Happy:  I take one quick look at the arm rash  Why?   Why are you spending all this  money on this rash?  

Patient:  Because the doctor said it would help.

Happy:  Has it?

Patient:  No.  Not really.

Happy:  Does it itch?  Does it hurt?  Does it cause you any problems at all?

Patient:  No.  Not really.

Happy:  I didn’t think so.  It’s not a rash.  It’s bruising.

Happy:  Notice where the rash is ma’am.  It’s only on the outside of your arms.   That’s when you bump into things.  If the rash was on the inside of your arms, or on your trunk or any where else that you don’t bump I would reconsider another cause.  You’re bumping your arms and you’re bruising yourself.  

Patient:  But I don’t bump into things. 

Happy:  Yes you do.  Trust me.  I’m saving you a lot of money.  Stop putting medication on this bruise and leave it alone.  If you want, go buy yourself some cheap elbow pads from Walmart.  I guarantee your rash will disappear in two weeks.

Husband:  Thanks doc, you really know what you’re talking about.

You can download a video about the researchers and their work here.

From Mary’s post: “For some people, a great deal of the conflama around genetically-engineered (GE) crops has to do with the presence of a pesticide in the plant material–mainly the Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt protein–rather than coating the surface of the plant as organic Bt sprays or chemical-style pesticides would. No matter how many times I explain that there are benefits to this strategy (such as reduced impact on non-target species and on improvements in farm family health among others), it doesn’t seem to help. No matter how many times I explain that pesticides aren’t the only modification to plants (as we see at Biofortified regularly), it doesn’t matter to critics of GE. The fact that plants make their own pesticides? Not interested. And no matter how many times I explain how the Bt proteins work only on species that have the specific receptor for that interaction–and therefore does not affect humans as it would the corn borer pest–it doesn’t seem to have any impact. The misplaced fear continues to be used by the critics.ResearchBlogging.org

So when I saw this paper that suggested the Bt protein may be a powerful strategy for improving the lives of impoverished children around the world, all I could do was wonder if that might finally register with those who make unsupported claims of the effects of Bt on humans.”

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According to Utah law: “A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, with criminal negligence, or acting with a mental state otherwise specified in the statute defining the offense, causes the death of another human being, including an unborn child at any stage of its development.”

However, under current Utah law, there are provisions which prevent the state from prosecuting women who miscarry or have an abortion.

The bill – House Bill 12 – would strictly define abortion as performed by a physician under specified circumstances, and would remove the restrictions so that a pregnant woman could be prosecuted if she “recklessly” causes the “death” of an “unborn child.”

In order to show that a woman acted in a reckless manner, it merely needs to be shown that the woman’s action – smoking in this case – is known to cause miscarriages. Since there is strong evidence that smoking increases the risk of miscarriage, women who smoke during pregnancy and who suffer a miscarriage could be viewed as having acted recklessly. Thus, they would – by Utah state law if this bill is signed by the governor – be guilty of criminal homicide and could face a potential maximum penalty of life in prison.

The Rest of the Story

Besides being the most dangerous intrusion into the rights of woman that I am aware of, this is also the most dangerous intrusion into the autonomy of smokers that I have yet seen. This bill, if enacted into law, would literally allow the state to lock up in prison woman who smoke during pregnancy and experience a miscarriage.

Anti-smoking groups should be among the first protesting against this bill and urging the Governor to veto it. However, to the best of my knowledge, the national anti-smoking groups have been silent.

You know, I talk a fair amount on this blog about the mentality in the anti-smoking movement and where it could potentially lead, but this is no longer in the realm of what could happen. It’s here! This is happening before our eyes.

Fortunately, the governor of Utah vetoed this bill yesterday. He then went on to sign an amended bill in which the word “reckless” was removed. The legislation is still an absolute abomination: it makes it criminal homicide for a woman to take the morning after pill. However, the removal of the word “reckless” eliminates the ability of the state to press charges against smokers who suffer a miscarriage.

The Utah legislature and governor are a complete disgrace to America and to our Constitution and the individual rights and autonomy upon which this country was founded. I cannot possibly condemn them strongly enough.

They cover health, physiology, nutrition and exercise – something we did not have here on the network before, at least not in such a concentrated form. Check out the archives of their old blog and then bookmark the new Obesity Panacea.

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Summary:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – University of Michigan scientists have identified a new reservoir for hidden HIV-infected cells that can serve as a factory for new infections. New research shows that bone marrow, previously thought to be resistant to the virus, can contain latent forms of the infection. The findings, which appear online today in Nature Medicine, indicate a new target for curing the disease so those infected with the virus may someday no longer rely on AIDS drugs for a lifetime and may open the door to new treatments. The new research also gives a broader view of how HIV overwhelms the body’s immune system and devastates its ability to regenerate itself.

It is also difficult for me to see how a public health group could praise a legislature that has asked its citizens to smoke in order to support critical government programs. But the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has done so.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids praised the Utah legislature for enacting a $1.00 per pack cigarette tax increase in order to provide funds to support critical government programs that were on the chopping block. The money has already been allocated and none of it is going to anti-smoking programs or programs to provide services to smokers who will be paying the tax, Instead, the revenues are dedicated to save critical government programs that were on the chopping block and would otherwise have had to be cut.

