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The amazing part isn’t that she tried but that she seems to have succeeded, at least in mice: This is a great American story and also, obviously, a great statement about the value of legal immigration. We’re lucky to have Angela and she’s equally lucky to have this country. Talk about a win-win situation.

It sounds like one of those diseases that should have been wiped out long ago, but malaria, unfortunately, is alive and well, especially in Africa and other tropical, third world locations. Battling malaria is complicated for numerous reasons, among them the difficulty of creating drugs to battle the disease. Now, however, Hebrew University researchers have come up with a novel method of producing the medicine that can treat malaria – using common, everyday tobacco plants. Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via mosquitoes. Symptoms of malaria include fever, headache, and vomiting, and usually appear between...

Since the HIV virus was discovered 30 years ago this week, 30 million people have died from the disease, and it continues to spread at the rate of 7,000 people per day globally, the UN says. There's not much good news when it comes to this devastating disease. But that is perhaps why the story of the man scientists call the "Berlin patient" is so remarkable and has generated so much excitement among the HIV advocacy community. Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007....

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) — A 45-year-old man now living in the Bay Area may be the first person ever cured of the deadly disease AIDS, the result of the discovery of an apparent HIV immunity gene. Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a “functional cure.” Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem...

(Mashable) -- More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling for Apple to remove an app from the iTunes store that was created by an anti-gay Christian organization. Exodus International, which according to its website has ministries that "provide support for individuals who want to recover from homosexuality," released the app on February 15. The app has a 4+ approval rating from the Apple app store, and the organization is quick to point out that this rating is reserved for those apps that "contain no objectionable material." Gay rights activists obviously disagree.

When she was a toddler, Lula Balmond’s eczema was so bad that she had to be bandaged every night to help her sleep. And when Great Ormond Street children’s hospital said they wanted to admit her for two weeks, her mother Natalie was at her wits’ end. So in desperation she concocted her own cure in kitchen –and it worked.

Three California unions are accusing a rival labor coalition of using "shameful" tactics to win exclusive contracts for building renewable power plants — tactics they said delay new jobs and add to each project's costs. Unions representing carpenters, laborers and operating engineers criticized California Unions for Reliable Energy for challenging construction projects on environmental grounds — then dropping objections after its main affiliate, the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California, wins lucrative contracts to supply workers. Since 2000, CURE has participated in environmental hearings for all 12 renewable energy projects proposed for the Southern California desert, filing more...

Starting at 10AM we will present a special edition of the Jim Vicevich Show. Sandra Raymond, from the Lupus Foundation of America will be joining us, as well as Lisa Sartorius, the President of the Connecticut Lupus Foundation, as we take some time to raise money for Lupus research. Click here to contribute. Look for the “DONATE NOW” on the left hand side of the donate page. Read more about Lupus below the fold. As many of you may know I have Lupus. Lupus (SLE, CLE, SCLE) is a debilitating autoimmune disease, and while it’s affects on each individual can...

Big news no matter the circumstances, but in case you stumble across the headline elsewhere and are tempted to think it’s a major breakthrough, I recommend reading this excellent Fox News piece for perspective. The good news, obviously: An HIV-positive patient who was treated for leukemia more than three years ago shows no signs of the virus in his system to this day. Doctors can’t be completely sure that trace amounts aren’t lying dormant somewhere in his body, but as far as they’re able to measure, it’s all gone. He’s the first patient on record to be completely cured.The bad...

Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill? Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too...

White House Refuses to Release Donors to David Axelrod's CharityBy John Cook In 1998, White House senior adviser David Axelrod co-founded a charity aimed at curing epilepsy, which his daughter suffers from. It raised $800,000 last year from corporate and private donors. The White House won't say who they are. **SNIP** David Axelrod has no current official affiliation with CURE, but the organization's press materials describe him as a "CURE father and co-founder," and his White House bio says he "helped found" it. Susan Axelrod serves as CURE's chair, an unpaid position. Any viewer of Fox News piece, which is...

Retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor and two coauthors (Dr. Stanley Prusiner, recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine, and Ken Dychtwald, a psychologist and gerontologist) published a profound op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. They called for a massive effort to cure Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). In so writing, they echoed Maria Shriver, who has been making the same argument: It’s cheaper, as well as more compassionate, to cure the malady than it is to care for it. As the op-ed notes, we don’t spend money on polio anymore, not because we streamlined treatment or because we...

