The Rise of Cell Therapies to Repair Stroke Damage
A perfect world would include the means to prevent catastrophic failures of brain structure such as stroke from ever happening. One such means is a working implementation of the rejuvenation biotechnologies evisaged in detail in the SENS research plans. Strokes and other failures happen because tissue becomes damaged and frail. Remove that damage and the stroke risk of an old person would be that of a young person, which is to say very close to zero. Rejuvenation therapies lie a number of years in the future, however, where that number is very much determined by how much funding and support are dedicated to the right sort ...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 26, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Labor-intensive care
How's this for hospital marketing? The strap-hanger handles in the airport train connnecting the terminals at KLIA, Malaysia. Look at all those people assiduously taking care of this one patient!(Curious? More about the company, including medical tourism, here.) (Source: Running a hospital)
Source: Running a hospital - June 22, 2013 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Mitochondrially Targeted Antioxidant SS-31 Reverses Some Measures of Aging in Muscle
Antioxidants of the sort you can buy at the store and consume are pretty much useless: the evidence shows us that they do nothing for health, and may even work to block some beneficial mechanisms. Targeting antioxidant compounds to the mitochondria in our cells is a whole different story, however. Mitochondria are swarming bacteria-like entities that produce the chemical energy stores used to power cellular processes. This involves chemical reactions that necessarily generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) as a byproduct, and these tend to react with and damage protein machinery in the cell. The machinery that gets damaged ...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 23, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Just what is healthcare reform anyway?
by Jonathan H. Burroughs
That was a question a physician asked me at dinner last week and I answered simply, "World-class quality, safety and service at half the price."
Healthcare reform/transformation is a problem in the guise of a political conflict. What the two political parties argue over is who has the legal right to control and regulate the healthcare market: the federal government, state governments or private industry. This is a war that has been waged since we began as a nation and it shows no sign of slowing.
Unfortunately, while corporate lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defend their entr...
Source: hospital impact - May 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Three and a Half Ways to Cure Cancer
Today's topic is the cure for cancer, something a grail in medicine. It will be challenging to produce, but I think that the difficulty is presently overestimated by much of the public and those in the mainstream of the research community. The reasons for this are understandable: the past half century of cancer research is a story of continually discovered ever greater complexity in cancer biology. It is the sheer exuberant variation in cancer - between types, between tissues, between individuals, and even between tumors in an individual - that makes it such a daunting foe. Every cancer is an evolving mess of broken cells ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 24, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
US Medicine: Death by Command and Control Regulation
When I discuss the corrosive effects of regulation on progress in medicine, such as the enormous and entirely unnecessary costs and barriers put in place by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), I usually focus on the research and development side of the coin: the process of creating new therapies. That is greatly impacted, not least because as the system presently stands it is actually impossible to gain approval for any treatment for degenerative aging - no medicine is permitted into the clinical trial system if its purpose is to treat old people to reverse some of their symptoms. The FDA doesn't recognize aging as ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
“Can We See the Baby Bump, Please?”: Film on Commercial Surrogacy in India Screens in Boston
Update: A second public event has been added, also co-sponsored by Our Bodies Ourselves: “Systemic Violence or Informed Consent? The Politics of New Reproductive Technologies and Medical Experimentation in India” is the theme of the program at MIT on Tuesday, April 23, which will include the film screening and remarks by Sama’s co-founder, Sarojini N. The event will take place in MIT Bldg. 5, Room 217, at 7 p.m.
The rise of commercial surrogacy has led to numerous concerns and conversations involving women’s health and medical ethics. On Monday, April 22, Our Bodies Ourselves will sponsor a screenin...
Source: Our Bodies Our Blog - April 17, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Rachel Tags: Events Global News Pregnancy & Childbirth Reproductive Technology & Genetic Engineering Source Type: blogs
Robust Cancer Therapies Will Mean a Greater Use of Aggressive Stem Cell Therapies
When it comes to medical procedures, everyone has their own definition of acceptable risk. Sadly we're then overruled by faceless bureaucrats at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and similar government bodies - people who have only their own interests in mind, and suffer no consequences from making useful medical technologies illegal or too expensive for commercial use. Fortunately, the FDA doesn't rule the world: there are regions in which medical regulations are less onerous and therapies less costly, and these locations are only a plane flight away.
