GMO
sa smith | January 9, 2013Whoda thought that injecting viruses into peoples hearts would be not only fun, but good for their health! I just wrote about this little guy that can turn regular heart muscle cells into pacemaker cells (in guinea pigs), and here is another cool study hot off the presses:
Long-Term Follow-up Assessment of a Phase 1 Trial of Angiogenic Gene Therapy Using Direct Intramyocardial Administration of an Adenoviral Vector Expressing the VEGF121 cDNA for the Treatment of Diffuse Coronary Artery Disease
There is a cell protein-- VEGF, vascular endothelial growth factor-- that convinces your body to…
sa smith | January 2, 2013When youre trying to cure a genetic disease with a genetically modified virus, you dont have to get a perfect score.
You dont have to cure everyone in the trial.
You dont even really have to cure them-- Just make their lives a little easier, making it so that they can skip a few invasive procedures, or make it so that you can back off on some more aggressive traditional therapies.
Teeny-tiny wins are still WINS.
Not because we will take what we can get, but because we can modify those tiny wins and turn them into bigger and better wins.
Take Hemophilia B, for example:
The scientists in this…
sa smith | December 17, 2012Im seriously, you guys.
ANY MEDICAL CONDITION YOU CAN THINK OF: There is a scientist, somewhere, trying to use viruses to treat/cure that condition.
The latest:
Direct conversion of quiescent cardiomyocytes to pacemaker cells by expression of Tbx18
Lots of people, either through age or genetic defect, need pacemakers.
Pacemakers, while functional, come with a list of difficulties-- from the insertion process to making sure the damn battery works, to all the bacteria that could hitch a ride on the pacemaker to cause all kinds of complications.
But we are kinda stuck. I mean, we cant just make…
sa smith | December 11, 2012A lot of folks have been forwarding me this story from the New York Times--
In Girl’s Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia
It is a FANTASTIC story about a little girl who had been sick from leukemia for two years, wasnt responding to conventional therapies, and her parents chose to try alternative medicine. Not magic lotions and potions from soulless snake-oil salesmen-- A GMO virus, made in part with HIV-1.
What, exactly, her physicians used, I do not know-- This is a MSM piece, not a peer-reviewed paper, but Im guessing they used something like what I wrote about last year:
Oh,…
gregladen | December 3, 2012I might be exaggerating slightly about the ready availability of the materials...
Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by George Church and Ed Regis looks like a futurist tome on what could happen when technology finally catches up with human imagination and everything changes. Except it isn't. Most futurists are people with some knowledge of technology, a fertile imagination, and a publicist. Regenesis is by a scientist (working with a writer) who is busy making a different future and who has been involved in every stage of development of the technology under…
pronald | November 18, 2012Tomorrows Table: What does GMO really mean?
For years, journalists, television producers and newspaper reporters that write about genetically engineered crops, have used the term “GMO” (genetically modified organism) to describe these new crop varieties. The marketing industry has taken to writing “GMO-free” on their products, as a way to increase sales to consumers fearful of the genetic engineering process.The problem is that the term GMO is misused and misunderstood.Take, for example, a recent story on Voice of America about a newly developed rice variety that is tolerant of flooding.…
pronald | November 15, 2012The Tech Awards, presented by Applied Materials, honors individuals, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies who are using technology to significantly improve human conditions in 6 awards categories.
The technology used can be either a new invention or an innovative use of an existing technology.
NBC will be livestreaming the awards ceremony tonight from the Santa Clara Convention center.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/on-air/as-seen-on/The-Tech-Awards-2012-177952…
This year's categories are: Environment, Education, Young Innovator, Health, Economic Development, and Sustainable Energy.…
sa smith | November 8, 2012Since the anti-science foo-foo hippies lost their bid to have all foods labeled 'CONTAINS GMO WARBLEGARBLE! TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!', a group of scientists at the Evil League of Evil have generated GMO corn for LSD. I guess as a gesture of good-will, or something.
There.
I hope everyones happy now.
*whisperswhisperswhispers*
What?
*whisperswhisperswhispers*
The GMO corn for 'LSD' is not for the mind-altering drug 'LSD', but actually a putative treatment option for 'Lysosomal storage diseases'? This is GMO corn that could help treat a collection of genetic conditions that kill children/…
sa smith | October 29, 2012NICE!
Gene therapy of pancreatic cancer targeting the K-Ras oncogene
Cancer sucks, but some kinds of cancers suck worse than others. One that really sucks is pancreatic cancer. From the intro of this paper:
Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death among men and women, comprising 6% of all cancer-related death. The disease is usually diagnosed at advanced stage as it causes no specific symptoms in the early stages. Thus, the prognosis is very poor and the overall 5-year survival rate is <5%.
