Econoclasm Chapter Two, continued: Medical externalities
I ' ve had a request to say more about inflation. That ' s a bit off topic for the time being, but I ' ll get to it.Medicine is also unlike most other goods and services in the
extent to which it has important positive externalities – that is, benefits for
people outside of the transaction, who are not the providers or consumers. (Of
course it has negative externalities as well, including carbon emissions and
notably, a huge quantity of plastic waste.) A straightforward positive
externality is infectious disease control. Prev enting or curing infectious diseases
prevents them from being transmitted to others. This ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 25th 2023
This study generates a comprehensive single-cell transcriptomic atlas of human atherosclerosis including 118,578 high-quality cells from atherosclerotic coronary and carotid arteries. By performing systematic benchmarking of integration methods, we mitigated data overcorrection while separating major cell lineages. Notably, we define cell subtypes that have not been previously identified from individual human atherosclerosis scRNA-seq studies.
Besides characterizing granular cell-type diversity and communication, we leverage this atlas to provide insights into smooth muscle cell (SMC) modulation. We integrate genome...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 24, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Econoclasm Chapter Two: Medical Economics
You hear all the time politicians and pundits saying that we should let the Free Market ™ work in health care, that Free Market™ solutions are the best. But it should be
obvious that Medicine exists in a world even less like Economics 101 than most
industries. To begin with, while our basic needs for food, clothing and shelter
are predictable and roughly similar for everyone, our n eed for medical services
is largely unpredictable, and it varies radically from person to person and
time to time. Some people go for decades without really needing any at all,
although there are some preventive measures or screening tests t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 23, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
How to Measure Healthspan in Mice
Somewhere in the list of topics that are not given a great deal of thought outside the research community, there is the issue of how exactly one goes about measuring healthspan in mice, the length of life spent in good health. There is no standardization to speak of, and what is called healthspan in one study is typically assessed with a completely different set of measures from what is called healthspan in another study. Thus there are groups attempting to promote specific well-defined approaches to assessment of healthspan in animal models, in the hope that others adopt them in order to make data on the effects of interv...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 20, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 18th 2023
In conclusion, given the relative safety and the favourable effects of aspirin, its use in cancer seems justified, and ethical implications of this imply that cancer patients should be informed of the present evidence and encouraged to raise the topic with their healthcare team.
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Aged Transplant Organs Cause Harm to Younger Recipients
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/12/aged-transplant-organs-cause-harm-to-younger-recipients/
Old tissues are dysfunctional in ways that young tissues are not. This has always been known in the context of organ transplants, but absent me...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 17, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Klotho Levels Decline with Age, But Are Unaffected by Physical Fitness at a Given Age
Klotho is a longevity-associated gene. Klotho functions within the cell, but a portion of the full protein is also released into the bloodstream. In humans, higher levels of circulating klotho correlate with lower incidence of age-related disease and mortality. In mice, interventions such as gene therapies that increase klotho levels have been shown to extend life, while reducing klotho levels shortens life. Klotho is thought to act within the kidney, where it is protective, slowing age-related decline of kidney function. Increased klotho levels produce cognitive improvement in mice and non-human primates, however, and hig...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 13, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
The arrogance of expertise
Here is a thoughtful essay by NYT reporter Ed Yong. (Free Gift link! [as opposed to a not free gift]) It ' s long, but worth it. Yong was assigned the Long Covid beat and he found -- as I already knew -- that people who tell their doctors about long-term fatigue, pain, and cognitive difficulties, for which the physicians could find no specific biophysical explanation, commonly found their complaints dismissed or even ridiculed:Covering long Covid
solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force it
is often misconstrued as. It is instead a human endeavor, relentlessly
buffeted by our culture, values an...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 11, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Self-management skills that are not top of the pops
When I carried out my informal survey of the pain self-management skills people had used in the past week, there were no real surprises. Movement, activity management (pacing – and I will have more to say about this in a couple of weeks!), sleep, attention management and doing something fun were all at the top of the list. Others were lower down and while they don’t get to shine as much, I’m not so sure they are as seldom used as this wee survey suggests.
