Fighting Cancer – new perspectives

I have just lost a friend so this is of interest to me.

James P. Allison is the chairman of the immunology department at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. His seminal research opened up a new field in cancer treatment: immunotherapy. Instead of poisoning a tumor or destroying it with radiation, Dr. Allison has pioneered ways to unleash the immune system to destroy a cancer.

Two years ago, Science magazine anointed immunotherapy as the “Breakthrough of the Year.” More recently, Dr. Allison, 66, won the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, often a precursor to a Nobel.

Something from the interview… on a different note if you will excuse the pun.

On a less serious subject, is it true you once sang with Willie Nelson?

Only once. I was a postdoc in La Jolla, Calif., and I had this little band that played local bars. He came by and we sang “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Seeing someone survive cancer because of something I’ve been part of is about as good it gets. But at that time, singing with Willie was big.

James P. Allison in his laboratory in Houston. He discovered an alternative to using radiation to fight cancer, finding a way to set T-cells loose on the disease. CreditScott Dalton for The New York Times

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Here  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/arming-the-immune-system-against-cancer.html?_r=0  you can find an interview with Dr Allison on getting the body’s t-Cells to do the work. This is probably the way to go in the future.

This is probably becoming the focus now because here is another article http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-03-human-leukemia-cells-harmless-immune.html on new directions in treatment of cancer (with a difference to the one above)..

Majeti and his colleagues have some reason to hope that when the cancer cells become macrophages they will not only be neutralized, but may actually assist in fighting the cancer. Like a bloodhound owner who gives the dog a sniff of an object that was associated with the person or animal he wants to track, macrophage cellspresent recognizable bits of abnormal cells to other immune cells so that they can launch an attack. “Because the macrophage cells came from the cancer cells, they will already carry with them the chemical signals that will identify the cancer cells, making an immune attack against the cancer more likely,” Majeti said.

Am I a racist?

Watch this if you have not seen it before,

 

http://www.news24.com/World/News/Religion-must-be-subject-to-satire-Rushdie-20150107

http://www.news24.com/World/News/Religion-must-be-subject-to-satire-Rushdie-20150107 Religion must be subject to satire – Rushdie (via @News24)

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity,” said Rushdie, who was the subject of a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for his assassination in the 1980s.

Is there a ghost in the House?

Is there a ghost in the house!

Why O! Why in this day and age are there zillions of people so gullible that they believe in psychics and ghosts?

Is it due to Conmen? One who gains the trust, or “confidence”, of his victims (often called marks) in order to manipulate, steal from, or otherwise predate upon them.

Or is it just plain stupidity?

Or maybe both?

Interesting article about James Randi in the New York Times. Now as you  probably know Randi has a million dollar challenge to anybody who can prove supernatural… and up to now nobody has been able to claim the prize!!! A million dollars, I could do with a million dollars!

And the likes of John Edwards did not even go there: Surprise! surprise!

But here is a link to the Randi article (and of course Uri Geller who has been calles a psychopath also figures). http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable-skepticism-of-the-amazing-randi.html?_r=0

Love the last paragraph

 

In July last year, Randi came closer than ever to the end. He was hospitalized with aneurysms in his legs and needed surgery. Before the procedure began, the surgeon showed Peña scans of Randi’s circulatory system. “Very challenging, a very difficult situation,” the surgeon told him. “But he lived a good life.” The operation was supposed to take two hours, but it stretched to six and a half.

When Randi began to come to, heavily dosed with painkillers, he looked about him in confusion. There were nurses speaking in hushed voices. He began hallucinating. He was convinced that he was behind the curtain before a show and that the whispering he could hear was the audience coming in. The theater was full; he had to get onstage. He tried to look at his watch, but he found he didn’t have it on. He began to panic. When the hallucinations became intensely visual, Peña brought a pen and paper to the bedside. It could prove an important exercise in skeptical inquiry to record what Randi saw as he emerged from a state so close to death, one in which so many people sincerely believed they had glimpsed the other side. Randi scribbled away; his observations, Peña thought, might eventually make a great essay. Later, when the opiates and the anaesthetic wore off, Randi looked at the notes he had written.

They were indecipherable.