Scientists today hailed the 'end game' in the battle to understand the causes of cancer and how to treat it. In a dramatic breakthrough compared to the discovery of penicillin, doctors have successfully trialled a drug that uses genetic data to target specific tumours. Professor Mark Stratton, the head of the Cancer Genome Project, today said that researchers had reached a 'remarkable moment' in the fight against the disease. 'We have the potential to sequence cancer genomes in their thousands and tens of thousands to find all the mutations within them,' he told Radio 4's Today programme. 'We have entered...

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers narrowly advanced a bill today that would repeal a state law designed to find the causes and cures of homosexuality. The law, written in 1950, classifies homosexuals as "sexual deviants" and requires the state Department of Mental Health to conduct research on "deviations conducive to sex crimes against children." The research would be used to help identify potential sex offenders. The bill moved out of the Assembly Committee on Public Safety on a 4-0 vote, with one Democrat and two Republican members abstaining from voting. They said the law's reference to homosexuality should be removed but...

There may be a big breakthrough in cancer therapy coming. A study published in Nature, from a team headed by CalTech chemical engineering professor Mark Davis (right), proves a method for RNA Interference, using tiny bits of RNA injected into the blood, which interfered with the reproduction of tumor cells. There is tremendous excitement over “game-changing” therapies for cancer, Parkinson’s, and chronic pain. As always there is also a compelling back story. Davis began his work after watching his wife nearly die from breast cancer treatments. The work he has just done on humans replicates research that won Andrew Fire...

OK Guys/Gals. I have not had an attack in years but after attending a couple of Brewfests and relizing how good Ale is (I quit drinking beer do to gout years ago) and forgetting how crippling and excrutiating an attack of gout is well I have a whole foot invovled. As a careprovider I have to get up (I have an old wheelchair to use the pain is that bad). I dont want to go to the Doc and thought I would try some home flushing of the uric acid. Right now I have a combo in one ice pitcher...

Medication that can protect humans against nuclear radiation has been developed by Jewish-American scientists in cooperation with a researcher and investors from Israel. The full story behind the dramatic discovery will be published in Yedioth Ahronoth's weekend edition. The ground-breaking medication, developed by Professor Andrei Gudkov – Chief Scientific Officer at Cleveland BioLabs - may have far-reaching implications on the balance of power in the world, as states capable of providing their citizens with protection against radiation will enjoy a significant strategic advantage vis-à-vis their rivals. For Israel, the discovery marks a particularly dramatic development that could deeply affect the...

Medication that can protect humans against nuclear radiation has been developed by Jewish-American scientists in cooperation with a researcher and investors from Israel. The full story behind the dramatic discovery will be published in Yedioth Ahronoth's weekend edition. The ground-breaking medication, developed by Professor Andrei Gudkov – Chief Scientific Officer at Cleveland BioLabs - may have far-reaching implications on the balance of power in the world, as states capable of providing their citizens with protection against radiation will enjoy a significant strategic advantage vis-à-vis their rivals. For Israel, the discovery marks a particularly dramatic development that could deeply affect the...

How the humble hydrangea shrub could hold the key to curing MS, diabetes and arthritis By FIONA MACRAE 05th June 2009 It's bright and beautiful flowers bring a splash of colour to gardens all over Britain. But it seems the hydrangea is more than just a pretty bloom. A drug made from its roots could be used to treat a raft of common diseases, researchers say. The colourful shrub - a staple of Chinese medicine - has the power to 'revolutionise' the treatment of multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and some forms of diabetes and arthritis, scientists claimed yesterday. Hydrangea: The common...

Hung over? Try eggs, fries, cocoa ... Thursday, January 1, 2009 3:24 AM By Kevin Mayhood THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH The cup of cures for your pounding head and queasy stomach runneth over. New Year's Day is a little late for a lecture on abstinence or moderation, and we won't go into the scientific intricacies of a hangover. Suffice it to say you're hurtin', so here are a few remedies that folks say work, at least for them. "Hot chocolate," said Laura Yazvac, a bartender at the Surly Girl Saloon in the Short North. "Chocolate milk is good for dehydration." Lactose-intolerant?...

