Free Republic

Scientists Find Clue to AIDS Origins, New Therapy Mon Jan 10,12:02 PM ET By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - A single change in a human gene may hold the key to preventing people living with HIV (news - web sites) from progressing to full-blown AIDS (news - web sites), researchers said on Monday. They found a crucial difference between a gene in humans and one in rhesus monkeys that blocks infection of the virus in the animals -- a finding that offers new insights into the origins of AIDS and gene therapy. Had the gene been the same in humans,...

In his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature this evening, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to outline an ambitious reform agenda. It likely will include not only sweeping changes in California's dysfunctional budget process but also an overhaul of how legislative and congressional districts are drawn. Our advice to the governor: Be bold in the face of predictable opposition from entrenched special interests and majorities in the Senate and Assembly who have a stake in preserving the discredited status quo. Because of his unique appeal across the political spectrum – from unionized truck drivers...

German medics arrived at the conclusion that consumption of large caffeine doses prevents baldness. Male's hormone testosterone is responsible for baldness in men, meaning that the more testosterone a man as, the more prone he is to losing his hair. Head of the research team Professor Peter Elsner states that hormonal boldness could in fact be prevented by means of caffeine. As a result of their extensive research studies, German scientists arrived at a fascinating conclusion! Apparently, claim the scientists, it is possible to prevent baldness at an early age by means of treating hair with products containing caffeine (for...

For the more than 20 million Americans suffering from asthma (including 6.1 million children), a cure may be looking no farther than the lemons in your refrigerator. According to a study at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, a key to preventing asthma might be found in a lemon, a rose or a pine tree. In the study, inhalation of limonene, the main component found in the essential oil of citrus, prevented asthma symptoms in animals. The findings were published in the journal Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.

Human trials are set to begin this summer on a vaccine designed to fight type 1 diabetes. According to the Press Association, a British news site, the vaccine works by "injecting a protein which stops the body destroying the insulin-producing cells." Specifically, the protein "encourages the production of protective immune cells to defend the cells in the pancreas against attack," according to the British Broadcasting Corp. The Times Online said the limited human trials that will take place in Britain represent "one of the most significant advances against the disease since the widespread prescription of insulin began in the 1920s....

Everyone has cure for the Dems By C.J. Karamargin ARIZONA DAILY STAR Tight jeans and abundant cleavage attract millions of viewers to the hit ABC show "Desperate Housewives." Attracting voters will require very different tactics for Desperate Democrats. Everyone seems to have words of advice for the beleaguered minority party. Indeed, they're flowing like the ribald passions on a nighttime soap opera. Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Howard Dean, wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal last week criticizing the "Go moderate, young man" mantra of the Democratic Leadership Council. Trippi urged the party to "reconnect with the...

Leukemia Pill designed to help patients not cured by a successful drug know as Gleevec works better than doctors had hoped. Rumors of the new drug's success have been leaking for months,because cancer experts are so excited by the results.

Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why. Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today. I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing. It is not just an idea: it's a very...

US scientists believe they have made a discovery which could mean a cure for more diabetic patients in the future. Some patients have already been cured by islet cell transplants, but a major obstacle is a shortage of donor pancreases to harvest the cells from. Now National Institute of Health scientists say they have found a way to make more of the cells required. They told the online edition of Science that they used a serum derived from cows to help in their reproduction. Plentiful cellsPeople with Type 1 diabetes need to inject insulin to keep their blood sugar under...

How do you cure a leftist?

CBS has learned that apparently Yasser Arafat has begun a new treatment of Gin Soaked raisins and has been experienceing miraculous recovery episodes of near death experiences followed by lucid conversations with his followers and French Doctors.The treatment, which was first prescribed by presidential hopefull John Kerry's wife "Momma T" Tereza Heinz Kerry. French doctor Luis Tornapart heard of the treatment on the far right wing web site FreeRepublic and was anxious to try it on Arafat. "I thought for sure it could not hurt any, he already had been pronounced dead three times by DEBKA and CBS." Doctors in...

Smoking marijuana, the federal government constantly reminds us, is dangerous in every way. It impairs cognitive functioning, makes you high, and, because it’s smoked, is a demon in a bong hit—and so on. A counterargument is that pot has helped thousands of cancer and AIDS patients, for example, contend with side effects of their illnesses and treatments. There is also evidence that marijuana works for some psychiatric disorders as well, principally depression and bipolar disorder. Among some people, pot is jokingly referred to as “green Prozac.” The problem is you can’t legally take a toke for psychiatric diagnoses. “I think...

