GMO
oracknows | November 5, 2015I've been at this blogging thing for more than a decade now. Looking back on those years, I find it incredible that I've lasted this long. For one thing, I still marvel that there are apparently thousands of people out there who still like to read my nearly daily musings (or, as George Carlin would call them, brain droppings) after all these years. More importantly, being a public advocate for science is a rough business, as I've documented over the years. Back when I first started out, I was completely pseudonymous and anonymous. I kept my real name relatively secret. It was less than five…
sa smith | October 30, 2015April 7, 2010:
Using HSV-1 to cure metastatic melanoma
May 26, 2015:
WHOOOO!!!!! GMO HSV-1 vs Cancer
October 27, 2015:
FDA approves first-of-its-kind product for the treatment of melanoma
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. Melanoma, one type of skin cancer, is the leading cause of skin cancer related deaths, and is most often caused by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. According to the National Cancer Institute approximately 74,000 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma and nearly 10,000 will die from the disease in 2015.
Imlygic, a genetically modified…
milhayser | June 3, 2015On ERV, Abbie Smith provides an update on a pioneering treatment for hemophilia that uses viruses to insert missing genes in a patient's DNA. Hemophilia results from from the mutation or deletion of a gene that makes a blood clotting agent called Factor IX; without it, hemophiliacs are at risk for uncontrolled bleeding. While Factor IX can be delivered pharmaceutically, utilizing viruses to modify patients' DNA yields long-term improvements in natural Factor IX production. Abbie writes, "the amount of therapeutic Factor IX these patients needed (on average) dropped from 2613 IU/kg to 206. The…
oracknows | June 1, 2015I've been following Mike Adams a long time, going back to 2007 and even before. It's difficult to find anyone who can pack more pseudoscience, conspiracy mongering, and outright hateful bile into an article when he has a mind to do so. I've documented this tendency many times, so many times that, each time I write about one of his rants, I tell myself it'll be the last time. But it never is, because Adams is so vile and I cannot abide the way he spits on the grave of people who died of cancer, people like Tony Snow, Patrick Swayze, Elizabeth Edwards, and Farrah Fawcett. Every time, his MO is…
sa smith | May 27, 2015WHOOOOOOOO!!!!
April 7, 2010:
Using HSV-1 to cure metastatic melanoma
May 26, 2015:
Talimogene Laherparepvec Improves Durable Response Rate in Patients With Advanced Melanoma
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
They just published the results of Phase III clinical trials of a herpes simplex-1 genetically modified to kill cancers, specifically, advanced melanoma.
The GMO virus has a name now: T-VEC.
And instead of looking at 50 patients who all got the virus, this study was a group of 436 patients , randomly assigned 2:1 to a treatment (T-VEC) group, or GM-CSF only group (the immunostimulatory molecule…
oracknows | May 6, 2015As hard as it is to believe, I've been spending a significant part of my time countering pseudoscience for close to 17 years, so long that it seems that I've always been doing it. Of course, that's not true; I didn't actually become involved in this seemingly never-ending Sisyphean task until I was in my mid-30s, which means that the majority of my life had been spent more or less blissfully ignorant that there are people out there who passionately believe, for example, that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism and that bleach enemas can reverse that autism or that there were quacks out…
oracknows | April 19, 2015I didn't think I would be writing about this, but, then again, I seem to say that fairly frequently. Be that as it may, on Friday I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz's promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions. When I wrote my post, my first reaction was somewhat supportive, but with reservations. However, as I read your comments and thought about it some more, I started having second thoughts. Then, over the weekend, I had a rather…
sa smith | April 14, 2015One of my favorite stories is the tale of a GMO virus deployed to treat Hemophilia B:
Gene therapy for Hemophilia B
... Hemophilia B is a disease in males caused by point mutations/deletions/etc in the clotting Factor IX gene. If you dont make Factor IX, you wont clot properly, and will have all of the health issues we associate with hemophilia.
... The scientists in this paper took six Hemophilia B patients, and treated them with an Adeno-Associated Virus-8 (two at low, medium, and high doses of virus) that contained a functional copy of the Factor IX gene.
Four of them of them bumped up…
oracknows | February 22, 2015Oh, goody. Here's something we didn't need here in the US. While Australian skeptics have successfully been rallying to put a stop to a series of lectures from American antivaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny, we're going to have to put up with a far bigger name in quackery showing up right here in the good ol' U. S. of A. I'm referring to His Royal Highness, the Quacktitioner Royal, Prince Charles, the next King of England. Yes, in March he and Camilla will be here on a four day tour that will include a trip to Louisville to give the keynote address to a symposium on health and nature on March…
oracknows | February 12, 2015
It's been a while since I've taken notice of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, the misguided "food safety" activist who sees chemicals, chemicals, chemicals everywhere and raises fears about them all, especially the ones that she can't pronounce. The first time I took any significant notice of her was about a year ago, when she was making news for lobbying Subway to remove the "yoga mat chemical" azodicarbonamide from its bread. Of course, as I explained, azodicarbonamide is a safe chemical that disappears during the baking. It's a maturing agent that makes bread dough rise better and…
oracknows | February 10, 2015Sometimes, in order to understand advocates of pseudoscience, such as antivaccinationists, it's a useful exercise to look at their most extreme elements. Admittedly, in focusing on such loons, one does take the risk of generalizing the nuts to everyone a bit much, but on the other hand I've often found that the extremists are basically like the less loony versions on steroids. The advantage, to me, is that they are unconcerned (for the most part) with hiding the craziness at the root of their beliefs. While, for instance, SafeMinds of the merry band of antivaccinationists at Age of Autism (…
oracknows | February 8, 2015
Note added 2/10/2015: I've posted a followup in response to the skeptics who defend Bill Maher.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted the return of the antivaccine wingnut side of Bill Maher, after a (relative) absence of several years, dating back, most likely, to the thorough spanking he endured for spouting off his antivaccine pseudoscience during the H1N1 pandemic. This well-deserved mockery included Bob Costas taunting him on his own show with a sarcastic, "Oh, come on, Superman!" in response to his apparent belief that diet and lifestyle alone would protect him from the flu, as well as Chris…
oracknows | December 31, 2014She's baa-aack.
