pocket
  • Consistently using a laptop in your lap
  • Smoking
  • Drinking
  • Recreational drugs
  • Some hair loss medications
  • Illness
  • Stress
  • BPA

Yes, BPA (Bispehnol-A), still found in plastic food containers, can seriously affect both male and female fertility. Though the FDA recently moved to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles, it is still found in numerous everyday products. And even those labeled “BPA-free” now contain a distant relative to BPA, known as BPS chemical, whose affects may be just as detrimental.

Not only low sperm counts, but reproductive difficulties, including Anogenital distance, have been shown to come up from BPA-exposure in the past. Males with short AGD have been found to have 7 times the chance of being sub-fertile. This is a troubling statistic given that prenatal BPA exposure through parental consumption is associated with shortened AGD.

Eight million couples struggle with fertility problems in the United States each year. But, many of these problems can be easily prevented, with common sense nutrition, self-care, and conscious awareness of those triggers that can lead to a low sperm count.

“You know you can bring a sperm count to zero by taking hot baths every other day for a month,” Turek explained. “It’ll take you three months to recover. It’ll go to zero.”

Additional Sources:

Miami.CBSlocal

Source: https://naturalsociety.com/bpa-more-lowering-sperm-counts-drastically

Filed Under: Drugs, Fluoride, Food, Health, Vaccines and Medicine

First ever computer model of a living organism performed

July 26, 2012 By 1 Comment

In what can only be described as a milestone in biological and genetic engineering, scientists at Stanford University have, for the first time ever, simulated a complete bacterium. With the organism completely in virtual form, the scientists can perform any kind of modification on its genome and observe extremely quickly what kind of changes would occur in the organism. This means that in the future, current lab research that takes extremely long to perform or is hazardous in nature (dealing with lethal strains of viruses for instance), could be moved almost exclusively to a computer.

The researchers chose a pathogen called Mycoplasma genitalium as their target for modeling, out of practical reasons. For one, the bacterium is implicated in a number of urethral and vaginal infections, like its name might imply as well, however this is of little importance. The bacterium distinguishes itself by having the smallest genome of any free-living organism, with just 525 genes. In comparison, the ever popular lab pathogen, E. coli has 4288 genes.

Don’t be fooled, however. Even though this bacterium has the smallest amount of genetic data that we know of, it still required a tremendous amount of research work from behalf of the team. For one, data from more than 900 scientific papers and 1,900 experiments concerning the pathogen’s behavior, genetics, molecular interactions and so on, were incorporated in the software simulation. Then, the 525 genes were described by 28 algorithms, each governing the behaviour of a software module modelling a different biological process.

“These modules then communicated with each other after every time step, making for a unified whole that closely matched M. genitalium‘s real-world behaviour,” claims the Stanford team in a statement.

Thus, even for an organism of its size, it takes that much information to account for every interaction it will undergo in its lifespan. The simulation work was made using a 128-node computing cluster, and, even so, a single cell division takes about 10 hours to simulate, and generates half a gigabyte of data. By adding more computing power, the computing process can be shortened, however its pretty clear that for more complex organisms, much more resources might be required.

“You don’t really understand how something works until you can reproduce it yourself,” says graduate student and team member Jayodita Sanghvi.

BIG LEAP FORWARD FOR GENETIC ENGINEERING AND CAD

Emulating for the first time a living organisms is fantastic by itself, and is sure to set the ground for the development of Bio-CAD (computer-aided-design). CAD is primarily used in engineering, be it aeronautic, civil, mechanical, electrical and so on, and along the years has become indispensable, not only in the design process, but more importantly in the innovation process. For instance, by replacing the insulating material for a boiler in CAD, the software will imediately tell the engineer how this will affect its performance, all without having to actually build and test it. Similarly, scientists hope to achieve a similar amount of control from bio-CAD as well. The problem is that biological organisms need to be fully described into the software for bio-CAD to become lucrative and accurate.

“If you use a model to guide your experiments, you’re going to discover things faster. We’ve shown that time and time again,” said team leader and Stanford professor Markus Covert.

We’d love to see this research expanded forward, which most likely will happen, but we’re still a long way from modeling a human – about 20,000 genes short.

The findings were presented in the journal Cell.