An eminent French cardiologist has triggered an impassioned debate in the medical world over his claim to have discovered a cure for alcoholism. Dr Olivier Ameisen, 55, one of France's top heart specialists,says he overcame his own addiction to alcohol by self-administering doses of a muscle-relaxant called baclofen. He has now written a book about his experience - Le Dernier Verre (The Last Glass) - in which he calls for clinical trials to test his theory that baclofen suppresses the craving for drink. Widespread media coverage of his book in France has led to a rush of demands from alcoholics...

Doctors in Berlin are reporting that they cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a person naturally resistant to the virus. But while the case has novel medical implications, experts say it will be of little immediate use in treating AIDS. Top American researchers called the treatment unthinkable for the millions infected in Africa and impractical even for insured patients in top research hospitals. “It’s very nice, and it’s not even surprising,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “But it’s just off the table of...

The Race for the Cure® One in eight women will be stricken with breast cancer in her lifetime. The KomenCharlotte Race for the Cure® raises money to fund education, screening and treatment programs for these women and thousands of others in our own community and supports the national search for a cure. The Komen Race for the Cure® Series is the largest series of 5K run/ walks in the world. Since its origination in Dallas in 1983, the Komen Race for the Cure® Series has grown from one local race with 800 participants to an international series of 115 races...

A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday. The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy -- starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies. (snip) "I had never expected such a strong effect on these aggressive tumor models," she said. The researchers believe lodamin may also be useful in other diseases marked by abnormal blood vessel...

Growing evidence shows that surgery may effectively cure Type 2 diabetes — an approach that not only may change the way the disease is treated, but that introduces a new way of thinking about diabetes. A new article — published in a special supplement to the February issue of Diabetes Care by a leading expert in the emerging field of diabetes surgery — points to the small bowel as the possible site of critical mechanisms for the development of diabetes. The study's author, Dr. Francesco Rubino of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, presents scientific evidence on the mechanisms of diabetes...

Scientists claim videos are proof of breakthrough An injection that dramatically relieved the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease within minutes would qualify as the discovery of the decade. That is exactly what was claimed yesterday for an experimental treatment being tested in America. Scientists at the Institute for Neurological Research at the University of California have treated around 50 patients at a private clinic by injecting an anti-arthritic drug, etanercept, into the spinal column in the neck and then tilting the patients to encourage the drug to flow to the brain. They claim 90 per cent respond to the treatment, usually...

AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) ― There is new hope for patients diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. There's a new treatment being studied in Colorado and it has already cured one patient. Most patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer die from it, but a national clinical trial has left Richard Jordan, from Fort Collins, cancer free. Jordan has defied the odds. Just over a year ago, he was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer -- the tumor was choking a major blood vessel. "You usually don't last more than six months," Jordan said. Doctors at the University of Colorado Cancer Center offered some hope....

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - New research reports posted on the American Cancer Society's Web site late Tuesday suggest that a Florida man with no medical training may have invented a machine that could lead to a cure for cancer. "It gives me goose bumps that there might be a better way to do this and it looks like it's happening," said John Kanzius, inventor of the machine. Kanzius, 63, is a former broadcast executive from Pennsylvania who wondered if his background in physics and radio could come in handy in treating the disease from which he suffers himself. Created...

Tuesday, 30 October 2007, 11:55 GMT Blood findings bring malaria hope Researchers could be a step closer to a cure for malaria after discovering people with blood group O are naturally protected from its most severe forms. Edinburgh University has found blood type O people are significantly less likely to experience the most life-threatening effects of malaria. It is hoped the discovery will help develop drugs which mimic the properties of red cells. Red cells in O group blood prevent malaria worsening. "We may be able to reduce the number of children dying from severe malaria in sub-Saharan Africa"Dr...

Cancer cure 'may be available in two years' By Nic Fleming Science Correspondent  Last Updated: 8:26pm BST 19/09/2007   Cancer sufferers could be cured with injections of immune cells from other people within two years, scientists say. Red tape hinders cancer research, says reportUS researchers have been given the go-ahead to give patients transfusions of “super strength” cancer-killing cells from donors.Dr Zheng Cui, of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, has shown in laboratory experiments that immune cells from some people can be almost 50 times more effective in fighting cancer than in others.Dr Cui, whose work is highlighted...