The Rest of the Story

It is not possible for me to express the strength of my condemnation of the Utah legislature for showing such a disrespect for the autonomy of women and for the Constitution, trying to establish a state-based religion by making it criminal homicide for a woman to choose to use a morning after pill or to suffer a miscarriage as a result of the actions of an abusive partner or of an accident. The simple fact that the Utah legislature has made it its business to investigate or have an interest in the circumstances behind every miscarriage suffered in the state (which is about 20% of identified pregnancies, by the way) is sickening.

Now, the Utah legislature has opted to save critical government programs through the most cowardly of policies: a regressive tax that punishes those least able to pay — the most heavily addicted smokers and their families and children.

Moreover, the Utah legislature has now made it essential for its citizens to continue smoking, or else critical government programs will have to be cut.

Utah is basically telling its citizens who smoke: “Please continue to smoke so that we’ll have your tax money to support critical government programs. Don’t quit, because if you do, you are putting these critical public programs at risk of being decimated.”

If Utah legislators were sincerely concerned about protecting the health of their state’s children, they would have allocated revenues to smoking education and prevention programs. In squandering that opportunity, they ensured that the tobacco industry’s marketing of tobacco products in Utah will go relatively unopposed. But even worse, in sending the message that cigarette consumption is necessary to support critical public programs, the legislature has made it clear that it really doesn’t want smokers to quit. The legislature has made the state dependent on a steady, continuing stream of cigarette revenues for the funding of critical programs and has completely eliminated the incentive for the state to try to reduce cigarette consumption.

In light of the action that the Utah legislature has taken this session, it deserves nothing but condemnation. I would not be so narrow-minded – thinking only about anti-smoking actions – to praise the legislature this session even if it did something that was sincerely intended to reduce tobacco use. But this measure is not sincerely intended to protect children, it is merely a piece of political cowardice: balancing the state’s budget in the most politically easy way. But the end result is setting up perverse incentives for the state to make sure that nothing is done that would seriously decrease cigarette consumption.

Here are some T-shirts I have designed to acknowledge the accomplishments of the Utah legislature this session:

“Utah: Where Women Can Go to Jail for Using Legal Contraception”

“Utah: Where Miscarriages Constitute Murder”

“Utah: Where You Can Attend Church at the State House”

“Utah: The Greatest Hypocrites on Earth”

“I Support My State Budget: I Smoke”

“I Care About Critical Government Services: I Will Keep Smoking”

“If You Care About Essential State Programs, Don’t Even Think About Quitting”

Summary:

REGENERX BIOPHARMACEUTICALS, INC. announced that a research team from the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI reported that Thymosin beta 4 (TB4), administered to rats one day after embolic stroke, improved neurological functional outcome compared to control animals. Improvement in neurological function was measured at various time intervals over a seven week period and was statistically significant.

An increase in remyelination of axons (regeneration of the nerve sheath) was observed in rats receiving TB4 compared to control animals, likely due to an increased mobilization of oligodendrocyte progenitors (stem cells surrounding axons) that differentiate into mature myelin-producing oligodendrocytes. In cell culture, TB4 treated neuronal progenitor cells isolated from normal and stroke rats demonstrated increased mRNA levels of epidermal growth factor receptor. This receptor has previously been shown to be a regulator of oligoprogenitor cell expansion and tissue regeneration in response to brain injury and further supports the role of TB4 in stem cell-mediated tissue repair.

This year the Oscar party is at the beach.  And what better way to show up at the beach than in your  bikini and thong.  That’s how you show up at an Oscar party. By the way, I’m picking Avatar to win everything.  Have a great night at the Oscars!

Bizarrely, Jonathan Zittrain turns out to be my cousin — which is odd because I have known him for some time and he is also very active in the online civil rights world. How we came to learn this will be the first of my postings on the future of DNA sequencing and the company 23andMe.

Just read the whole thing. This is really a matter of the humanities, not science. Specifically, the almost mystical significance people seem to put into the finding that they share genetic ancestry with people, even people who they knew and were friendly with before they knew this datum.

Also, I think this sort of thing makes hang-wringing about the ethical conundrums that genetic counselors might have in regards to paternity issues which a wife might know of, but the husband might not, seem totally ridiculous. With the plethora of personal genomic data which will likely be part of everyone’s information portfolio circa 2020 you’d have to be retarded, or very exceptional, not to notice a “extra-pair paternity event” within a family.*

H/T Dr. Daniel MacArthur.

* Exceptional as in the putative father is dead, and all his relatives are dead, or he has no relatives (e.g., only child whose parents were only children, etc.).

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This must be one of the ones I did in Seattle in 2007, when they asked me to come and explain the book.

What I always ask is, “If the brain or the mind are an illusion, whose illusion are they?”

This question is modelled on the Jewish zen: “If the mind is an illusion, whose arthritis is this?”

On this episode of ID The Future, Anika Smith interviews science writer Denyse O’Leary about her book, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul.

In the book O’Leary and her co-author Mario Beaurogard, neuroscientist and Associate Professor at Université de Montréal, explore the question of whether or not the mind is an illusion as materialists believe. The Spiritual Brain looks at whether religious experiences come from God or are merely the random firing of neurons in the brain. Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He and O’Leary offer compelling evidence that mind creates matter, rather than matter creating mind.

Listen here. By the way, I always call myself the co-author and recognize neuroscientist Mario as the lead author.