 

 

And then of course an interesting experiment. You can see ghosts if you really want to! Here is how!

http://io9.com/test-subjects-made-to-see-ghosts-in-disturbing-lab-ex-1655906924

 

On a happier Subject!

Stem cells?

Parkinson’s Disease breakthrough!

This is for the near future! 5 Years?

Basically the disease is caused by the loss of nerve cells in the brain that produce the chemical dopamine ,which helps to control mood and movement.

Now according to an article on BBC and I quote To simulate Parkinson’s, Lund University researchers killed dopamine-producing neurons on one side of the rats’ brains.

They then converted human embryonic stem cells into neurons that produced dopamine.

These were injected into the rats’ brains, and the researchers found evidence that the damage was reversed.

There have been no human clinical trials of stem-cell-derived neurons, but the researchers said they could be ready for testing by 2017.

Malin Parmar, associate professor of developmental and regenerative neurobiology, said: “It’s a huge breakthrough in the field [and] a stepping stone towards clinical trials.”

A similar method has been tried in a limited number of patients.

It involved taking brain tissue from multiple aborted foetuses to heal the brain.

Clinical trials were abandoned after mixed results, but about a third of the patients had foetal brain cells that functioned for 25 years.

You can read more here http://www.healthcanal.com/medical-breakthroughs/57115-stem-cell-transplants-for-parkinson%E2%80%99s-disease-edging-closer.html

And

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Plymouth-breakthrough-study-Parkinson-s-disease/story-24181860-detail/story.html

If you find this one on hoax slayer go shout at the BBC

 

Fossilised bones of dinosaur believed to be the largest creature ever to walk the Earth has been unearthed in Argentina, palaeontologists say.

Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall. Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus. Scientists believe it is a new species of titanosaur – an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period. Read more: http://ow.ly/wXCu1

Image credit: BBC Natural History Unit

Our wasteful World

I Have Egg on my face, this seems to be not true

Read here – http://www.hoax-slayer.com/unsold-car-stockpile-photographs.shtml

Not that something like this would have been hard for me to believe I may add

Read in Zerohedge.com about all the unsold cars in the world. New but not sold.Because less people can afford to buy new cars but car makers continue to manufacture… Go figure!

ll around the world these cars just keep on piling up, there is no end in sight.  The economy shouts out quite loud that nobody has the money anymore to spend on a new car. The reason being that they are making their “old” cars go on a lot longer.  But we cannot stop making them, soon we will run out of space to park them.  We are nearly running out of space to drive them that’s for sure!

This is just one park to give you some idea of what it looks like  (it happens to be in Spain) of the thousands all over the world.

 

*shaking my head* Who ever said people are smart? Greedy sure but smart? Hell NO!

Is America Burning???

Talking about Nero – Who fiddled while Rome burned? History repeats itself does it not!

 

Be sure to look under your bed!

Is there a crocodile under your bed?

Breakfast in Bed? Terrified mam finds an 8ft crocodile under his bed after it spent entire night just inches from where he slept.

• 300lbs giant had sneaked into the Humani lodge, Zimbabwe
• Spent the entire night lying quietly beneath oblivious Guy Whitall
• Beast had managed to stay hidden for more than eight hours overnight
• The crocodile has now been released back into the wild

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2423311/Man-40-finds-8ft-crocodile-hidden-bed-spent-entire-night-just-inches-slept.html

Is Obama welcome here?

Well not really, he is a politician and we have enough of them – can we not export them?

 

We hang petty thieves and appoint the great thieves to public office.
~Æsop, Greek slave & fable author

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed
by those who are dumber.
~Plato, ancient Greek Philosopher

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where
there is no river.
~Nikita Khrushchev, Russian Soviet politician

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m
beginning to believe it.
~Quoted in ‘Clarence Darrow for the Defense’ by Irving Stone.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go
out and buy some more tunnel.
~John Quinton, American actor/writer

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds
from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
~Oscar Ameringer, “the Mark Twain of American Socialism.”

I offered my opponents a deal: “if they stop telling lies about me, I will
stop telling the truth about them”.
~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952..

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.
~Texas Guinan. 19th century American businessman

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be
left to the politicians.
~Charles de Gaulle, French general & politician

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.
~Doug Larson (English middle-distance runner who won gold medals at the 1924
Olympic Games in Paris, 1902-1981)

I am reminded of a joke:

What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!