VENLO, Netherlands - Do you find your fingers drifting into your mouth when you're nervous, anxious or just bored? Are your nails chewed to splinters or your cuticles gnawed to bleeding pulp? Nail biting is more than a bad habit. Doctors say it is one of the most common symptoms of stress or of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, especially for teenagers or younger children, and can lead to disfigurement and serious infection. Alain-Raymond van Abbe, a former health industry and cosmetics promoter, estimates the world's pathological nail biters number 600 million or more. He saw that onychophagy was so widespread that...

Inventor from Erie, P.A. teams up with leading cancer center. The work has been quietly been going on for the last three years in a no-frills laboratory in Erie, Pennsylvania. Inventor, John Kanzius, working with Jim and Charlie Rutkowski, have been perfecting a device that will kill cancer cells with a radio frequency. This humble workspace could soon become the epicenter of one of the most stunning scientific breakthroughs in cancer treatment in years. Using the Kanzius RF machine and special nanoparticles, it appears that cancer cells can be targeted and killed without harming the rest of the body. This...

"Those who cure you will kill you..." So, what's new?

Could a graze on the head help cure baldness? Biologists had thought that once mammals lose their hair follicles, they are gone forever. Now George Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his colleagues have shown that adult mice can regenerate follicles when their skin is wounded.

A BRITISH hospital has made the world's first attempt to treat blindness with a revolutionary gene therapy. Surgeons at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London operated on Robert Johnson, who was born with a rare sight disorder known as Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA), which deteriorates with age. Mr Johnson, 23, who had genes inserted into one eye, could see only outlines during the day and very little at night before having the procedure yesterday. He is one of a dozen young patients selected for the first clinical trial to test the new therapy, which has already proved successful at restoring...

New Cure for Cancer: Truth or Dare? by Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, American Cancer Society, for ABC News There is the medical equivalent of a tsunami wave building out there, only we don't know where this one is going to land. It is called DCA, and we at the American Cancer Society are suddenly receiving requests for information about something few if any of us had heard about as a cancer treatment until this past week. I suspect some of this rapid explosion is fueled in part by the Internet and the rapid exchange of information, and some by advocates who...

New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens. It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA),...

Scientists have identified a population of human colon cancer stem cells that can initiate tumor growth and differentiate into mature tumors, according to two reports in Nature. Two groups, working independently, showed that a subpopulation of CD133+ cells within the tumor, representing just a small fraction of the overall cancer mass, behave as cancer-initiating cells, with the ability to maintain themselves in culture in an undifferentiated state, initiate tumor growth after xenotransplantation in mice, and differentiate into cancers that are phenotypically indistinguishable from the original human tumor. "This is for me a really exciting set of reports," said Jeremy Rich,...

New discoveries that pinpoint bad seeds leading to a major redirection of research A spate of new discoveries about the basic biology of cancer is pushing researchers toward an astonishing conclusion: For decades, efforts to cure the disease may have targeted the wrong cells. Current therapies treat all cancer cells the same. They're aimed at shrinking tumours on the basis that the various cells within them all have similar powers to spawn new cancers and spread destruction. But mounting evidence suggests that cancer's real culprits -- the roots of perhaps every tumour -- are actually a small subset of bad...

Britons freed from chains in mullah's 'drug cure' prison By Isambard Wilkinson in Haripur (Filed: 06/10/2006) A Pakistani cleric has been arrested for running a private jail to which he lured dozens of drug addicts from Britain by offering a spiritual cure in return for money. Treatment: Maulana Ilyas Qadri In a raid this week, police found 113 people, aged between 12 and 50, bound in chains and shackled together at a madrassa, or religious school, in a remote village in northern Pakistan. At least seven were British nationals of Pakistani origin. Many prisoners, whose relatives consigned them to the...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2006 -- Next time the munchies hit, Americans in some parts of the United States only need to look for the red, white and blue bag asking shoppers to “Support Our Troops.” Lowes Foods stores in North and South Carolina and Virginia have recently started carrying Support Our Troops tortilla chips. The chips are packaged in red, white and blue bags and percentage of the proceeds from the sales benefits local Operation Homefront chapters. The chips run $1.99 to $2.59 a bag. Courtesy photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The bags of Support Our Troops...