At the bottom of the list is having hands-on treatment for relaxation or to feel good. OK, perhaps understandable because the whole ongoing debat...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 10, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Occupational therapy Psychology Research Resilience/Health Science in practice assertiveness Clinical reasoning pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
New G-RISE and IMSD Funding Opportunities and Upcoming Webinar
We’re pleased to announce that the notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) for the Graduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (G-RISE; PAR-24-032) and Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD; PAR-24-031) programs have been reissued. These NOFOs aim to strengthen research training environments and promote broader participation in the biomedical research workforce by expanding the pool of well-trained scientists earning a Ph.D., for example, encouraging the inclusion of individuals from underrepresented groups (see Notice of NIH’s Interest in Diversity).
The new NOFOs have some...
Source: NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - December 7, 2023 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Funding Opportunities Meetings/Events Training/Fellowships/Career Development Preparing an Application Webinars Source Type: blogs
How Digital Health Companies Attract Software Engineers: Strategies
The first article in this series laid out the challenges in recruiting programmers to digital health firms and who tends to make a strong contributor in those firms. Now we can cover the strategies companies use and the arguments they make.
Make an Important Difference in Society
Dean says that many programmers choose health IT over other industries because they want to do something positive for humanity. The programmer may have suffered a health crisis, or seen family members go through one. In any case, they find more meaning in health IT than retail, finance, or social media.
Dean’s observation matches what I...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - December 6, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: C-Suite Leadership Career and Jobs Health IT Company Healthcare IT Anmol Madan Carenet Health CliniComp Darena Solutions David Mulligan Dedalus Digital Health Software Developers Health IT Deveopment Health IT Programmers Health Source Type: blogs
Trial By Error: Dutch Survey Respondents Rate GET/CBT as “ the Worst ” Approach, Per New Report
By David Tuller, DrPH A survey of more than 1500 patients in the Netherlands with a diagnosis of ME, CFS or ME/CFS rated graded exercise therapy as “the worst” interventions, according to an article on the site of the ME and Disability Support Group, while “explanation and advice about the importance of lying down to … Trial By Error: Dutch Survey Respondents Rate GET/CBT as “the Worst” Approach, Per New Report Read More » (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - December 6, 2023 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized dutch Guidelines Knoop NICE survey Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 4th 2023
This study produced a great deal of data that continues to be mined for insights into human aging and effects of calorie restriction in a long-lived species such as our own, to contrast with the sizable effects on health and longevity in short-lived species such as mice.
In particular, and the topic for today, cellular senescence and its role in degenerative aging has garnered far greater interest in the research community in the years since the CALERIE study took place. Thus in today's open access paper, scientists examine CALERIE study data to find evidence for calorie restriction to reduce the burden of cellular ...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 3, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Care Reimagined: Transforming Law by Embracing Interdependence
Robyn Powell (University of Oklahoma), Care Reimagined: Transforming Law by Embracing Interdependence, Mich. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024): Building upon the foundation laid by All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship, this Review examines the complex issues surrounding... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - December 1, 2023 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
XPRIZE Healthspan, $101 Million to Incentivize Rejuvenation in Old People
Prizes for success in research and development can work well, if coupled with suitable publicity and activism. Such efforts have a long history, going back to the well-documented longitude rewards offered by the British government in the 1700s. More recently, the original Ansari X Prize for suborbital flight was a very successful example of this sort of initiative, and was launched around the same time as the Methuselah Mouse Prize to spur greater efforts to extend life in animal models. The Palo Alto Longevity Prize followed later with similar goals. Unfortunately for the ability of longevity-focused prizes to generate on...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 30, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Accounting for Disability in International Humanitarian Law
Janet Lord (University of Maryland), Accounting for Disability in International Humanitarian Law (2022): The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) represents an important and (potentially) progressive development in the protection framework under international humanitarian... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - November 30, 2023 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