Sources:

https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/computer-model-simulation-bacteria-31243/

https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/07/first-organism-fully-modelled.html

https://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2812%2900776-3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_coli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_genitalium

Filed Under: Biotechnology, Genetics, Health, Nanorobots, Vaccines and Medicine

Transforming cancer treatment

July 16, 2012 By 2 Comments

A Harvard researcher studying the evolution of drug resistance in cancer says that, in a few decades, “many, many cancers could be manageable

Predicted probability distribution of times from when treatment starts until resistance mutations become observable in circulating DNA (credit: Luis A. Diaz Jr/Nature)

“Many people are dying needlessly of cancer, and this research may offer a new strategy in that battle,” saidMartin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and of biology and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.

“One hundred years ago, many people died of bacterial infections. Now, we have treatment for such infections — those people don’t have to die. I believe we are approaching a similar point with cancer.”

Nowak is one of several co-authors of a paper, published in Nature on June 28, that details how resistance to targeted drug therapy emerges in colorectal cancers and describes a multidrug approach to treatment that could make many cancers manageable, if not curable.

The key, Nowak’s research suggests, is to change the way clinicians battle the disease.

Physicians and researchers in recent years have increasingly turned to “targeted therapies” — drugs that combat cancer by interrupting its ability to grow and spread — rather than traditional chemotherapy, but such treatment is far from perfect. Most targeted therapies are effective for only a few months before the cancer evolves resistance to the drugs.

The culprit in the colon cancer treatment examined in the Nature paper is the KRAS gene, which is responsible for producing a protein to regulate cell division. When activated, the gene helps cancer cells develop resistance to targeted-therapy drugs, effectively making the treatment useless.

To better understand what role the KRAS gene plays in drug resistance, a team of researchers led by Bert Vogelstein, the Clayton Professor of Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, launched a study that began by testing patients to determine if the KRAS gene was activated in their tumors. Patients without an activated KRAS gene underwent a normal round of targeted therapy treatment, and the initial results — as expected — were successful. Tests performed after the treatment broke down, however, showed a surprising result: The KRAS gene had been activated.

As part of the research, Vogelstein’s team analyzed a handful of mutations that can lead to the activation of the KRAS gene. To help interpret those results, they turned to Nowak’s team, including mathematicians Benjamin Allen, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematical biology, and Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics.

Analyzing the clinical results, Allen and Bozic were able to mathematically describe the exponential growth of the cancer and determine whether the mutation that led to drug resistance was pre-existing, or whether it occurred after treatment began. Their model was able to predict, with surprising accuracy, the window of time from when the drug is first administered to when resistance arises and the drug begins to fail.

“By looking at their results mathematically, we were able to determine conclusively that the resistance was already there, so the therapy was doomed from the start,” Allen said. “That had been an unresolved question before this study. Clinicians were finding that these kinds of therapies typically don’t work for longer than six months, and our finding provides an explanation for why that failure occurs.”

Put simply, Nowak said, the findings suggest that, of the billions of cancer cells that exist in a patient, only a tiny percentage — about one in a million — are resistant to drugs used in targeted therapy. When treatment starts, the nonresistant cells are wiped out. The few resistant cells, however, quickly repopulate the cancer, causing the treatment to fail.

“Whether you have resistance prior to the start of treatment was one of the large, outstanding questions associated with this type of treatment,” Bozic said. “Our study offers a quantitative understanding of how resistance evolves, and shows that, because resistance is there at the start, the single-drug therapy won’t work.”

The answer, Nowak said, is simple: Rather than the one drug used in targeted therapy, treatments must involve at least two drugs.

Nowak isn’t new to such strategies. In 1995 he participated in a study, also published in Nature, that focused on the rapid evolution of drug resistance in HIV. The result of that study, he said, was the development of the drug “cocktail” many HIV-positive patients use to help manage the disease.

Such a plan, however, isn’t without challenges.

The treatment must be tailored to the patient, and must be based on the genetic makeup of the patient’s cancer. Perhaps even more importantly, Nowak said, the two drugs used simultaneously must not overlap: If a single mutation allows the cancer to become resistant to both drugs, the treatment will fail just as the single-drug therapy does.

Nowak estimated that hundreds of drugs might be needed to address all the possible treatment variations. The challenge in the near term, he said, is to develop those drugs.