And then there is this:
There are several standard approaches to treat…
pronald | October 18, 2012"The tactics of the Dr. Oz show fall short of even the lowest standards of media and medical ethics."
via Letter to Dr. Oz Show Producers by Bruce Chassy, PhD | Academics Review.
sa smith | October 10, 2012Lets play a game.
Think of a human disease. Any disease. Viral, bacterial, genetic, acquired, anything.
Im pretty sure that no matter what disease you just thought of, there is a scientist, somewhere, trying to use a virus to cure/treat that disease.
As I was doing my rounds on PubMed, looking for cool new research, I stumbled upon this paper:
Canalostomy as a Surgical Approach for Cochlear Gene Therapy in the Rat.
I couldnt find this article online, so I searched PubMed for more info on using GMO viruses to treat deafness.
NOH MAH GAWD. There are SO MANY papers! A handful:
Cochlear…
sa smith | October 3, 2012Orac wrote yesterday about the abominable union between anti-vaxers and anti-GMOers:
“Genetically modified” vaccines and GMOs: Sapping and impurifying all our precious bodily fluids?
My 'message' to these kinds of people? Get over it. Fast. Because you look ridiculous.
Skinner: Im telling you people, the earth revolves around the sun!
Abe: Burn him! [lights the pyre]
Shutton: What a story! [takes a photo]
Abe: [chasing him] Youve stolen my soul!
Average Joes and Janes might, might know a little bit about the Most Famous GMO viruses: Vaccines. And thats all fine and dandy for some of them…
oracknows | October 2, 2012About a week ago, I wrote one of my usual meandering posts in which I pointed out the similarities between two different anti-science movements. On the one hand, there are anti-vaccinationists, who fetishize the naturalistic fallacy (i.e., the belief that anything "natural" is better and that anything human made or altered by science is dangerous) and use misinformation, pseudoscience, and bad science to demonize vaccines. On the other hand, we have the movement that is opposed to "genetically modified organisms" (GMOs), who fetishize the naturalistic fallacy, and frequently use…
pronald | September 24, 2012The ‘Frankenfoods’ debate is coming to your dinner table. Just last month, a mini-war developed in Europe, when the European Union’s chief scientist, renowned biologist Anne Glover, said that foods made through genetic engineering, such as soy beans—about 80 percent of US grown soybeans have been genetically engineered —are as safe as organic or conventional foods.
It’s a wholly uncontroversial comment—at least among scientists. But it set off the usual scare mongering from Friends of the Earth, and other like-minded advocacy groups that finds all genetically engineered (GE) foods and crops…
oracknows | September 23, 2012Ideologically motivated bad science, pseudoscience, misinformation, and lies irritate me. In fact, arguably, they are the very reason I started this blog. True, over time my focus has narrowed. I used to write a lot more about creationism, more general skeptical topics, Holocaust denial, 9/11 Trutherism, and the like, but these days I rarely write about topics that don't have anything to do with medicine. Sometimes, it even seems that I've narrowed my focus to the point that all I write about is antivaccine nonsense. That doesn't mean that I've lost interest; rather it's that over time I've…
pronald | August 31, 2012Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering series on Sustainable Agriculture and modern biotechnology #KSLA2012 with tweets · KamounLab · Storify.
sa smith | July 10, 2012I used to think gene therapy was an absurd 'solution' for HIV/AIDS. Well, 'absurd' is putting it lightly. I thought gene therapy was a perverted solution-- Even if it 'worked', it would only be available for the richest people in the richest countries, not the millions and millions and millions of individuals living in poverty who need a solution the most (not just the poor abroad, I doubted the poor right here in the USA could get this kind of therapy).
But in the six years Ive been writing at ERV, my stance on gene therapy has changed from 'Thats disgusting, and Im actually kind of angry…
pronald | June 20, 2012Journalist Kevin Kloor discusses the spread of disinformation about GMOs The latest, most egregious example is a report with an Orwellian title, “GMO Myths and Truths”
via Collide-a-scape » Blog Archive » Collide-a-scape >> Look Beyond the Scientific Veneer of a GMO Report.
He makes a plea to influential and well-respected scholars like Marion Nestle: Dont be fooled by a scientific veneer.
pronald | June 17, 2012F. Cunningham gave a great talk today at the ASM 2012 meeting on the discovery of provitamin A synthesis, Vitamin A deficiency and the creation of Golden Rice. Read my twitter stream here.
pronald | June 13, 2012New study concludes" "The western bean cutworm is neither a 'new plant pest' nor 'caused by GE corn' as stated by Greenpeace."