The curious case of the catatonic biogerontologists The SENS strategy as described here purports to have all the characteristics that should make it persuasive: it's detailed, it's thorough and it's all firmly based on established experimental work in the various relevant areas of biology. So, you may well ask, where's the catch? Why, on all the many documentaries on aging that remain so popular, don't my colleagues come out and advocate the work that I advocate? There are three main reasons why most mainstream gerontologists remain so conspicuously absent from the growing band of vocal advocates of the SENS approach...

(Note: The original article is replete with in-text links and visual aids; please visit it in order to access those links.) SENS is a practical, foreseeable approach to curing aging because all the types of metabolic side-effect whose accumulation is (or is even hypothesised to be) eventually pathogenic are amenable to repair (or in some cases obviation, i.e. disruption of the mechanism by which they become pathogenic) by techniques that, according to the experimentalists who have performed the key work on which those techniques build, can (with adequate funding) probably be implemented in mice within a decade or so. There...

(Note: The original article is replete with in-text links; please visit it in order to access those links.) What is Engineered Negligible Sensecence? "It's not a very catchy name, is it?" you may be thinking. Yes, I know -- "Engineered Negligible Senescence" has ten syllables and is not the world's most memorable, or indeed self-explanatory, phrase. But it is a good name for our ultimate goal, honest -- as well as SENS being a catchy acronym. Here's an explanation. I'm afraid it starts with a rather long preamble, but trust me, it's worth it. First, let's be precise: our ultimate...

Monkeys motivated with laziness 'cure' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 13/08/2004) Scientists have managed to turn procrastinating primates into workaholic monkeys by switching off a gene in the brain circuit. Like many humans, monkeys tend to slack when a goal is distant, but work harder as a deadline looms. But scientists in the United States have found a gene therapy - blocking the brain messenger chemical, dopamine - that makes the animals work hard all the time. The monkeys, which had been trained to perform simple computer tasks in return for treats, lost their sense of balance between a...

Forget about the hair of the dog. The skin of a prickly pear cactus has been shown to reduce the suffering caused by a hangover. Volunteers who took an extract of the desert cactus Opuntia ficus indica, before a binge had fewer hangover symptoms than those who took a placebo, according to a study published yesterday by American researchers. The cactus, used in some folk medicines, could help cut the impact of hangovers, which affect the economy through low productivity and absenteeism, according to the study in The Archives of Internal Medicine. The suffering may be related to inflammation caused...

I believe that I have found a natural medicine (refluxed pure natural rubber, and since natural, basically unregulated by FDA) that is anti – carcinogenic and may cure cancer, and natural rubber (the longest known molecule), seams to have the ability to also stop bleeding once in the blood system, which in many cases is the first sign of cancer as an cancerous ulcer. The German scientist Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) came up with the concept in medicine of a magic bullet that would kill bacteria but not harm Humans. He had some success with an arsenic compound that he add...

BERKELEY, California -- It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS. And that scares them...

CLEVELAND -- A Lyndhurst man became the first person in the United States to benefit from a procedure that can cure Tourette syndrome, reported NewsChannel5.  Video New Hope For Tourette Syndrome Patients Jeff Matovic, 31, has suffered from severe Tourette Syndrome for 28 years. The disorder caused him to have major tics and jerks, making it extremely difficult to walk or sit still. Last month, doctors at University Hospitals implanted electrodes in Matovic's brain and attached them to a pacemaker.The deep brain stimulation has been done before to help people with Parkinson's disease, but had never before been tried in...

<p>Even if it weren't a blatant piece of single-interest ballot box budgeting, the proposed education initiative now being circulated is so riddled with problems that it deserves the ripping it's likely to get if it makes it to the November ballot.</p>

        BLEEDING HEARTS There’s nothing more dangerous in this day and age Than the liberal poison in thought. It spreads an infectious disease through our culture Which too many people have caught. Its symptoms include shedding blood from the heart In profusion for those who have failed To make sound decisions, to work hard and save, And to emulate those who prevailed. In spite of the obstacles found in their way, The successful are never inclined To think of themselves as the victims of fate, Or to claim that the system’s designed To thwart their best efforts at getting ahead Because...

Indian scientists claimed to have developed a "cure" to diabetes from a plant found in West Bengal's Purulia hills. "The drug - 'ICB201' - has been derived from a plant after it was noticed that people in Purulia hills used it in case of diabetic problems," Dr S Bhattacharya of Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, whose team developed the drug, said at the Science Congress on Tuesday evening. Bhattacharya, while delivering the BC Guha Memorial Award Lecture on "Confronting Diabetic Type II: A global Epidemic", claimed — "probably the answer to 'Type-II' diabetes has been found". Asserting that earlier...