“This will be the main avenue for research into cancer treatment, I think, for the next decade and beyond,” Nowak said. “As more and more drugs are developed for targeted therapy, I think we will see a revolution in the treatment of cancer.”

Sources:

https://www.kurzweilai.net/transforming-cancer-treatment

The molecular evolution of acquired resistance to targeted EGFR blockade in colorectal cancers, Nature, 2012, DOI: 10.1038/nature11219

Filed Under: Cancer, Drugs, Genetics, Positive, Science, Vaccines and Medicine

DNA nanorobots deliver ‘suicide’ messages to cancer cells, other diseases

February 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Kurzweil AI on February 17, 2012

Researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed

Gated Nanorobot

Hinged nanorobot opens when target molecules are sensed

a nanorobotic device made from DNA that could potentially seek out specific cell targets within a complex mixture of cell types and deliver important molecular instructions, such as telling cancer cells to self-destruct.

Inspired by the mechanics of the body’s own immune system, the technology might one day be used to program immune responses to treat various diseases.

Using the DNA origami method (complex 3-D shapes and objects are constructed by folding strands of DNA), the researchers created a nanosize robot in the form of an open barrel whose two halves are connected by a hinge.

Recognition molecules

The nanorobot’s DNA barrel acts as a container that can hold various types of contents, including specific molecules with encoded instructions that can interact with specific signaling receptors on cell surfaces, including disease markers.

The barrel is normally held shut by special DNA latches. But when the latches find their targets, they reconfigure, causing the two halves of the barrel to swing open and expose its contents, or payload.

Programming cancer-cell suicide

The researchers used this system to deliver instructions, encoded in antibody fragments, to two different types of cancer cells — leukemia and lymphoma.

Schematic front orthographic view of DNA barrel of closed nanorobot loaded with a protein payload. Two DNA-aptamer locks fasten the front of the device on the left (boxed) and right.

In each case, the message to the cell was: activate your apoptosis or “suicide switch” — which allows aging or abnormal cells to be eliminated.

This programmable nanotherapeutic approach was modeled on the body’s own immune system, in which white blood cells patrol the bloodstream for any signs of trouble.

These infection fighters are able to home in on specific cells in distress, bind to them, and transmit comprehensible signals to direct them to self-destruct. This programmable power means the system has the potential to one day be used to treat a variety of diseases.

Integrating sensing and logical computing functions

“We can finally integrate sensing and logical computing functions via complex,

Aptamer lock mechanism, consisting of a DNA aptamer (blue) and a partially complementary strand (orange).

yet predictable, nanostructures — some of the first hybrids of structural DNA, antibodies, aptamers, and metal atomic clusters — aimed at useful, very specific targeting of human cancers and T-cells,” said George Church, a Wyss core faculty member and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, who is principal investigator on the project.

Because DNA is a natural biocompatible and biodegradable material, DNA nanotechnology is widely recognized for its potential as a delivery mechanism for drugs and molecular signals.

There have been significant challenges to its implementation, such as what type of structure to create; how to open, close,

and reopen that structure to insert, transport, and deliver a payload; and how to program this type of nanoscale robot.

By combining several novel elements for the first time, the new system represents a significant advance in overcoming these implementation obstacles.

For instance, because the barrel-shaped structure has no top or bottom lids, the payloads can be loaded from the side in a single step — without having to open the structure first and then re-close it.

Also, while other systems use release mechanisms that respond to DNA or RNA, the novel mechanism used here responds to proteins, which are more commonly found on cell surfaces and are largely responsible for transmembrane signaling in cells.

This is the first DNA-origami-based system that uses antibody fragments to convey molecular messages

Payloads such as gold nanoparticles (gold) and antibody fragments (magenta) can be loaded inside the nanorobot

— a feature that offers a controlled and programmable way to replicate an immune response or develop new types of targeted therapies.

“This work represents a major breakthrough in the field of nanobiotechnology as it demonstrates the ability to leverage recent advances in the field of DNA origami pioneered by researchers around the world, including the Wyss Institute’s own William Shih, to meet a real-world challenge, namely killing cancer cells with high specificity,” said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber.

Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, and professor of bioengineering at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “This focus on translating technologies from the laboratory into transformative products and therapies is what the Wyss Institute is all about.”