Cures for a wide range of food allergies are less than a decade away, scientists said yesterday. By modifying the proteins in foods that cause the reactions, researchers have created treatments that can safely desensitise the body's immune system. "Therapies for food allergy will be on the market within seven to 10 years," said Ronald van Ree, of the University of Amsterdam, who is leading work on the development of treatments. (Snip) Because the allergens are well known, he was able to artificially produce them, but with a difference. "We can change the molecules so that IgE antibodies do not...

Scientists are taking the first major step in using stem cells to replace retinal cells lost to degenerative eye diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. According to findings published today, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle can reliably make retinal cells from embryonic stem cells. The researchers are now implanting the cells into blind animals to see if the cells can restore vision. "This work is the first step toward retinal reconstitution," says Stephen Rose, chief research officer at the Foundation Fighting Blindness, a nonprofit funding agency based in Owings Mills, MD. ~snip~ According to a...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Climate change could be slowed by burying greenhouse gases blamed for global warming deep below the ocean floor under thick, cold sediment that would trap it for thousands of years, said a team of Harvard-led scientists. The seafloor along the U.S. east and west coast is vast enough to store almost unlimited carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal-fired plants, said Daniel Schrag, director of Harvard's Center for the Environment. "It would make coal a green fuel," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters. Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is the main gas blamed for...

MELBOURNE scientists believe they may have found a cure for Alzheimer's disease if tests on mice prove successful in humans. In a world first, a Melbourne research team has developed a once-a-day pill that could stop the debilitating disease in its tracks. Human trials of the drug PBT2 will begin next month. Professor George Fink, director of the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria, which developed the drug in partnership with Prana Biotechnology, said it was a major breakthrough. "I'm getting great excitement out of it, it's certainly another Eureka," he said on Channel 10. "If we can replicate in...

AUSTRALIAN scientists may have found a cure for Alzheimer's disease. In a world first, a Melbourne research team has developed the once-a-day pill to combat the brain disease. Human trials of the drug start next month. The drug, known as PBT2, was developed by the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria in partnership with Prana Biotechnology in Melbourne. "It is a major breakthrough and very much a Melbourne discovery,'' said Professor George Fink, the director of the Mental Health Research Institute. "Though much depends on the next phase of human clinical trials ... early results indicate this drug offers hope...

A team of scientists from Old Dominion University and Eastern Virginia Medical School has reported killing melanoma s in mice using lightning-fast, high-powered jolts of electricity. The researchers expect their paper to be placed online Wednesday in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications . It's the culmination of at least eight years of work seeking possible health benefits from short, high-voltage doses of electricity. The results, the researchers think , eventually could translate into an effective cancer treatment that carries no side effects. "We've never had a tumor that didn't respond," said the lead researcher, Richard Nuccitelli , an...

March 01, 2006 Drug Found to Reverse the Ravages of Alzheimer's in Mice Researchers have identified a compound that could significantly improve treatment of Alzheimer's disease. When administered to mice engineered to develop hallmarks of the disease, the drug reversed cognitive decline and reduced the two types of brain lesions--plaques and tangles--that occur in Alzheimer's patients. Frank M. LaFerla of the University of California at Irvine and his colleagues gave Alzheimer's mice and normal mice daily doses of the drug, known as AF267B, for eight weeks and then tested their ability to learn to locate a hidden platform in a...

New York -- Charles Socarides, the psychiatrist famous for insisting that homosexuality was a treatable illness and who claimed to have "cured" hundreds, has died. He was 83. Socarides, died Dec. 25 of heart failure at a hospital near his Manhattan home, his family announced. A funeral Mass was held Friday. He waged an unsuccessful battle to reverse the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, and brushed off frequent condemnations by colleagues who considered his views hurtful.

OK, new thread to celebrate reaching a major milestone! Within a few hours Team FreeRepublic will be in the Top1000!!!! We should pass Dean for America, around noon tommorrow. Other liberal teams want to challenge us (DUmmies and Kos) but we're humiliating them beyond description.