Futurismic

I try to keep partisan stuff out of these posts, but somebody needs to note that Obama has responded at some length to 14 questions on science policy issues posed to him by Sciencedebate 2008, representing a truckload of scientific associations. McCain hasn’t answered yet. NPR has a short item about both candidates’ health policies. And the AAAS just put out a “policy alert” on a few of Gov. Palin’s views on evolution, global warming, and other topics. Not always sexy issues to the media, but something for American voters to think about.

[Story tips: slashdot, Framing Science; Political Studies by minkymonkeymoo]

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This is just a *face-palm* of epic proportions - welcome to the concept of “viral sovereignty“.

This extremely dangerous idea comes to us courtesy of Indonesia’s minister of health, Siti Fadilah Supari, who asserts that deadly viruses are the sovereign property of individual nations — even though they cross borders and could pose a pandemic threat to all the peoples of the world.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, yes, there is a precedent for developing nations protecting the intellectual property implicit in their native biome - the West has shafted them in the past, after all. But as Jamais Cascio points out:

… it’s extraordinarily important for information about potential pandemic diseases to be made as open as possible, if we want to avoid a global health disaster. Withholding viral data, and refusing to provide samples of the viruses, out of a misplaced fear of viropiracy (or more paranoid fantasies), is simply criminal.

I think you’d have to be very paranoid to not see the logic there, really. But anyway - if you catch a virus, it replicates in your body, right? So if viropiracy became a part of international legislation, would you technically be infringing the IP of a nation if you caught a unique disease there but crossed the border before the symptoms started to show, and end up liable to be prosecuted for piracy as well as smuggling? Probably not… but it highlights just how bloody stupid an idea it is, doesn’t it? [image by Noii]

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ReWalk is an Israeli-developed exoskeleton suit that gives paraplegics the ability to stand, walk - and even drive. This story has been floating around for a few days (including some typically tasteless Robocop comparisons from UK tabloid news outlets), but m1k3y at grinding.be posted the video and it looked so science fictional - that perfect balance between “wow, check it out” and no-big-deal workaday reality - that I thought it deserved a re-run here:

See what I mean about workaday? The whole atmosphere of the video is low-tech, almost mundane. Perhaps they’re playing down the technological angle for fear of attaching stigma, but it’s about as un-Robocop in style as you could imagine. What will promotional videos for the first commercially available brain-machine interfaces look like?

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Via Jeremy Tolbert and various other sources, the headline pretty much says it all. The discovery of virophages - a “newly discovered type of virus that spreads at the expense of other viruses” - offers a potential new alternative to antibiotics in fighting viral infections. [image by Nils Geylen]

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This isn’t likely to let us off the hook for diet and exercise. But reseachers at Mayo Clinic Arizona and Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute say the trillions of bacteria in your gut may play a role in regulating your weight. Mice that lack certain bugs tend to be fatter than their germ-free laboratory counterparts, and exposing lab mice to the germs makes them fatter. How much they eat, and how often they hit the exercise wheel, don’t seem to have an impact.

What about people? One study of children from birth to age 7 found:

The children who were normal weight at age 7 had distinctly different bacteria in their [stool] samples than those collected from overweight-obese children, suggesting that differences in the composition of the gut microbiota precede overweight-obesity.

The usual caveats apply: The bacteria/obesity connection has yet to be proved, and more research is needed before this leads to obesity treatments. SFnal scenarios about genetic engineering, nanotech, weight regulation, or gypsy curses are good to go.

[Illustration: deletem3]

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In typical Daily Mail style I begin with the ever-dependable “X Causes Cancer Shock” blog post. [image by shaymus]

That’s right! The Magic Molecules of the Future or carbon nanotubes - shortly to be used in every worthwhile human pursuit from watching pornography to curing cancer - may in fact cause cancer themselves.

That is to say: a couple of studies, one published in Nature Nanotechnology and another published by The Japanese Journal of Toxicological Science suggest that certain kinds of carbon nanotubes induce lesions and mesothelioma in a manner similar to another wonder-material, asbestos.

