Health and Medicine

This week, U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock pledged that all British newborns will be able to have their genomes sequenced at birth. The babies don't get much of a say, but mums and dads can opt in. By receiving this genetic information, families could get advanced warning of heightened disease risks and plan for personalized treatment. In the U.S., doctors used Crispr to snip the genes of cancer patients (a first in the country). The technology is quickly advancing: Last month, researchers announced a more precise, flexible version called "prime editing." The new genome-editing tool lets researchers ctrl-alt-delete or ctrl-v DNA with less collateral damage. Zoom out: It took 13 years and nearly $3 billion to sequence the first genome. Now, a country wants to offer it to all newborns. Gene-editing tech is moving quickly, too. But...centrally compiling human DNA could be a security risk and a privacy challenge. And some uses of DNA sequencing and Crispr are quite controversial. Get ready for a whole range of new ethical dilemmas.

"A pack a day keeps lung cancer away" quoted Dr Ian McDonald prominent cancer surgeon. Dr Henry Garland said it was a "harmless pastime". Both men were enlisted by the FDA to do tests on Laetrile (B17) stating "No satisfactory evidence has been produced to indicate any significant cytotoxic effect of Laetrile on the cancer cell". Dr Ian McDonald died when his cigarette set his bed on fire, Dr Garland died of lung cancer.

@James Thomas Rook Jr. I agree. This is a silly attempt by those companies to get some free coverage and look "good"..... and they figure it will cost them little. It could also backfire a little since they are picking a fight with a celebrity who is dead and cannot defend himself. If we follow this logic then we will start banning President's Day in the US because a US President owned slaves and even had sex with them.

Information about mineral deficiencies and the easy cure of diabetes male pattern baldness all kinds of other diseases that we all want rid of !! minerals.pdf

For more on the health effects of fasting:

(Image caption: Hydration sensing neurons (red) and the glial cells (green) in a 🐭 brain. Essentially, when overhydration is detected by glial cells in the brain, the Trpv4 channel triggers the release of taurine, which inhibit hydration sensing neurons) As harmful as dehydration? We are all familiar with the drawbacks of dehydration, but we rarely hear about the harmful effects of overhydration. It is known that excess fluid accumulation can lead to dangerously low sodium levels in the blood or hyponatremia – a life-threatening condition that can result in brain swelling. Similarly, more is known about the mechanisms in the body that detect and drive thirst while little is known about how the brain detects a state of overhydration. “[Hyponatremia] occurs in common pathological conditions, including brain injury, sepsis, cardiac failure and in the use of drugs, such as MDMA (ecstasy),” says Dr. Charles Bourque, whose team from the Centre for Research in Neuroscience at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) uncovered a 🔑 piece to the puzzle of how our brains detect hyponatremia and regulate overhydration. The new study featured in Cell Reports unearths the fundamental mechanism of how hyponatremia is detected in the brain. “Our specific data will be important for people studying hydromineral and fluid electrolyte homeostasis, and clinicians who treat patients faced with hyponatremia,” reports Dr. Bourque, who is a scientist in the Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience Program (BRAIN) at the RI-MUHC and a professor in McGill’s Department of Neurology. This condition is more common in elderly patients and can cause cognitive problems and seizures in this vulnerable group. While it remains uncertain how hyponatremia develops, a defect in the hydration sensing mechanism of the brain could be the culprit. No strangers to studying the mechanisms of hydration in the body, Dr. Bourque’s team, located at the Montreal General 🏥, has also made several 🔑 discoveries in the past on how the brain detects and prevents dehydration; how salt intake increases blood pressure; and how the brain’s biological 🕜 stimulates thirst prior to 💤. In this instance, experiments by first study’s author Sorana Ciura, a PhD student in Dr. Bourque’s laboratory, who is now at the Institut Imagine, Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades in Paris, revealed that the brain’s hydration sensing neurons don’t detect overhydration in the same way that they detect dehydration. Inhibiting hydration sensing neurons The new research shows that overhydration activates Trpv4, which is a cellular gatekeeper implicated in maintaining the balance of 💧 in the body. Trpv4 is a calcium channel that can be found in glial cells, which are cells that act to surround hydration sensing neurons. “Our study shows that it is in fact glial cells that first detect the overhydrated state and then transfer this information to turn off the electrical activity of the [hydration sensing] neurons,” explains Dr. Bourque. The researchers also found that it is the release of the amino acid taurine that acts to inhibit hydration sensing neurons. Essentially, when overhydration is detected by glial cells, the Trpv4 channel triggers the release of taurine, which acts as a trip wire to inhibit hydration sensing neurons. Hope for patients with hyponatremia The brain’s ability to detect excess hydration is essential to maintaining fluid balance in the body and preventing conditions like hyponatremia. “Preclinical models of hyponatremia will be used to examine if the mechanism we report is affected in this condition with the long-term objective of designing new treatments or diagnostic tools,” says Dr. Bourque. “Hyponatremia is common with as many as one-quarter of hospitalized patients suffering from a traumatic brain injury developing the condition,” says Dr. Judith Marcoux, a neurosurgeon at the Montreal General 🏥 of the MUHC, who collaborates with Professor Bourque to define the basis for the emergence of hyponatremia in patients that suffer from a traumatic brain injury (TBI). “Nothing is really known about the mechanisms that lead to hyponatremia in these patients,” Dr. Marcoux adds. ‘’Hyponatremia can have catastrophic consequences such as causing seizures or leading to a coma, and raised intracranial pressure can cause further damage to the brain, which can lead to a decrease in neurological and functional outcomes for patients. ”

Check this warning out: (Of course I think they were thinking LARGE doses when they wrote it) ?

We don't say this often: It's been a wild month at the FDA. Fresh off its e-cig regulations, the agency announced yesterday it's going to overhaul the procedure for approving most medical devices. Critics have waited a long time for this. The FDA currently operates under a framework from 1976, which allows certain devices to get a speedy, TSA PreCheck-type approval if manufacturers show their products are similar to others that already exist on the market. The problem? Those comparable products (you can call them "predicates") are sometimes decades-old. The data: Nearly 20% of devices cleared through this process are based on predicates that have been around more than 10 years, per the FDA. Zoom out: Just a few days ago, a team of over 50 media organizations published an investigation into medical device safety. What did they find? "More than 1.7 million injuries and nearly 83,000 deaths suspected of being linked to medical devices had been reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over a 10-year period." VIA Morning Brew

Good point! Maybe as people read about this and share it... more will vote with their wallets as you say. I don't hold out a lot of hope though.