Tag Archives: health

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Needle-free vaccine

smoothieGood news for spike-averse individuals like myself with the ongoing development of a vaccination method that claims to be as pleasant as drinking a yogurt smoothie:

This new generation vaccine has big benefits beyond eliminating the “Ouch!” factor. Delivering the vaccine to the gut — rather than injecting it into a muscle — harnesses the full power of the body’s primary immune force, which is located in the small intestine.

…

“Nature isn’t used to seeing antigens injected into a muscle,” said Barrett, who also is a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The place where your immune system is designed to encounter and mount a defense against antigens is your gut.”

Wonderful news.

[from Physorg][image from Dannynic on flickr]

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Doctor, my nays: Physicians strike back at online reviews

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scrubsLike restaurants and hair stylists, doctors now have to face the public, in the form of reviews posted on the Internet. Some are trying to get patients to sign promises not to post negative comments — or any comments at all. It’s even spawned at least one new business: Medical Justice, in Greensboro, North Carolina, sells a standard waiver agreement.

Patients who sign agree not to post online comments about the doctor, “his expertise and/or treatment.”

It seems like swimming upstream in the Internet age, but let’s do some point/counterpoint:

Some sites “are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices,” and their sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation, [Medical Justice founder Dr. Jeffrey] Segal said….

John Swapceinski, co-founder of RateMDs.com, said that in recent months, six doctors have asked him to remove negative online comments based on patients’ signed waivers. He has refused. “They’re basically forcing the patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, and I really find that repulsive.”…

“Are there bad doctors out there? Absolutely, but this is not a good way to figure it out,” [Chicago gynecologist Lauren] Streicher said.

Ars techica comments:

Review sites will only continue to increase in popularity—though potential customers should always take what they read online with a grain of salt. Instead of fighting the trend, doctors need to embrace the new reality and maybe even use the reviews as an opportunity to improve themselves.

[Image: Scrubs, by ndanger]

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Bionic eye breakthrough

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eye_closeUS company Second Sight have developed a bionic eye system that allows a man who has been blind for 30 years to see flashes of light:

He says he can now follow white lines on the road, and even sort socks, using the bionic eye, known as Argus II. It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye.

The Argus II is designed to help sufferers of retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition.

[article form the BBC][image from Mazintosh – Fotogranada on flickr]

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Gattaca becomes reality – all babies to be DNA sequenced at birth by 2020?

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digital rendering of DNAA genetics outfit named Illumina is preparing to launch an affordable genetic mapping service in the next couple of years. Its first few customers can expect to pay between US$10,000 and US$20,000 for a complete mapping of every gene in their DNA, but their chief executive has told The Times that by 2020 the equipment should be so affordable that all newborns will have their genomes sequenced at birth:

“The limitations are sociological; when and where people think it can be applied, the concerns people have about misinformation and the background ethics questions.

“I think those are actually going to be the limits that push it out to a ten-year timeframe,” he added.

Of course, he’s bound to be positive about the prospects; CEO of the company isn’t exactly a disinterested position. But I think that’s a pretty plausible timeframe, if only so far as the capability is concerned.

And there will be resistance to the idea, even if the Gattaca comparison is rather overstated. Given the UK government’s current obsession with storing the minutia of its citizen’s lives, I’d be worried about letting them have my entire genetic sequence – though not because of what they would use it for so much as that I couldn’t trust them not to leave it in a briefcase on a rush-hour train…

Even that makes light of a potentially sticky ethical quagmire, though; we won’t get to see everything that’s hidden in Pandora’s box until we actually open the lid. Let’s just hope we’ve gotten over our little global obsession with copyright and intellectual property by the time the street-corner sequencer shacks open for business, eh? [story via FuturePundit; image by ynse]

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Multiple sclerosis responds to stem cell therapy

Still wondering what stem cell therapy might be good for? Wonder no more – a team from the University of Chicago have used stem cells to treat – and in some cases partially reverse – the effects of multiple sclerosis. The doctors…

… recruited 12 women and 11 men in the early relapsing-remitting stage of MS, who had not responded to treatment with the drug, interferon beta, after six months.

They removed stem cells from the patients’ bone marrow, and then used chemicals to destroy all existing immune cells in the body, before re-injecting the stem cells. These then developed into naïve immune cells that do not see myelin as alien, and hence do not attack it.

Three years later, 17 of the patients had improved by at least one point on a standard disability scale, while none of the patients had deteriorated.

Kinda like the biological equivalent of a complete oil change! Those are some pretty impressive results; I think we’re going to see a lot of awesome stuff come out of the stem cell field over the next decade, especially now there’s a US administration that isn’t actively hostile to it on moral grounds.

Looking further ahead, maybe the regenerative power of stem cells will eventually lead to the science fiction staple of rejuvenation treatments?