Remember Stephanie Seneff? When last Orac discussed her, she had been caught dumpster diving into the VAERS database in order to torture the data to make it confess a "link" between aluminum adjuvants in vaccines and acetaminophen and—you guessed it!—autism. It was a bad paper in a bad journal known as Entropy that I deconstructed in detail around two years ago. As I said at the time, I hadn't seen a "review" article that long and that badly done since the even more horrible article by Helen Ratajczak entitled Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes–A review (which, not…
sa smith | December 20, 2014Ive mentioned this technology on ERV before:
Saving the American Chestnut tree from extinction with GMOs
Well the scientists involved think they have finally done it. They have finally made American Chestnut trees resistant to the blight that is literally driving the species to extinction:
Breakthrough at SUNY-ESF: Genetic engineering may save the nearly extinct American chestnut
After 25 years of research, a pair of professors at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry say they have used a gene from wheat to create an American chestnut that could withstand the blight that wiped…
sa smith | December 9, 2014Five kids in the first trial.
Then eleven.
Now thirty (ultimately 39):
Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells for Sustained Remissions in Leukemia
Slowly but surely, HIV genetically modified to genetically modify relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients T-cells are prolonging (saving?) kids lives.
Ive written about this treatment a couple times before:
‘Dismal prognosis’ with leukemia? Nothing a GMO virus cant fix.
GMO virus vs B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Why is this not a standard therapy yet??
Basically, scientists get HIV to teach cancer patients Cytotoxic T-cells how to…
oracknows | July 25, 2014
I came so close.
Yes, when I read the latest target subject of this piece of Insolence to be bestowed upon you today, I came so close to resurrecting a certain undead Fuhrer who used to roam this blog on a regular basis chomping brains and inspiring horrible Nazi analogies. Indeed, it’s been at least four years since the Hitler Zombie made an appearance on this blog; so the temptation was there, although there was trepidation too because four years is a long time. There are, of course, hard core long time Orac readers who no doubt would have cheered the Rotting Seig Heil’s return, but I’m…
oracknows | July 8, 2014Over the years I’ve been studying science versus pseudoscience, medicine vs. quackery, reason versus crankery, I’ve noticed one thing. The cranks, pseudoscientists, and quacks of the world have a hard time dealing with legitimate criticism. Now, I know I sometimes get a bit—shall we say?—frisky with my criticisms. OK, obnoxious. I have, however, mellowed considerably since the dawn of this blog, as any reading of posts from the early days (or even not-so-early days) will confirm. Sure, I do occasionally still reach back into that reservoir of the “Insolence” that got me started, but I’d never…
sa smith | June 11, 2014Holy crap! This is so clever!!
A synthetic sex ratio distortion system for the control of the human malaria mosquito
Component #1-- Anopheles gambiae, the kind of mosquito that is notorious for spreading malaria.
Component #2-- I-PpoI, a protein that 'sees' a specific DNA sequence, and cuts it. aka, a homing endonuclease. It was originally found in slime mold. :-D
It might seem as if there is no way these two components could come together in any meaningful way.
But when you are an evil scientist, anything is possible!!
It turns out that there is a DNA sequence on the X-chromosome of the…
sa smith | June 3, 2014A fungus plague has been attacking the American Chestnut tree population for over 100 years now. Scientists have been trying everything to save the tree from extinction.
I wrote about one approach back in 2009:
Virus helps save the American Chestnut tree
Really innovative idea-- Infect fungal infected trees with fungus... infected with a virus. The virus infects the infecting fungus, and weakens it so the trees immune system can kill it. Very cool, but complicated.
The other idea I mentioned in that post was to cross-breed the American tree (susceptible to the fungus) with its Chinese cousin…
sa smith | May 16, 2014So scientists cured a woman of a pervasive, treatment resistant multiple myeloma.
With a genetically modified, vaccine strain measles virus.
Remission of Disseminated Cancer After Systemic Oncolytic Virotherapy
*anti-vax-anti-GMOers-heads-explode*
The media is going nuts over this, but this is not a new idea/approach. Measles, and certain other viruses, can be domesticated and modified to kill cancers-- we call them oncolytic viruses.
Sometimes we straight-up genetically modify viruses for the explicit purpose of attacking a cancer. We have done this with Newcastle virus vs prostate cancer,…