Jun 10

image thumb20 Is it time for a Manhattan project on cancer?
Time to do this to cancer?

It is exciting, learning about this newly discovered protein that disrupts cancer expansion:

Using mice, it was also discovered that the COMMD1-deficient cells were more invasive when implanted. The researchers then generated mouse melanoma cells that produced an overabundance of COMMD1, and injected those cells back into healthy mice. The number of metastatic lung tumors that resulted was greatly reduced when the cells expressed greater levels of COMMD1.

but then I feel bummed because they are so cautious:

The next step, Dr. Burstein said, will be to investigate what changes in the tumor environment may be responsible for reducing levels of COMMD1 in cancer cells.

I would suggest, instead, that the next step be to directly raise levels of this protein in some dying humans, just like they did the mice.  Risky?  Yes.  Would they have had volunteers?  Thousands. 

Why don’t they do this? I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.   I suspect it is because they are bound by the Hippocratic oath, and/or lawyers.   Perhaps that oath needs modified to “Do no harm, unless the informed patient agrees”.

I see no reason, other than timidity, for advances like above to not be capitalized on in months, not decades.

 

Jun 03

The vagas nerve can be stimulated to control and minimize the immune system. This will help those suffering from autoimmune diseases.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25440/?a=f

Faster, I need this please.

Apr 27

image thumb73 Casual Lies: Health Care Cost Edition
Liar

I have to wonder how the people I know that support Obama deal with the constant revelations of lies from him.  They seem like normal relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintances on the outside, but they must be quite warped to continue to support such a blatant liar.

The latest Obama scam is that while he was touting how much the Obamacare would save the nation and cut medical costs, his administration actually had a report  from Health and Human Services saying it would increase costs:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

You have to wonder why the HHS staff didn’t leak it.  Everybody else leaks in DC and I have trouble believing they are honest, because, well, nobody is honest in DC.

Anyway, back to Obama supporters who ignore his lying ways… I just don’t understand you.  You seem…. well, you seem sick.  Get better. The nation needs you.

Apr 24

image thumb70 Pesky big pharma
Awful!

There they go again… investing, risking, and inventing drugs that take on awful diseases. How dare they! What do they seek? They want to prevent the awful descent into the madness of Alzheimer’s Disease, all for a buck of two. The scum!

The current vaccine is therapeutic, meaning it is aimed at treating patients already affected by the disease. But if results are positive, the technology could also be used to manufacture a prophylactic, or preventative, vaccine, Jelitto said.

There should be a law that stops this kind of evil profiteering.

Apr 14

image thumb39 Obamacare and the Constitution
I, Obama, in order to form a more perfect union for my donors

Dave Kopel summarizes the main Constitutional arguments against Obamacare quite nicely.  I’ll summarize his summary:

  1. violates commerce clause of Constitution because it is an individual mandate.
  2. violates privacy rights by forcing disclosure of private information to a 3rd party
  3. violates the takings clause by forcing spending without due process

I would add that it violates the 5th amendment (equal protection) by not being applicable to all classes of people. For instance, only those 18 to 65 must purchase, others are covered by government programs.

If this isn’t struck down as unconstitutional then I don’t know why we have federal courts and a Constitution, because they obviously don’t care what it reads.

Apr 08

image thumb14 The plan to kill insurance 
Smokers get the same rates!

Force us to buy insurance. Force us to have insurance goodies we don’t want. Force insurance companies to offer unprofitable plans. Force them to insure those who only sign up when they get sick. Deny them rate increases.  Watch insurance companies die. Force us onto a government single payer plan. Make it free to 51% of the people, rape the rest of us.

It would be nice if he at least told us the plan. Those of us smart enough to figure it out are also the rape targets.

Mar 25

Obama has a high approval rating with maniacal dictators…

image thumb59 Hope and Change

 

Those of you who voted for this guy (Obama) really should be ashamed of yourselves.

Mar 25

994 davis micrograph medium I’m glad there are smart people with financial interests
Nanoparticles get busy delivering bad stuff to cancer cells
Photo: Caltech

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13334

A California Institute of Technology (Caltech)-led team of researchers and clinicians has published the first proof that a targeted nanoparticle—used as an experimental therapeutic and injected directly into a patient’s bloodstream—can traffic into tumors, deliver double-stranded small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), and turn off an important cancer gene using a mechanism known as RNA interference (RNAi). Moreover, the team provided the first demonstration that this new type of therapy, infused into the bloodstream, can make its way to human tumors in a dose-dependent fashion—i.e., a higher number of nanoparticles sent into the body leads to a higher number of nanoparticles in the tumor cells.