Ref.: Shawn M. Douglas, Ido Bachelet, George M. Church, A Logic-Gated Nanorobot for Targeted Transport of Molecular Payloads, Science, 2012 [DOI:10.1126/science.1214081]

Credit for images: Shawn M. Douglas et al./Science

Source: https://www.kurzweilai.net/dna-nanorobots-deliver-suicide-messages-to-cancer-cells-other-diseases

Filed Under: Featured, Health, Nanorobots, Vaccines and Medicine

Cancer Costs Forecast To Rise 62% By 2021

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The cost of diagnosing and treating cancer patients could rise by two-thirds over the next decade, according to a new report.

Healthcare analysts Laing and Buisson warned diagnosis and treatment costs are set to increase by 62% from £9.4bn in 2010 to £15.3bn by 2021.

This will mean the average cost of treating someone suffering from cancer will go from £30,000 in 2010 to almost £40,000 in 2021.

The Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment: A 2021 Projection report, conducted for Bupa, warns this will inevitably affect cancer survival rates in the UK.

It said: “If we do not address the rising cost of cancer, we are unlikely to be able to afford the desired and expected level of cancer diagnosis and treatment over the next 10 years and beyond.

“This possibility will mean that the UK’s cancer survival rate could fall even further behind that of other developed countries.”

The study comes weeks after data from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development revealed the UK is lagging behind other countries on average survival rates for breast, bowel and cervical cancer.

The predicted hike in costs would largely be due to Britain’s ageing population, which is predicted to lead to a 20% growth in cancer rates by 2021.

Rising costs of technology and treatments used to combat forms of the disease will also be a contributing factor.

Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of Cancer Partners UK , said: “Ironically, the reasons behind this dramatic increase in costs are a cause for celebration.

“Cancer is predominantly a disease of older people and because of the advances of modern medicine, many more are living in good health well beyond retirement. This trend is set to continue so cancer incidence will inevitably rise.

“Fortunately, when cancer does strike, we now have powerful new technologies available to gradually turn cancer into a chronic, controllable disease like diabetes.

“However, the rising numbers and the advent of innovation come with a hefty price tag.”

According to the report, the NHS will take the greatest hit, with the money it spends on diagnosing and treating cancer going up by £5.2bn.

Costs are also predicted to rise in the private sector by an estimated £531m and by £131m in the voluntary sector.

 

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/cancer-costs-forecast-rise-62-2021-005343944.html

Filed Under: Big Pharma, Cancer, Corporations, Health, Politics, Population, Science, United Kingdom, Vaccines and Medicine Tagged With:

Flu Shots Could Actually Be Increasing Your Risk of Developing the Flu

December 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Explosive new research has found that flu shots may actually weaken children’s immune systems, and increase their risk of developing other influenza viruses.

The report is one of many to come out within the recent months highlighting the overall ineffectiveness of the widely-promoted flu vaccine.

Published in the Journal of Virology, 41 children were examined by researchers from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Of the children, 27 were considered healthy and unvaccinated.

The other 14 children were diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and received an annual flu shot.

Interestingly, children with chronic illness like cystic fibrosis are actually required to get flu shots in the netherlands — where the study was conducted. The average age of the children participants was 6.

Special report: Even Low Dose Vitamin D Slashes Flu Risk by Nearly Half

The researchers found that children who were not vaccinated built up more antibodies across a broader array of influenza strains than the children who were vaccinated. This means that according to the study results, receiving the flu shot actually weakens your natural ability to fight the flu.

Of course some health officials are still clinging to flu shots, recommending them despite the mounting evidence that they are not only ineffective but quite dangerous.

“Annual vaccination against influenza is effective but may have potential drawbacks that have previously been underappreciated and that are also a matter of debate,” lead author Rogier Bodewes said in a statement.

Amazingly, similar research has been conducted on the subject with the same conclusions. One study examined the effectiveness of the flu vaccine only to find that flu shots are effective in only around 1% of injected individuals.

The researchers from the study stated:

“The corresponding figures [of people showing influenza symptoms] for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)” announced the study authors. In other words, you would have to vaccinate 100 people to reduce the number of people affected by the influenza virus by just one.