People who undertake medical tourism for stem cell therapies a...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Engineered Stem Cells Show Promise in Heart Therapy Trial
Modest progress is demonstrated in a recent stem cell therapy trial for heart failure, putting some ballpark numbers to the level of benefits obtained by patients in reputable overseas clinics for some years now. It is to be expected that this sort of published result will lend further support for medical tourism while these therapies remain restricted and largely unavailable in countries like the US, thanks to the heavy hand of the FDA and similar regulatory bodies.
This trial also shows the scope of remaining progress yet to be achieved if the goal is complete organ repair, something that will likely prove impossible wi...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 11, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Health Extension and Science Funding
I mentioned the Health Extension group late last year. It is a Bay Area grassroots initiative associated with the technology startup community, with salons and presentations sponsored by the SENS Research Foundation (SRF) among others. California is home to a fair chunk of the US aging research community and related relevant science labs, and the SRF has their research center there in the Bay Area - so it's good to see that the technology community continues the evolution of its support for longevity science.
As an aside, it is interesting to speculate as why there is - and so far as I am aware, always has been - a strong...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 27, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Blurry in Bangkok Part II: The Bumrungrad Story
No
In my last article, I told you about an experience my colleagues and I encountered on a business trip in Thailand. My friend needed new contacts, and didn’t have a chance to get them before he left DC. Since we were meeting in Bumrungrad, one of the leading medical tourism hospitals in the world, he decided to put them to the test, [blinking profusely the whole time, I might add.] With minutes, he was registered, seen by a nurse, seen by a doctor, tested and given a prescription for new lenses. M-i-n-u-t-e-s.
read more (Source: Healthcare IT News Blog)
Source: Healthcare IT News Blog - February 18, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: David Lareau Tags: Chang Foo e-s Industry News Thailand Network Infrastructure Quality and Safety Source Type: blogs
The NHS Providing Services to "Health Tourists" under False Pretenses
I have posted a number of previous notes about medical tourism. However, a recent article brought to my attention the concept of fraudulent medical tourism provided by the National Health Services (NHS) in the U.K. (see: Overseas 'health tourists' costing NHS at least £40m). By fraudulent, I mean that individuals from abroad not entitled to health services from this government health service are receiving them. Read the excerpt from the article below for more details.
The NHS has lost at least £40m in four years by failing to identify so-called "health tourists" accessing hospital care, a BBC investigat...
Source: Lab Soft News - January 29, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Hospital Executive Management Hospitals and Healthcare Delivery Medical Consumerism Medical Ethics Source Type: blogs
Finally: Some good news from the Much Vaunted National Health System©
It appears that a significant number of providers have had enough with treating illegal immigrants:"While [MVNHS©] hospitals are allowed to charge foreign patients for treatment if they do not come from a country with a reciprocal arrangement, GPs are forced to take on people without charging."What to do, what to do?Ah:"A survey of GPs has found that the majority think this is too generous and the rules should be changed."The docs claim that the rules themselves are quite confusing, and reimbursement levels for illegals is significantly reduced. They even manage to work in medical tourism as a potential culprit. In an eer...
Source: InsureBlog - January 18, 2013 Category: Medical Lawyers and Insurers Source Type: blogs
Medical tourism trends
The allure of good care at much lower prices will cause increasing numbers of people to go abroad for cheaper treatment.
The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions predicts that the number of Americans traveling abroad for treatment will soar to more than 1.6 million in 2012.
Will cost pressures cause payers around the world to be more amenable to sending patients in their countries abroad for cheaper treatment? (Source: Nicola Ziady)
Source: Nicola Ziady - January 10, 2013 Category: Medical Marketing and PR Authors: Nicola Ziady Tags: Healthcare Trends Medical tourism Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 7th 2013
Discussion
- Latest Headlines from Fight Aging!
- Dopamine Receptor Variant Associated With Longevity
- UCP1 Extends Longevity Via Hormesis?
- TFP5 Shows Promise for Treating Alzheimer's Disease
- Does Lichen Age?
- A French Interview with Aubrey de Grey
- Reduced Frataxin Expression Extends Life in Nematodes
- In Search of the Roots of Heat Shock Hormesis
- A New Record For Human Male Longevity
- Early Growth ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 6, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
