Towards Stem Cell Medicine that Doesn't Involve Stem Cell Transplants
In all but the most aged and damaged individuals, the beneficial effects of much of the present generation of stem cell transplant therapies could in principle be produced by stem cell populations already present in the body. These cells just need the right signals and instructions to be put to work. Gaining a sufficient understanding of those signals is a work in progress, and the existing approach of stem cell culturing and transplantation has been an important part of that work to date - a necessary step on the road. It is still the early days in this field when considering the bigger picture, but it is interesting to s...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 11, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Don Quixote and the Health Professional’s Endless Quest
By RICHARD GUNDERMAN, MD
April 22 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the greatest novelist who ever lived, Miguel de Cervantes. Though the day will pace unnoticed by most physicians, it is in fact one many should note. Why? Because both his life and work can serve as vital sources of inspiration and resilience for health professionals everywhere.
In a 2002 Nobel Institute survey, 100 of the world’s most highly regarded writers named his Don Quixote the greatest novel of all time, outscoring its nearest rivals –works by Dickens, Tolstoy, and Joyce – by more than 50%. Said the head judge who announced the res...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Simon Nath Tags: Featured Physicians THCB Richard Gunderman Source Type: blogs
“85% of biomedical research is wasted” and librarians
First to the rather disturbing 85% figure. This originates from a 2009 Lancet article that suggests much research is wasted due to asking the wrong questions, being badly designed, being not published, being poorly reported and more. The paper has been cited some 400 times in Google Scholar which indicates that it is an area of interest and concern.
So where where do librarians fit in? A recent paper (“Impactful librarians : identifying opportunities to increase your impact”) suggests that they can play a very important role in improving research quality in their organisations. At the same time, this will help raise th...
Source: The Krafty Librarian - March 1, 2016 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Rob Penfold Tags: Library Profession Research Source Type: blogs
Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group 20th anniversary: Origins of TAG
Dr Nicola Lindson-Hawley is a managing editor and post-doctoral researcher, based in the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group (TAG) in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK in 2012, which focused on new approaches to smoking cessation. Nicola began working with Cochrane TAG (@CochraneTAG) at the beginning of 2015. read more (Source: Cochrane Collaboration - Official Blog)
Source: Cochrane Collaboration - Official Blog - January 27, 2016 Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Muriah Umoquit Tags: Issue 51 Current news Cochrane contributors Review groups & Events Source Type: blogs
Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment
I’ve never been more concerned about the harms of healthcare. Any exposure to the health care system can get you in trouble.
It’s especially scary when healthy people enter the system–often in the name of prevention. Remember that the most likely outcome of a medical intervention in a person without complaints is harm. How can we make a person who says he is well any better?
The newest scourge is the treatment of risk factors–not diseases. It’s routine for me to see people admitted to the hospital because of side effects from drugs or procedures used to treat risk factors.
This morning, thanks...
Source: Dr John M - January 15, 2016 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr John Source Type: blogs
New Journal on Evolution of Language
The Oxford University Press has announced a new Journal of Language Evolution. Its editors are Dan Dediu and Bart de Boer, two investigators notable for both the seriousness of their research and original thinking. They describe their intentions here. I'm wishing them the best of luck. (Source: Babel's Dawn)
Source: Babel's Dawn - December 12, 2015 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
November blogs digest: Cas9, Angelina Jolie, diabetes, and more
Extending the study of evidence-based medicine
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an approach to medical practice intended to enhance decision making, recognizing that only the strongest study types can yield strong recommendations. Many people owe their lives to evidence-based medicine, benefitting from trials and observational studies that have informed early diagnosis and effective treatments. But the indisputable successes are no cause for complacency, and Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at University of Oxford, explained more.
Cas9: one protein to rule them all
We hail CRISPR/Cas as the most ...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - December 1, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Sophie Marchant Tags: Biology Health Medicine blogs digest genomics Source Type: blogs
The Doctor- Patient Relationship and the Outcomes Movement
By MICHEL ACCAD, MD
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, authors Erin Sullivan and Andy Ellner take a stand against the “outcomes theory of value,” advanced by such economists as Michael Porter and Robert Kaplan who believe that in order to “properly manage value, both outcomes and cost must be measured at the patient level.”