The findings do not stop there. The researchers also highlighted other findings about the flu vaccine, which topple the mainstream concept of their safety and effectiveness:

  • “Vaccinations had…no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates.”
  • “Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost.”
  • “The analysis showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions…”
  • “There is no evidence that [influenza vaccines] affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.” — Meaning vaccines do not affect transmission of disease, what they are designed for.
  • “In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms.”

As prominent studies continue to highlight the ineffectiveness of the seasonal flu shot, it is truly amazing that many mainstream health officials and organizations still push the shot on the public despite links to nerve disease and narcolepsy.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/flu-shots-could-actually-be-increasing.html

Filed Under: Health, Vaccines and Medicine

Merck Scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman Admitted Presence Of Sv40, Aids And Cancer Viruses In Vaccines

December 2, 2011 By 1 Comment

Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines.

One of the most prominent vaccine scientists in the history of the vaccine industry — a Merck scientist — made a recording where he openly admits that vaccines given to Americans were contaminated with leukemia and cancer viruses. In response, his colleagues (who are also recorded here) break out into laughter and seem to think it’s hilarious. They then suggest that because these vaccines are first tested in Russia, they will help the U.S. win the Olympics because the Russian athletes will all be “loaded down with tumors.” (Thus, they knew these vaccines caused cancer in humans.)

This isn’t some conspiracy theory — these are the words of a top Merck scientist who probably had no idea that his recording would be widely reviewed across the internet (which didn’t even exist when he made this recording). He probably thought this would remain a secret forever. When asked why this didn’t get out to the press, he replied “Obviously you don’t go out, this is a scientific affair within the scientific community.”

In other words, vaccine scientists cover for vaccine scientists. They keep all their dirty secrets within their own circle of silence and don’t reveal the truth about the contamination of their vaccines.

Transcript of audio interview with Dr. Maurice Hilleman

Dr. Len Horowitz: Listen now to the voice of the worlds leading vaccine expert Dr Maurice Hilleman, Chief of the Merck Pharmaceutical Company’s vaccine division relay this problem he was having with imported monkeys. He best explains the origin of AIDS, but what you are about to hear was cut from any public disclosures.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: and I think that vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th century.

Narrator: 50 years ago when Maurice Hilleman was a high school student in Miles City Montana, he hoped he might qualify as a management trainee for the local JC Penney’s store. Instead he went on to pioneer more breakthroughs in vaccine research and development than anyone in the history of American medicine. Among the discoveries he made at Merck, are vaccines for mumps, rubella and measles…

Dr Edward Shorter: Tell me how you found SV40 and the polio vaccine.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: Well, that was at Merck. Yeah, I came to Merck. And uh, I was going to develop vaccines. And we had wild viruses in those days. You remember the wild monkey kidney viruses and so forth? And I finally after 6 months gave up and said that you cannot develop vaccines with these damn monkeys, we’re finished and if I can’t do something I’m going to quit, I’m not going to try it. So I went down to see Bill Mann at the zoo in Washington DC and I told Bill Mann, I said “look, I got a problem and I don’t know what the hell to do.” Bill Mann is a real bright guy. I said that these lousy monkeys are picking it up while being stored in the airports in transit, loading, off loading. He said, very simply, you go ahead and get your monkeys out of West Africa and get the African Green, bring them into Madrid unload them there, there is no other traffic there for animals, fly them into Philadelphia and pick them up. Or fly them into New York and pick them up, right off the airplane. So we brought African Greens in and I didn’t know we were importing the AIDS virus at the time.

Miscellaneous background voices:…(laughter)… it was you who introduced the AIDS virus into the country. Now we know! (laughter) This is the real story! (laughter) What Merck won’t do to develop a vaccine! (laughter)

Dr Maurice Hilleman: So what he did, he brought in, I mean we brought in those monkeys, I only had those and this was the solution because those monkeys didn’t have the wild viruses but we…

Dr Edward Shorter: Wait, why didn’t the greens have the wild viruses since they came from Africa?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …because they weren’t, they weren’t, they weren’t being infected in these group holding things with all the other 40 different viruses…

Dr Edward Shorter: but they had the ones that they brought from the jungle though…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …yeah, they had those, but those were relatively few what you do you have a gang housing you’re going to have an epidemic transmission of infection in a confined space. So anyway, the greens came in and now we have these and were taking our stocks to clean them up and god now I’m discovering new viruses. So, I said Judas Priest. Well I got an invitation from the Sister Kinney Foundation which was the opposing foundation when it was the live virus…

Dr Edward Shorter: Ah, right…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: Yeah, they had jumped on the Sabin’s band wagon and they had asked me to come down and give a talk at the Sister Kinney Foundation meeting and I saw it was an international meeting and god, what am I going to talk about? I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to talk about the detection of non detectable viruses as a topic.