The report in Nature suggests that nanotubes longer than about 20 nm micrometers are the chief culprits:

Carbon nanotubes that are straight and 20 micrometers or longer in length–qualities that are well suited for composite materials used in sports equipment–resemble asbestos fibers. This has long led many experts to suggest that these carbon nanotubes might pose the same health risks as asbestos, a fire-resistant material that can cause mesothelioma, a cancer of a type of tissue surrounding the lungs. But until now, strong scientific evidence for this theory was lacking.

Fortunately in order to be as thoroughly unpleasant as asbestos, carbon nanotubes would need to become airborne and and be inhaled, something that carbon nanotubes are apparently not inclined to do.

As ever, more research is needed.

From a science fictional perspective: what will be the tabloid healthcare-stories of decades hence?

The problem with things like asbestos and thalidomide is that their terrible side-effects only come to light after millions of lives are damaged. And these tragedies are by definition black swans, inherently unpredictable and devastating with it.

Where is the next hubristic-but-unpredictable human-derived disaster going to come from? Carbon nanotubes? Quantum computing? Could it be something so boringly innocuous that you use it every day without thinking, whilst it eats away at every cell in your body?

I’m not talking about global warming or bird flu - I mean really out-there, mind-blowingly awful stuff we haven’t thought of yet. Stuff that’s affecting us right now that we don’t know about.

Anyway, less gloom and more cheer. Here is a funny story about a crazy luddite!

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First the good news - there may be a more efficient way to receive vaccinations than traditional injections.

But before those of you with a phobia get too excited by the prospect, the alternative still involves needles - the needles of tattoo machines, in fact.

“… administering pieces of DNA from the human papillomavirus virus into the skin of mice by three tattoo-gun injections produced a 200-fold greater production of antibodies to the virus than was achieved with the old method of a needle injection into a muscle.

Vaccines made with bits of DNA are not new, but the usual ways of delivering them have not worked very well. The reason that tattoo injections are so much more effective is thought to be because the repeated puncturing of the skin by the rotating tattoo needle does real damage to the skin — the presence of a bona fide wound causes inflammatory cells to flood into the site, where they speed and enhance the immune response to the vaccine.”

So probably more painful than traditional hypodermic injections, but cheaper and more effective - two factors that matter a lot in the world of health-care. [via grinding.be] [image by Frenkieb]

We can assume that someone will come up with a less painful way to achieve the same results, too. How about some sort of sticky patch that uses an enzyme to create a skin wound, then delivers the vaccine and starts the healing process, all in one?

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Those nanoparticles sure are handy. Whether it’s increasing the efficiency of computer chips and solar cells, giving prosthetic limbs sensation or extending the lifetime and capacity of batteries, the applications of the rapidly advancing technology are seemingly endless.

A collaboration of researchers from the US Army and the University of Missouri-Columbia have found that by mixing a nanomaterial that acts as a fuel and one that acts as an oxidizer, they can create explosions that are on such a small scale they are useable within the human body. These ‘nanoengineered thermites’ can create shockwaves that can target drug-delivery to cancer cells, leaving nearby normal cells unharmed. They hope to bring the technology into a working prototype within 2 to 5 years.

[story and image via The Daily Galaxy]

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With the organic food market growing and growing, it’s easy to wonder just how much difference it makes. Are just paying more for the same input to our bodies? A group of food scientists grew a number of different crops and animal produce, one lot entirely organic, the other non-organic. They found that organic fruit, vegetables and especially milk had more antioxidants and healthy fatty acids. It’s interesting to note that the most technologically advanced option isn’t always the best one - future agriculture will have to combine new inventions with older techniques if it wants to hit the sweet spot of good food. Now I’m glad I got that subscription to Abel and Cole veg boxes.