In contrast, Sullivan and Ellner point out that medical care is first of all a matter of relationships:
With over 50% of primary care providers believing that efforts to measure quality-related outcomes actually make quality worse, it seems there may be something missing from the e...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 4, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB MICHEL ACCAD Source Type: blogs
TRIAL BY ERROR: The Troubling Case of the PACE Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study
By David Tuller, DrPH
David Tuller is academic coordinator of the concurrent masters degree program in public health and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
A few years ago, Dr. Racaniello let me hijack this space for a long piece about the CDC’s persistent incompetence in its efforts to address the devastating illness the agency itself had misnamed “chronic fatigue syndrome.” Now I’m back with an even longer piece about the U.K’s controversial and highly influential PACE trial. The $8 million study, funded by British government agencies, purportedly proved that patients could “recover” fr...
Source: virology blog - October 21, 2015 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Information adaptive pacing therapy CFS chronic fatigue syndrome clinical trial cognitive behavior therapy Dave Tuller exercise graded exercise therapy mecfs myalgic encephalomyelitis outcome PACE trial recovery Source Type: blogs
Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2015 Keynote Videos
The SENS Research Foundation has released videos of the keynote addresses given at the Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2015 conference held earlier this year. The SENS Research Foundation is one of the very few organizations focused on speeding up progress towards medical technologies capable of repairing the cell and tissue damage that causes aging. This has been a neglected area of research and development, scattered across many fields in medicine, and with little coordination between research groups working on aspects of the same form of damage and degeneration. As a consequence the basic science is far ahead of its applicat...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 19, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
The Most Important Thing that NYT’s Nicholas Kristof Left Out
Today, Nicholas Kristof of the NYT wrote an op-ed entitled “The Most Important Thing, and It’s Almost a Secret.” According to Kristof, “The most important thing going on in the world today is something we almost never cover: a rapid decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease.”
Kristof makes a powerful case for the improving state of humanity and rightly bemoans the fact that the media all too often focus on war, hunger and despair. And that gives most readers the wrong impression that the world is falling apart.
But, where did all the progress that Kristof talks about come from?
The Homo sapiens has been on this ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 1, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Marian L. Tupy, Chelsea German Source Type: blogs
Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2015 Wraps Up on a High Note
An official release from the SENS Research Foundation on the recent Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2015 conference:
The Rejuvenation Biotechnology conference brings together experts from research, academia, industry, policy, finance and regulatory fields to share ideas - and the latest research and developments - on diseases that are impacting the aging population on a global scale, such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference creates a forum for thought leaders from multiple disease communities to consider the wider potential of novel strategies for early interven...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 31, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Boston Beats Beijing in Olympics Contest
News comes this morning that Beijing has been awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics, beating out Almaty, Kazakhstan. Which touches on a point I made in this morning’s Boston Herald:
Columnist Anne Applebaum predicted a year ago that future Olympics would likely be held only in “authoritarian countries where the voters’ views will not be taken into account” — such as the two bidders for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Fortunately, Boston is not such a place. The voters’ views can be ignored and dismissed for only so long.
Indeed, Boston should be celebrating more than Beijing this week. A ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 31, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Real and Pseudo Free Banking
Like certain weeds and infectious diseases, some myths about banking seem beyond human powers of eradication.
I was reminded of this recently by a Facebook correspondent’s reply to my recent post on “Hayek and Free Banking.” “We had free banking in the US from 1830 until 1862,” he wrote. “It didn’t work out too well.” “During the Wildcat Era,” he added, “banks were unregulated and failed by the hundreds.”
Imagine the effect my critic must have anticipated — the crushing blow his revelations would surely deal to my cherished beliefs. Upon reading his words, my eyes widen; my jaw goes slack. Can thi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 23, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
