Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,227

In a paper published in the July 31 issue of Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center used CRISPR-Cas9 to edit long-lived blood stem cells to reverse the clinical symptoms observed with several blood disorders, including sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia.

It’s the first time that scientists have specifically edited the genetic makeup of a specialized subset of adult blood stem cells that are the source of all cells in the blood and immune system.

The proof-of-principle study suggests that efficient modification of targeted stem cells could reduce the costs of gene-editing treatments for blood disorders and other diseases while decreasing the risks of unwanted effects that can occur with a less discriminating approach.

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A solid clarification article in a major newspaper where I point out that the transhumanism movement is vastly different than how Epstein interpreted in in 2011. Transhumanists need to speak up about what their vision of transhumanism is so others and media know what it really is about.

The revelation that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein planned to impregnate 20 women with his sperm in a “DNA seeding” centre left the world feeling sick. But for patrons of a small, but growing, political movement it caused utter chaos.

“This is the largest media coverage we have ever experienced,” says Zoltan Istvan, former presidential candidate and founder of the Transhumanist Party. “But this is the worst type of coverage. Lots of damage control is being done right now.”

The father-of-two has spent the morning taking telephone calls and sending emails to fellow “leaders” of the movement to try and work out some form of publicity crisis management strategy.

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Arch Intern Med. 1997 Feb 10;157:281–5.

Growing numbers of patients suffering from many symptoms believe that they have a condition called multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome (MCSS). It has been suggested that this syndrome can be triggered by exposure to any of a large and usually incompletely defined number of natural and synthetic chemical substances. Major medical organizations, including the National Research Council and the American Medical Association, have not recognized MCSS as a clinical syndrome because of a lack of valid, well-controlled studies defining it and establishing pathogenesis or origin. Lately, some have proposed that many patients with MCSS suffer from hereditary coproporphyria. However, this purported association is based chiefly on results from a single reference laboratory of a fundamentally flawed assay for erythrocyte coproporphyrinogen oxidase.

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But critics point out that all that promise could vanish if the rush to implement A.I. tramples patient privacy rights, overlooks biases and limitations, or fails to deploy services in a way that improves health outcomes for most people.

You could be forgiven for thinking that A.I. will soon replace human physicians based on headlines such as “The A.I. Doctor Will See You Now,” “Your Future Doctor May Not Be Human,” and “This A.I. Just Beat Human Doctors on a Clinical Exam.” But experts say the reality is more of a collaboration than an ousting: Patients could soon find their lives partly in the hands of A.I. services working alongside human clinicians.

There is no shortage of optimism about A.I. in the medical community. But many also caution the hype surrounding A.I. has yet to be realized in real clinical settings. There are also different visions for how A.I. services could make the biggest impact. And it’s still unclear whether A.I. will improve the lives of patients or just the bottom line for Silicon Valley companies, health care organizations, and insurers.

“I think that all our patients should actually want A.I. technologies to be brought to bear on weaknesses in the health care system, but we need to do it in a non-Silicon Valley hype way,” says Isaac Kohane, a biomedical informatics researcher at Harvard Medical School.

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In 1948, physicist Leonard Eisenbud proposed a particular way of transmitting the waves to overcome this. But not until now have researchers made it happen.

By Michael Slezak.

It’s a call with no response. A new way of creating waves – whether of light, radio or sound – that don’t echo promises to improve everything from your Wi-Fi signal to medical imaging to shining lasers through space.

As a wave travels – think of light shining through water, for example – it can become scattered. This is a problem in telecommunications: if you send digital signals down a very long optical fibre, the pulses can get stretched out, and 1s can start to blend into 0s.

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A small, portable breath monitor can quickly and accurately detect acute respiratory distress syndrome, researchers report.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is an often deadly disease that causes fluid to leak into the lungs and demands early diagnosis.

To detect the condition today, doctors rely heavily on their own judgment and time-consuming tests. The researchers say their new technology could improve survival rates and lower the cost of care.

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