Three Problems with Taxpayer Financing of Election Campaigns
The new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has introduced H.R. 1, a bill with two public financing components: one a pilot program for vouchers, and the other a conventional if generous subsidy program for small donations. I focus here on the latter. Public financing schemes have often focused on encouraging small donors in part to allegedly counter the influence of “Big Money.” The financing of campaigns by taxpayers fits easily into a number of dichotomies that structure our public discourse: small/large, vulnerable/powerful, poor/rich, left/right, and of course, friend/enemy. The realities ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 16, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: John Samples Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 7th 2019
This study suggests that advantages and disadvantages vary by environment and diet, however, which might explain why evolution has selected for multiple haplogroups rather than one dominant haplogroup.
This is all interesting, but none of it stops the research community from engineering a globally better-than-natural human mitochondrial genome, and then copying it into the cell nucleus as a backup to prevent the well-known contribution of mitochondrial DNA damage to aging. Further, nothing stops us from keeping the haplogroups we have and rendering the effects of variants small and irrelevant through the development...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 6, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Life Extension Advocacy Foundation 2018 Retrospective
The Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF) staff members have grown their efforts considerably over the past year, including the launch of a yearly conference series and a network of angel investors focused on startup companies engaged with the aging process. The LEAF blog should probably be on your reading list. Insofar as a position on aging goes, the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation folk appear more guided by the Hallmarks of Aging view than the SENS view, but there is a significant overlap, and many of their past fundraising efforts have directly supported the SENS Research Foundation. The more fellow travelers th...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 4, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Using Blockchain for More Efficient Healthcare Economy: Interview with Digipharm Founder, Ahmed Abdalla
If you’ve been following the news, you know that the U.S. healthcare system has many, many inefficiencies. Some have gone so far as to claim that U.S. healthcare is flat-out broken. While that may be over-dramatization for political purposes, many of the arguments presented are entirely valid. With recent modifications to U.S. legislature, the healthcare market is slowly moving toward outcomes-based pricing, a trend seen in many of the world’s leading health systems. But shifting the entire financial foundation of a decades-old ecosystem of complex institutions is no easy task, requiring quite a bit of innovation. Digi...
Source: Medgadget - January 2, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Mohammad Saleh Tags: Exclusive Informatics Medicine Public Health Society Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at the Rejuvenation Research and Advocacy of 2018
Discussion of Mitochondrial Hormesis as an Approach to Slow Aging
Cornelis (Cees) Wortel, Ichor Therapeutics Chief Medical Officer, on Rejuvenation Research and Its Engagement with the Established Regulatory System
An Interview with a Programmed Aging Theorist
An Interview with Reason at the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation
An Interview on Mitochondrial Damage and Dysfunction in Aging
An Interview with Vadim Gladyshev on Research into the Causes of Aging
An Interview with Jim Mellon, and Update on Juvenescence
A Lengthy Interview with Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation
An Interview with Peter de Keize...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 31, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Seasons of grief
While speaking as a panelist on substance use disorder (SUD), I felt it necessary to remind the audience that addiction is a family disease. While family members may not themselves be tethered to use of a substance, we all share in the anger, guilt, despair, and all too often grief that ripple back and forth in a family’s encounter with SUD. I learned early on, “Addiction isn’t a spectator sport, eventually the whole family gets to play.”
What may be harder for some to understand is that the “sport” gets played for a lifetime, even by generations to come. I am reminded of a line near the end of Robert Woodruff ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - December 17, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Bill Williams Tags: Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 3rd 2018
This article, however, is more of a commentary on high level strategy and the effects of regulation, coupled with a desire to forge ahead rather than hold back in the matter of treating aging, thus I concur with much more of what is said than is usually the case.
For decades, one of the most debated questions in gerontology was whether aging is a disease or the norm. At present, excellent reasoning suggests aging should be defined as a disease - indeed, aging has been referred to as "normal disease." Aging is the sum of all age-related diseases and this sum is the best biomarker of aging. Aging and its diseases ar...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 2, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Why the polls keep getting it so wrong; and a solution – ask people who their friends and family are voting for
This study was also able to track social influence over time, as the researchers started polling both personal intentions and social circle intentions in July and continued weekly until after the US voted in November. One week before the election, more participants said they would vote for Clinton than Trump. Yet, as early as September, these polls accurately predicted Trump’s win as people reported a swing towards him in their social circles. Not only that, but people who reported an intention to vote differently from their social circle were much more likely to change their own position at the last minute.
