Alchemical solutions the result of quantum discoveries?

I can't tell you how gratifying it is to read about this kind of thing. In Japan, scientists have been busily figuring out how to get rid of nuclear waste by transmuting it. That is, disposing of radioactive waste by breaking it down into less-damaging components.

I put this in the same category as non-invasive surgical procedures and stem cell therapies--this is where we're supposed to be going. This is what science is all about--discovering and cooperating with the magic of nature rather than inventing ways to combat it.

I could be dreaming, but it seems to me that science has largely broken free of many old restraints since physicists discovered the quantum factor. After quantum physics demonstrated unequivocally that the observer normally finds what he or she is looking for, it became clear that science was looking in painfully limited ways at how to find solutions.

Now the dam is broken, and everyone is realizing that nature itself contains the power to heal. That we don't always have to think of ways to kill things; perhaps all we have to do is think of ways to harness our body's own capabilities.

I feel blessed to be living in this age of wondrous breakthroughs in our approaches to medicine and healing. We are dumping bleeding-with-leeches attitudes left and right. Thank God--just in time for my old age...

BIO gathers bioscience pros in Chicago

It's billed as the world's largest biotechnology convention--18,000+ bio professionals are expected to attend April 9 through 12 at Chicago's Navy Pier. And a dozen state Governors are coming along to show their love for the biotech sector--and the improvements a strong biotech/biomed community usually brings to a state's economy.

Sending your governor to the conference is one way to gauge the level of passion for courting the bioscience industry. States that are doing so include: Illinois (Rod Blagojevich), Alabama (Bob Riley), Florida (Jeb Bush), Indiana (Mitch Daniels), Massachusetts (Mitt Romney), Michicgan (Jennifer Granholm), Minnesota (Tim Pawlenty), Missouri (Matt Blunt), Ohio (Bob Taft), the self-governing commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Anibal Acevedo-Vila), and Wisconsin (Jim Doyle).

Panel discussions will feature healthcare and regulatory issues such as:

• opportunities and challenges in plant-based pharmaceuticals
• ethics and race-based drug development
• results of a national survey on the relationship of the FDA to the life science industry
• new discoveries in cancer treatment
• business and the metabolic syndrome (how business and funding affects treatments for a cluster of common conditions like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease)

Conference attendees are looking at how scientific discoveries can lead--faster and less expensively--to better treatment options. This is what bioscience is all about. Learn more here.

Self-generated pluripotent (formerly known as embryonic) stem cells

Promising news comes in this report that German scientists have been able to grow "embryonic" stem cells from some simple cells taken easily from the testes of male mice. Reason says women probably harbor similar capabilities--they just haven't identified which and where yet in females.

Clearly, we're going to have to come up with a different word now for these almost infinitely potent stem cells that can grow into virtually any other living tissue. The term "embryonic" has negative connotations related to the controversy over when an embryo-should-be-considered-a-fetus-should-be-considered-a-child. Despite the routine destruction of frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures, the use of such discarded (abandoned) embryos to generate stem cells has raised huge debates in the United States, though not in many other countries.

We can only hope that this discovery will quickly lead to developing simple procedures for harvesting human cells that will let us all experience the miraculous benefits of stem cell therapies without compromising anyone's ethical positions.

And we can sit back again and marvel at the wonders of the universe--that we carry within our bodies the ability to heal ourselves. Hey, if a humble planaria worm can grow a new head, why wouldn't humans be able to grow new body parts? In just a few years, we're all going to wonder what took so long.

The magic voice--speech without talking

This is cool. A Ph.D. has invented a mechanism for reading the electromagnetic current that comes from your throat when you're just thinking about saying words. It's called subvocal speech recognition and I can see the future: people dictating notes to their computers or talking on their cell phones without disturbing anyone else, even in a crowded meeting room or a bus or airplane.

One guy in Japan is even working on a subvocal cell phone that works by putting sensors on your fingers and thumb against your face. And I just saw on Animal Planet that they've inserted a piece into a deaf dog's skull and attached a hearing device to it--the dog can hear again. I remember joking last year that one day we'd be exchanging thoughts through metal plates in our heads.

Judging by this stuff, that day's not far off.

New hope for neurological conditions involving protein unfolding

Your cells put up a protective barrier when you get stressed--and that's good. Now scientists have discovered a protein that can speed up the return to normal--which is also an essential part of good health. They managed to clone this protein back in 1999 and have been experimenting with it ever since. Stress causes proteins to unfold within your cells, and this protein (CHIP) helps them fold back up. They found that mice who lacked the CHIP protein were more susceptible to lots of stressors--including fever and heart attacks.

Fascinating that chronic stress can cause the same symptoms (protein unfolding) as serious neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Huntington's. I wonder how long it will take us to figure out a better way to manage stress? The HearthMath people have the answer--it's all in the heart.

But despite their simple methods for calming the heart, it still takes great focus and tremendous commitment--both of which many of us stressed-out people have a hard time summoning.

Measuring health care

Accountability is tough in health care--so many variables affect both process and outcome that setting benchmarks is tough. Apparently, the federal government wants to try anyway. They've announced a new tool called the State Snapshot Web tool. Here's what it provides for state policymakers:

* A ranking of 15 representative measures of state health care quality.
* Summary measures of the quality of types of care for each state.
* Comparisons of each state's summary measures to regional and national performance.
* Performance meters that show a state's performance relative to the region or nation.
* Data tables for each state's summary measures that show the NHQR detailed measures and numbers behind the performance meters.

Diabetes is an area of special concern as the percentages of occurrence keep rising across the U.S.--they're measuring quality of care, differences in treatment by group, and money saved by managing the disease better. They're also working on a guide to go with the tool.

It's a good start. Once health care providers must begin meeting standardized performance measures, maybe next we can break the stranglehold insurance companies have on who gets what care.

No surprise: Immune response linked to marital status

Studies have shown that social support and friendships are critical to optimal life span and social support helps elderly adapt to stress.

A new study says marital status--read: happily married is good--affects how well flu shots work in older people. Sorry, but my reaction to this is, 'duh.' If social support is good for people, it's a no-brainer that a happy marriage would also be. There's no better source of social support in the world than a loving spouse.

Now if only we can discover how to help more modern people get and stay happily married, we will undoubtedly save billions in health care costs.

Priorities

I'm all for the environment--my kids think I'm insane because I try to conserve water, reuse paper, and so on (okay, I was raised by depression-era parents, but it's really my conservationist leanings that motivate me)--and preserving our animal kingdom. But the U.S. government investing $10 million dollars to help Cornell scientists confirm (or deny) a report that a thought-to-be-extinct species of woodpecker has reemerged seems like a skewed decision in a world where that money could be used for so many other good purposes--too numerous to mention.

Given all the people projects--medical research and other things--in our country that need funds, this report almost makes me think the U.S. government believes it has unlimited money. But that's just me.

MS drug risks to be weighed

An advisory panel is meeting today to debate whether the FDA should allow drugmakers to begin marketing Tysabri again. Patients have found Tysabri effective in reducing the progression of disability in MS and also the risk of relapse. Despite its roughly 50% improvement in these areas, the drug did cause a severe reaction in a few patients, two of whom died.

Other patients who had found the drug dramatically helpful were devastated when it was taken off the market. Given the serious quality-of-life issues for MS patients, this seems to be a case of let the patient decide whether to take the risk. As with many cancer and other drugs, when it's their best hope, many will choose to undergo risky treatments.

There are nearly a hundred federally approved clinical trials in process right now testing various aspects of treatments for multiple sclerosis.

It is in no small part through these personal risk/reward decisions that the body of medical knowledge grows.