President of Queens Firm Found Guilty of Criminal Contempt For Violating Court Order Not to Market Bogus Cancer Cure Over the Internet ROSLYNN R. MAUSKOPF, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and MARK B. McCLELLAN, M.D., Ph.D., Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced today that a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York has convicted Jason Vale, president of the Queens based company Christian Brothers Contracting Corporation ("Christian Bros."), of three counts of criminal contempt in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 401(3). On April 20, 2000, in a civil suit brought...

A cure for insulin-dependent diabetes may be in sight after United States scientists not only halted the disease in mice, but reversed it. Planned patient trials could lead to a cure for the disorder, scientists say. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said they had reversed the disease in mice by injecting them with spleen cells from healthy animals. The work was a follow up to research in 2001 in which spleen cells called splenocytes were shown to halt the auto-immune process behind type 1 diabetes. At that time, the scientists were surprised to find that treated animals...

After a 20-year search, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution scientists on an expedition to the Bahamas that covered some 1300 miles have discovered the hideout of a mystery sponge that harbors a chemical with a remarkable ability to kill cancer cells in laboratory tests. In 1984, exploring deep waters off the Bahamas in one of the institution’s submersibles Harbor Branch scientists discovered a small piece of sponge that contained a chemical with a remarkable ability to kill cancer cells in laboratory tests. Despite almost two decades of searching, the group was never able to find enough of the sponge to fully...

Phoenix is one of the many sites of the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and this year's event is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 12. Last year's event drew 36,000 participants, most of them walkers, and a couple thousand 5K runners. The race is used to raise money for breast cancer research, as well as for dubious benefactors. Many participants wear a sign to indicate they are walking or running in honor of a deceased friend or loved one who died of, or suffers from, breast cancer. Though the sponsoring Susan G. Komen Foundation has been there in...

Furore over study that suggests 'cure' for homosexuality By Steve Connor, Science Editor 06 October 2003 A study showing that it may be possible to change the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians has reopened the debate over whether people are born homosexual or straight. Research that demonstrates some homosexual men and women were capable of becoming "predominantly" heterosexual through psychotherapy has created a furore within academia. The study was based on interviews with 200 men and women who claimed to have had their gay preferences changed in therapy - often provided by religious organisations that believe homosexuality is a...

Vaccine 'cure' for cancer By Isabel Oakeshott, Evening Standard 22 September 2003 Scientists said today they are on the brink of a major cancer breakthrough with a revolutionary vaccine. The new technique has produced dramatic results against one of the most vicious cancers, that of the pancreas, which has a 95 per cent mortality rate. The findings, which raise hope that a cure is within reach, are being unveiled at a major international conference in Copenhagen. An American team was revealing a new treatment-based on the body’s ability to fight disease. Patients were given powerful injections of material taken from...

PORTLAND - A man died after falling out of his boat during the Row for the Cure fundraiser in Portland Sunday morning. Witnesses said the 63-year-old man appeared to have some type of medical problem before falling out of his boat. Rowers nearby quickly jumped into the water to help and held his head above water. The U.S. Coast Guard arrived quickly and pulled the man out of the Willamette River near the Morrison Bridge. The Coast Guard administered CPR but could not restore the man’s breathing. Authorities did not immediately release the man’s name or hometown, pending notification of...

The suicide-murder at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the suicide-murder in Jerusalem that targeted a bus full of families and children on their way back from prayer occurred only about five hours apart. They claimed about 20 lives each and also injured about 100 people. We do not yet know who carried out the attack in Baghdad, but we know exactly who destroyed the families' bus in Jerusalem. He was Raed Abdel-Hamed Masq, from Hebron. He was not the usual brainwashed teenage suicide bomber. No. In fact, he was one of the brainwashers: a chief cleric, an imam, in...

PALO ALTO (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Fifteen percent of the 18 million people living with depression experience symptoms such as paranoia and hallucinations. This type of depression, called psychotic depression, is hard to treat with standard medication. Now a controversial treatment is changing the lives of people with this illness. Just a few months ago, this scene was unthinkable for Isabel Camarillo. "I didn't want to live at all. I was always thinking of how to kill myself," she tells Ivanhoe. Camarillo started hearing voices as a teenager. "It was like they were controlling my life," she says. They didn't go...

http://cbs11tv.com Step Towards Type 1 Diabetes Cure Jun 3, 2003 10:41 am US/Central There is good news for the estimated one million American sufferers of type 1 diabetes. Researchers have announced an important step toward a cure of the disease. The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay explains that type 1 diabetes is a disease where a person lacks the insulin-producing cells, or islets cells, in the pancreas that regulate sugar. People who suffer with the type 1 diabetes must inject insulin on a daily basis for their whole lives. Now, researchers are testing a new treatment for...