Another patt...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - November 5, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: guest blogger Political Social Source Type: blogs
The Complex Case for Inpatient Psychiatric Care
Amidst the cat pics and political memes, the images of my former elementary school classmates’ children, now elementary school students themselves, there will be a link to a mental health article smushed in there on my Facebook wall. Sometimes, usually against my better judgment, I click on it, because click-bait is just so deliciously clickable. Today, I made the mistake of clicking on an article written by Noam Shpancer, PhD, a psychologist and professor at Otterbein University. The article detailed the experience of a psychotic loved one who spent a brief time in an inpatient psychiatric hospital.
In his piece, origi...
Source: World of Psychology - October 29, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Gabriel Nathan Tags: Schizophrenia Stigma Suicide Trauma Treatment inpatient psychiatric hospitalization involuntary hospitalization Psychiatric Care psychiatric institution Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 29th 2018
This study shows that some genetic changes linked to cancer are present in surprisingly large numbers of normal cells. We still have a long way to go to fully understand the implications of these new findings, but as cancer researchers, we can't underestimate the importance of studying healthy tissue."
Early Onset of Menopause Correlates with Shorter Life Expectancy
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2018/10/early-onset-of-menopause-correlates-with-shorter-life-expectancy/
Aging is a phenomenon affecting all organs and systems throughout the body, driven by rising levels of molecular damage. The varia...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 28, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 22nd 2018
In this report, we propose that the molecular mechanisms of beneficial actions of CR should be classified and discussed according to whether they operate under rich or insufficient energy resource conditions. Future studies of the molecular mechanisms of the beneficial actions of CR should also consider the extent to which the signals/factors involved contribute to the anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor and other CR actions in each tissue or organ, and thereby lead to anti-aging and prolongevity.
RNA Interference of ATP Synthase Subunits Slows Aging in Nematodes
https://www.fightaging.org/archives...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 21, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Is Crowdfunding The Grim Future of Health Insurance?
A growing number of people, mostly Americans, is forced to use crowdfunding sites to ask for money to cover medical expenses. While in many cases, the option is a potential source of hope binding people together for a good cause that would otherwise be lost due to financial reasons, the phenomenon also shows the desperate state of a healthcare system where victims of terrible illnesses have to “commodify” themselves on online donation forums. Should it stay that way? Should we fear for a dark future of health insurance in some parts of the world?
The patchwork called crowdfunding
Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo, Crowd...
Source: The Medical Futurist - October 13, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Health Insurance Healthcare Design Social media in Healthcare crowdfunding digital health digital health insurance ethics future health data medical medical expenses Source Type: blogs
Discussing the Longevity Investor Network
Bill Cherman and I, cofounders of Repair Biotechnologies, were recently interviewed on the topic of the Longevity Investor Network, an initiative organized by the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation volunteers. The Network is a group of angel investors and venture capitalists of varying backgrounds, all of whom are interested in the rapidly growing longevity industry. Some want to speed the advent of therapies capable of turning back aging, some are long-time fellow travelers from our broader advocacy community, some are newly arrived, just starting to learn about the science and the potential scale of this market. It is a ...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 12, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 8th 2018
This article, unfortunately paywalled, is interesting to note as a mark of the now increasingly energetic expansion of commercial efforts in longevity science. David Sinclair has been building a private equity company to work in many areas relevant to this present generation of commercial longevity science; while I'm not sold on his primary research interests as the basis for meaningful treatments for aging, he is diversifying considerably here, including into senolytics, the clearance of senescent cells demonstrated to produce rejuvenation in animal studies. This sort of approach to business mixes aspects of investing and...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 7, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Quite Simply: UNACCEPTABLE
Last week, my mom stunned me with bad news: A young woman named Tiffany Costa died. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and died two weeks ago from stage II breast cancer at just 29 years old. She was metastatic for many years.
Tiffany’s extended family members are dear friends of my mom. I came to “meet” Tiffany because of an email my mom forwarded to me. She was being treated with Doxil. There was (and it would appear there still IS) a shortage of Doxil and she was trying to raise money to have the drugs brought into this country from Europe. The cost was exorbitant. I remember reading the email and I reca...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - September 25, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