But this part makes me think it all might work out:

Caltech, Davis, and Heidel have a financial interest in Calando Pharmaceuticals.

 

Mar 25

Obama said anything to get elected. Now he’ll do anything in his first and only term.

Can we survive him?  Not easily.

Mar 18

image thumb57 Letter to lying scum 
Will you please give me a job next year?
I think Utahans have caught up to me…

Words can’t really describe how disgusted I am with Jim Matheson.  Here is the letter I sent him today:

Soon to be Ex-Congressman Matheson:

I can’t believe you are going to vote for this health care monstrosity.

You’ve fooled Utahans for years, but this year it is over.  I will work for and donate to Morgan Philpot to ensure you need to beg for a judgeship like your brother got in return for your vote betraying Utah.

Ken Nelson
St. George UT

It isn’t policy differences that have me disgusted with Matheson, it is that he continues to LIE to Utahans about his real beliefs and positions.

Mar 11

image thumb48 $2 billion peed away 
Aerial shot of Kansas City schools

Between 1985 and 2003 Federal Judges took over Kansas City, Missouri and channeled 2 billion dollars to the school district

Not only did they double property taxes to pay this huge bill, but they imposed an income tax surcharge on everyone who lived or worked in the city.

Despite this massive effort, litigation failed either to improve the quality of education or to reduce racial isolation. Test scores continued to drop, and the percentage of minority students continued to rise. Eventually, black parents—who had long opposed the court’s heavy emphasis on "magnet schools" designed to draw whites into the school system—insisted upon a return to neighborhood schools.

Yesterday, the district voted a plan to shut down half their schools and fire 700 of their 3000 employees.

Why, exactly, do we think the Feds can run our health care any better?

Mar 10

image thumb40 Hate those insurance companies
Maybe he’s talking about Medicare
when he tries to scare us about those “insurance companies”?

I love my insurance company (Intermountain Healthcare). They’ve paid through the nose for me over the last two years. Other than a brief scuffle trying to get a rheumatologist, they been very supportive and helpful through two years of expensive health struggles. They have denied one procedure, recently, and… it turns out they were right.  The referred doctor found the problem was another part of my hip.

My wife mentioned yesterday that for all the Obama griping about “insurance companies” the actual insurance that rejects the highest number of claims is….

MEDICARE

They reject 6.85% of claims.  Aetna came in close – so I doubt many folks are “glad they met ya Aetna”. But I suspect that many of the rejections in the private insurance come in their Medicare gap insurance – or in other words the “no” originates from government rulings.

Now to the OBVIOUS here… when we are all under the government, who will we compare them too, who will we turn to when they decline us – which they will?

Feb 25

image thumb78 Antitrust exemptions
SEIU is also exempt from anti-trust rules. How about changing that?

The House voted to remove antitrust exemptions that health insurance companies have.

I’m not sure, exactly, how the exemption helps companies that are largely state based. The industry claims removing it won’t matter a whole lot.

I’ve got two problems with this. The first is that I don’t like Congress aiming at a particular industry, especially when they largely have political aims not the merit of the actual proposal as their goal.

The second problem is that the anti-trust exemptions unions have causes far more havoc in the economy.  Why not just get rid of anti-trust exemptions – period???

Well, we know that the Democrats don’t do anything for the country as a whole, they operate for their constituencies – unions, unproductive, bought off minorities, and terrorists.  And we know that the Republicans are too stupid, or timid, or both, to fight for the country.

What a bunch of maroons we have “leading us”. We probably deserve the thumping the next decade is going to give us. 

Feb 24

"Have you no shame?" he asked Anthem president Leslie Margolin at a special hearing.

Democratic Assemblyman Dave Jones
California Assembly

Dave… you and your colleagues have wrecked the most vibrant state in the Union in just 15 years. And you ask about “shame”?

Feb 16

You don’t want to get into one of those… believe me!

In statements and letters, Anthem and WellPoint have explained what the industry calls a recessionary death spiral: as unemployment and declining wages prompt healthy people to drop their insurance, the remaining risk pool becomes sicker and more expensive to insure, which in turn forces up prices and pushes more people out of the market.

I’m sure that Anthem is screwing its customers as much as it can get away with. But the ONLY reason that happens is that California and the Federal Government have driven out most insurers from California.

If Anthem is screwing you, switch. Ooops… nobody home?  Well, bitch to California, not to a business trying to earn a buck.