Dr Albert Sabin…there were those who didn’t want a live virus vaccine… (unintelligible) …concentrated all its efforts on getting more and more people to use the killed virus vaccine, while they were supporting me for research on the live viruses.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: So now I got to have something (laughter), you know that going to attract attention. And gee, I thought that damn SV40, I mean that damn vaculating agent that we have, I’m just going to pick that particular one, that virus has got to be in vaccines, it’s got to be in the Sabin’s vaccines so I quick tested it (laughter) and sure enough it was in there.

Dr Edward Shorter: I’ll be damned

Dr Maurice Hilleman: … And so now…

Dr Edward Shorter: …so you just took stocks of Sabin’s vaccines off the shelf here at Merck…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …yeah, well it had been made, it was made at Merck…

Dr Edward Shorter: You were making it for Sabin at this point?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …Yeah, it was made before I came…

Dr Edward Shorter: yeah, but at this point Sabin is still just doing massive field trials…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …uh huh

Dr Edward Shorter: okay,

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …in Russia and so forth. So I go down and I talked about the detection of non detectable viruses and told Albert, I said listen Albert you know you and I are good friends but I’m going to go down there and you’re going to get upset. I’m going to talk about the virus that it’s in your vaccine. You’re going to get rid of the virus, don’t worry about it, you’re going to get rid of it… but umm, so of course Albert was very upset…

Dr Edward Shorter: What did he say?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well he said basically, that this is just another obfuscation that’s going to upset vaccines. I said well you know, you’re absolutely right, but we have a new era here we have a new era of the detection and the important thing is to get rid of these viruses.

Dr Edward Shorter: Why would he call it an obfuscation if it was a virus that was contaminating the vaccine?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well there are 40 different viruses in these vaccines anyway that we were inactivating and uh,

Dr Edward Shorter: but you weren’t inactivating his though…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …no that’s right, but yellow fever vaccine had leukemia virus in it and you know this was in the days of very crude science. So anyway I went down and talked to him and said well, why are you concerned about it? Well I said “I’ll tell you what, I have a feeling in my bones that this virus is different, I don’t know why to tell you this but I …(unintelligible) …I just think this virus will have some long term effects.” And he said what? And I said “cancer”. (laughter) I said Albert, you probably think I’m nuts, but I just have that feeling. Well in the mean time we had taken this virus and put it into monkeys and into hamsters. So we had this meeting and that was sort of the topic of the day and the jokes that were going around was that “gee, we would win the Olympics because the Russians would all be loaded down with tumors.” (laughter) This was where the vaccine was being tested, this was where… so, uhh, and it really destroyed the meeting and it was sort of the topic. Well anyway…

Dr Edward Shorter: Was this the physicians… (unintelligible) …meeting in New York?

Maurice Hilleman1 Merck Scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman Admitted Presence of SV40, AIDS and Cancer Viruses in Vaccines

Dr Maurice Hilleman…well no, this was at Sister Kinney…

Dr Edward Shorter: Sister Kinney, right…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …and Del Becco (sp) got up and he foresaw problems with these kinds of agents.

Dr Edward Shorter: Why didn’t this get out into the press?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well, I guess it did I don’t remember. We had no press release on it. Obviously you don’t go out, this is a scientific affair within the scientific community…

Voice of news reporter: …an historic victory over a dread disease is dramatically unfolded at the U of Michigan. Here scientists usher in a new medical age with the monumental reports that prove that the Salk vaccine against crippling polio to be a sensational success. It’s a day of triumph for 40 year old Dr. Jonas E Salk developer of the vaccine. He arrives here with Basil O’Connor the head of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis that financed the tests. Hundreds of reporters and scientists gathered from all over the nation gathered for the momentous announcement….