[via the guardian, image by nevermind her]

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I think the most surprising thing about this is that it’s taken so long for someone to do it. Brooklyn medical practitioner Dr. Jay Parkinson offers a unique service to his young hipster-freelance clientele - for a yearly fee, they can get two home visits and unlimited consultations by text message or email. Not only does this make it far easier for his patients to get the advice they need at the time they really need it, it keeps Dr. Parkinson’s practice overheads nice and low, and leaves him time to indulge in his own creative pursuits as a photographer. The first practice in my town to offer this service will be getting my subscription fee in cash, with a smile. [Image by ElvertBarnes]

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A lengthy study of nuns, priests and monks by a medical researcher in Chicago produced a stunning correlation between the conscientiousness of the person and the likelihood of dementia in later life. Conscientiousness was described as someone self-disciplined, scrupulous and dependable. Those that scored in the 90th percentile for conscientiousness in 1994 had 89% less chance of contracting Alzheimer’s than someone in the 10th percentile as well as less cognitive decline. The researcher’s hypothesis for the link is that determined and dependable people are more resilient and adaptable to change.

[via reuters, photo by triblondon]

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An enterprising doctor in New York is offering a distinctive new form of treatment specializing in “young adults aged 18 to 40 without health insurance”. As well as making house calls to work or home, Jay Parkinson, MD will meet you online - via MSN, AIM, webcam or email - to discuss problems. Using the internet to search for the best price treatments to recommend also helps drive down the price of medicine. Are local surgeries and GPs under threat from the new world wide web docs? I can’t help thinking about the worlds of Snow Crash or Neuromancer when I think of doctors meeting you online to discuss your wounds.

[via Boing Boing, image from the doc's website]

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{Photo taken by StewartJames on Flickr Creative Commons}

A very interesting article in the Independent yesterday talked about a new study on the effects of vitamin D on health. The study by the Institute of Oncology in Milan and Lyon’s International Agency for Research on Cancer was the biggest ever to be done on the nutrient and found that it had a much bigger impact of health than previously thought.

90% of the vitamin D we receive is not from food but from absorbing sunlight on open skin. A solid dose of sunlight a few times a week was found to reduce mortality by 7%. Even taking pills filled with the vitamin can reduce the risk of cancer, MS and heart disease by as much as a half. Even Autism and Diabetes have links to Vitamin D deficiency. So perhaps the best thing you can do to save your life is to take that walk in the park on a sunny day.

Interestingly, the amount of sunlight needed is quite strong so winters in the UK, for example, are barely strong enough to give a good dose - the cause of countless flu seasons and the infamous Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) . Aside from supplements, light therapy with very bright lights is thought to help.

[via the independent]

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So, for my first real post, how about some good news combining bioengineering and nanotechnology, making it very futurismic–er, futuristic. Whatever.

Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have developed (and patented) a nanoparticle that, they believe, can deliver vaccines "more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost" of current vaccination methods.

Once upon a time, vaccines were made from dead-but-whole or living-but-weakened pathogens. Recently, researchers have figured out how to generate an immune response with a singe protein from a virus or bacterium. They’ve also discovered that the best way to get sustained immunity is to deliver an antigen directly to the specialized immune cells known as dendritic cells (DCs).

The trouble is, DCs aren’t all that common in skin or muscle, where injections are usually made, and in order to use them to activate the whole immune system, you also have to deliver a kind of "danger signal"–which there hasn’t been a good way to do, until now.

The new nanoparticles are so tiny they slip right through the skin and into the lymph nodes, where there are lots of DCs, and they carry a chemical coating that mimics the surface chemistry of bacterial cell walls. The result: a strong immune response without nasty side effects.

The researchers believe these nanoparticles could make it possible to vaccinate against diseases like hepatitis and malaria with a single injection, and at a cost of only a dollar a dose, far cheaper than current vaccines. The research team also plans to try using the technique to target cancer cells. And best of all, they say, the technique could be in use within five years. [Photo from Wikimedia Commons]

(Via Science Daily.)

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Futurismic readers with money to spare and a charitable mindset might like to make my year by buying me one of these nifty coffee-table-bookshelf combos to hold some of my home library. My book collection pales into insignificance when held up against the vast collections of rare and unique texts that affluent CEOs have stashed away … but some is better than none, especially as it seems that poor literacy is a strong indicator of early mortality.

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Technology is offering many improvements to life quality for persons with disabilities - coming down the pipeline at present is a Spanish-designed wheelchair that can be controlled by thought alone.

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