Serum brings hope for SARS cure May 07 2003 at 09:24AM Hong Kong - Serum taken from the blood of Hong Kong patients who have recovered from SARS, has been effective in treating some victims who had earlier not responded to anti-viral treatment, said doctors. However, they said more standardised testing would be needed before serum treatment could even be considered as a replacement for the combination of Ribavirin and steroids currently used in Hong Kong hospitals to treat SARS. Gregory Cheng, Associate Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics at Chinese University, said 20 patients who failed to respond to Ribavirin...

    Welcome Urbani SARS Virus Family Tree Health Fears Spoil a Swiss Jewel Show Virus Badly Underreported in Beijing "Take The SARS Quiz" Doctors Advance Effective SARS TreatmentSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Cure May Be As Close as Your Backyard An effective treatment for the illness known as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has been developed by a team of doctors and emerging diseases experts based on a little-known antidote to coronavirus&#8212;the agent most scientists say is responsible for the disease. According Dr. Leonard Horowitz, an internationally known expert in public health and emerging diseases, coronavirus can be...

Lucky discovery uncovers cancer-proof mouse 22:00 28 April 03 NewScientist.com news service A cancer-proof mouse, which can survive being injected with any number of cancer cells, has been discovered by US scientists. The discovery of the resistant mouse could pave the way for future gene or drug therapies if the mechanism by which it fights cancer can be understood Researchers at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina have now bred a colony of 700 cancer-proof mice from the resistant male they stumbled across while doing other experiments. Doctors have known for many years that in rare...

Just this hour the Hepatologist picked up the phone and called my wife with the stunning news that she is completely virus free. Six months ago she finished the second year of Interferon chemotherapy. The first attempt failed, so the treatment was repeated with Pegylated Interferon. The good doctor was so excited that he did not wait till her appointment next week, he called my wife with the good news as soon as he read the test results. We are so grateful.

'Use genetics to cure stupidity' February 28 2003 at 05:55PM London - James Watson, the British biologist who won a Nobel Prize for his role in unlocking the structure of DNA 50 years ago, has advocated using genetics to "cure stupidity", in a documentary television series to be broadcast next month. People of low intelligence who do not have a recognised mental disability are suffering from an inherited disorder as real as cystic fibrosis or haemophilia, Watson says in the series, according to a report in Friday's Times. In the series which starts on March 8, Watson, 75, is sceptical...

It sounds like a quack remedy -just moving the eyes from side to side to treat emotional suffering. But it works, says Julia Stuart, for anything from childhood abuse to post-traumatic stress disorder 08 January 2003 It sounds too good, and frankly too bizarre, to be true. After just three 90-minute sessions, people suffering emotionally after severe trauma such as rape, a car accident or abuse, can be rid of their debilitating symptoms. Add the fact that the therapy involves moving the eyes rapidly from side to side, and that it was discovered by an American while out for a...

It's green, prickly and sour, but this plant could cure obesity and save an ancient way of life Bushmen of the Kalahari stand to benefit from development of hoodia, which curbs appetite Rory Carroll in Johannesburg Saturday January 4, 2003 The Guardian Hunting with bows and poisoned arrows over the bleached sands of the Kalahari, it was sometimes days before the San bushmen had food or water. So precarious was survival that some believed their god was a "trickster" who played jokes with the land and their fate. The San learned that in this arid wilderness of southern Africa they...

A baldness cure that will loosen your bowels November 18 2002 at 06:50AM By Lynn Brezosky Harlingen, Texas - Something about the aloe plant evokes the image of a gifted child who needs little coaxing to do well. It takes root under perverse conditions - hot, dry weather preferred. Its healing powers are said to give soothing comfort to everything from burns to ulcers. It can be processed into juice, a capsule or shampoo. And a growing world market is looking to Harlingen, Texas, for its aloe fix. 800ha of aloe vera being harvested With little tending, the crop is...

Sudden stroke cure shocks doctors October 25 2002 at 11:07AM When partly paralysed stroke patient Cecil September plugged in the electrical cable and held tight to the bare wires, he prayed as he waited to die. Instead, within hours, he had fully recovered. The astonishing phenomenon has baffled doctors who have treated the Lentegeur man. It sounds like a bizarre tale from a "believe it or not" television show - but September's firm handshake and the spring in his step are proof that cannot be ignored. September suffered two severe strokes, one in December 2000 and a second in March...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) - Over 18 years, Parkinson's disease stole Jack Goldman's ability to drive, write and speak on the telephone. Because of shaking hands, he couldn't eat without spilling his food. He couldn't zip his pants. At times his joints were frozen. Other times, his medicine caused his body to squirm and jerk violently, throwing him out of his chair. "I had gotten to the point where life was barely worth living," he recalls. So three months ago he said yes to a grueling, even terrifying, operation. Wide awake with only local anesthesia, Goldman lay on an operating...