Dr Albert Sabin: …it was too much of a show, it was too much Hollywood. There was too much exaggeration and the impression in 1957 that was, no in 1954 that was given was that the problem had been solved , polio had been conquered.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …but, anyway we knew it was in our seed stock from making vaccines. That virus you see, is one in 10,000 particles is not an activated… (unintelligible) …it was good science at the time because that was what you did. You didn’t worry about these wild viruses.

Dr Edward Shorter: So you discovered, it wasn’t being inactivated in the Salk vaccine?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …Right. So then the next thing you know is, 3, 4 weeks after that we found that there were tumors popping up on these hamsters.

Dr. Len Horowitz: Despite AIDS and Leukemia suddenly becoming pandemic from “wild viruses” Hilleman said, this was “good science” at that time.

 

Source: https://majortrend.tv/5655/merck-scientist-dr-maurice-hilleman-admitted-presence-of-sv40-aids-and-cancer-viruses-in-vaccines/

Filed Under: Cancer, Health, Science, Vaccines and Medicine Tagged With:

Childhood Vaccine Exemption Rates Increasing Nationwide

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It seems as though the “necessity” of childhood vaccinations, widely voiced by many mainstream health officials and government figureheads, is simply not being accepted by parents around the country.

While the rates of children receiving vaccines remains high, we are seeing an increase in childhood vaccine exemption rates.

In eight different states, more than 1 in 20 public kindergartners are not receiving all the vaccines that the government ‘requires’ for school attendance.

Where are the highest vaccine exemption rates?

States in the West and Upper Midwest currently hold the highest vaccine exemption rates.

In Washington, an overall 6 percent of public school parents decided against at least one of the vaccines “required” for their child’s attendance, while some specific locations in Washington have exemption rates as high as 20 or even 50 percent.

Some other states with high vaccine exemptions rates are:

  • Alaska
  • Colorado
  • Minnesota
  • Vermont
  • Oregon
  • Michigan
  • Illinois

In addition, vaccine exemption rates increased in over half of the states, including many of the states with already high exemption rates. Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin were all states with increasing vaccine exemption rates.

Why are parents refusing vaccines for their children?

Parents just aren’t seeing what health and government officials seem to think is so clear about vaccine safety, necessity, and effectiveness. Could it be that parents are reluctant to get their children vaccinated due to the not so flattering history of many vaccines? The flu vaccine alone has been tied to convulsions, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and a number of other negative health effects. Gardasil is also a heavy hitter when it comes to serious health problems, with the vaccine leading to many deaths and thousands of hospitalizations.

Even more compelling is the severe lack of evidence highlighting the effectiveness of the shots. The Cochrane Database Review, the gold standard within the evidence-based medical model for determining the effectiveness of common medical interventions, does not lend clear scientific support to the theory that flu vaccines are safe or effective. Shockingly, these authoritative reviews reveal that there is actually a severe lack of evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of influenza vaccines in children under 2, healthy adults, the elderly, and healthcare workers who care for the elderly. Other research reported on by The Lancet shows that the flu vaccine only prevents the flu in 1.5 out of every 100 adults injected with the flu vaccine.

Maybe these are some reasons why parents are refusing vaccines for their children.

But the possibility of one vaccine causing damage isn’t the only reason parents are skeptical of vaccines. The amount of shots children are given is of great concern, with the cumulative effect leading to vaccine-induced and heavy metal toxicity. By the age of 6 a child may receive 24 pricks. Not only is the number of vaccinations alarming, but parents rightfully feel that many of the vaccines are downright unnecessary, further off-putting parents and leading to vaccination refusal.

‘Many of the vaccines are unnecessary and public health officials don’t honestly know what the effect of giving so many vaccines to such small children really are,’ said Jennifer Margulis, a mother of four and parenting book author.

Parents nationwide simply aren’t buying into the claim that vaccines are absolutely necessary. There is a massive distrust in the pharmaceutical industry as well as in officials and legislators pushing for vaccines. If you are one of the parents who is thinking about partaking in vaccine exemption for your child, it is vital that you know that medical, religious, and philosophical reasons for exemption are at your disposal. Take advantage of these possibilities today, as there is a distinct possibility that the United States government will soon come after the exemptions through abuse of the legal system.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/childhood-vaccine-exemption-rates.html

Filed Under: Big Pharma, Health, Rights, Tyranny, USA, Vaccines and Medicine
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