Alzheimer's Vaccine

A phatmaceutical company (cue the booing and hissing from Stage Left) is actually engaging in safety testing of a vaccine that would stop the progression of Alzheimer's disease.  Breakthrough stuff, and just in time for the current crop of baby-boomers.

A revolutionary drug that stops Alzheimer's disease in its tracks could be available within a few years.

It could prevent people from reaching the devastating final stages of the illness, in which sufferers lose the ability to walk, talk and even swallow, and end up totally dependent on others.

The jab, which is now being tested on patients, could be in widespread use in as little as six years.

...

Known as CAD106, it is the brainchild of scientists at Zurich-based biotechnology firm Cytos, which is also developing anti-smoking, obesity and flu vaccines.

Cytos chief executive Dr Wolfgang Renner said: "If it could prevent the progression of Alzheimer's, it would be fantastic."

Early tests showed the vaccine is highly effective at breaking up the sticky protein that clogs the brain in Alzheimer's, destroying vital connections between brain cells.

When the jab was given to mice suffering from a disease similar to Alzheimer's, 80 per cent of the patches of amyloid protein were broken up.

The vaccine is now being tried out on 60 elderly Swedish patients in the early and middle stages of Alzheimer's. Half of the men and women are being given the vaccine while half are being given dummy jabs.

Although the year-long trial is designed to show that the treatment is safe, the researchers will also look at its effect on the patients' symptoms.

While the results are not due until early next year, the initial findings are promising. Dr Renner told a Zurich conference earlier this week: "I am glad to report that the vaccine is very well tolerated."

If the trial is successful, larger-scale trials will follow, in which researchers will work out the best dose to give and how often it should be given. The finished product is six to eight years from the market.

The vaccine uses a tiny section of the amyloid protein attached to an empty virus shell to trick the immune system into attacking and breaking up deposits of protein clogging the brain.

Scientists at Cytos, who have sold the rights to the vaccine to Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, say the vaccine is likely to be given to those in the early stages of Alzheimer's, to stop the disease from progressing.

Here is an abstract of a recent Cytos presentation.  And FWIW, it appears to be a second anniversary for this drug:

June 19, 2005 - Cytos Biotechnology AG (CYTN) announced that its collaboration partner Novartis Pharma AG has obtained approval from the Swedish health authority to initiate a phase I clinical trial with the Immunodrug candidate CAD106, an immunotherapeutic product for the treatment of Alzheimer disease.

Good luck.

Comments

[clarice]

I think that's very promising information, too. Sooner, please.

[sylvia]

That tracks nicely with a recent article on a Parkinson's treatment I read about a couple days ago, also in early testing, that appears to have up to about a 65% improvement record. I'd give you a link but don't have one at the moment, but try the Foxs new site Health section for some info on it.

Are we even going to have any diseases in the future? We'll all live to 100.

[Cycledoc]

I'm not sure what a 65f% improvement is in patients with Alzheimer's disease?

I'd like for U.S. results to be first equal those elsewhere in the world and an average age of 80 would be a good first step.

Also pricing of new medications has been confiscatory thanks to PHARMA's profit drive. For example, new cancer drugs can cost as much as $100,000/year for mediocre results. A drug priced beyond reason, and we have many such drugs in the U.S. market, is a little like a tree falling in the woods.

[clarice]

Cycle--we have miracle drugs as a result of the money pharms invest in research. I have a nephew who had a very aggressive form of brain cancer who is alive and well today because of such medicine. It is frightfully expensive, but no one else anywhere in the world invented or manufactured it because no one else put the money into developing it. And I am certain none of the national health systems provide it as an option to their patients who simply are allowed to die of this cancer within a year .

[Semanticleo]

Pharms are just businesspeople. The Stakeholders want a return on their investment. Nothing wrong with the concept.

But what are they giving us? Hypnotics and
pain relievers with legions of side effects that make the original ailment seem tame and even benign.

What causes Alzheimers?

http://curezone.com/dental/dental_alzheimer.asp

Want some more? Sure. Let's put it in our childhood immunizations to turbo boost the quality of our later years and some in-between.

http://www.newstarget.com/z011764.html

That way, the Pharms can fleece us from the cradle to the grave. Excellent business plan.

[Maybeex]

Good point, Seman.
Before the days of big Pharma, people lived longer and had fewer childhood diseases. I want that America back.

[Semanticleo]

Maybee:

What we need is more folks like this;

http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=j_salk

[Semanticleo]

Bad link.

try

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Jesus H Christ, Cleo, now you're trying to push the mercury thing? Even in the face of little subtleties like the fact that autism is continuing to rise even after thimerosol was taken out of vaccines?

(Pssst: here's a quiz question. Incidence of Alzheimer's is 14 times high over the age of 85. More people than ever before are living into extreme old age. What's the outcome? Don't forget to show your work.)

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Before the days of big Pharma, people lived longer and had fewer childhood diseases. I want that America back.

That may have been a touch too subtle for Cleo, Maybee.

[Jane]

Where do I sign up? My once steel trap mind is now nothing but a leaky sieve, and it really pisses me off.

[clarice]

Steyn gives us a short form Dalrymple:
"I think socialized health care is the single biggest factor in transforming the relationship of the individual to the state. In fact, once it's introduced it becomes very hard to have genuinely conservative government - certainly, not genuinely small government. I think I say in my book that in Continental cabinets (and in Canada) the Defense ministry is somewhere you pass through en route to a really important portfolio like Health. Election campaigns become devoted to competing pledges about "fixing" health care, even though by definition it never can be.

In a public health care system, the doctors, nurses, janitors and administrators all need to be paid every Friday so the only point at which costs can be controlled is through the patient, by restricting access. If you go to an American doctor with a monstrous lump on your shoulder, it's in his economic interest to find out what it is and get it whipped off as soon as possible. If you go to a British or Canadian doctor, it's in the system's economic interest to postpone it as long as possible. And because the public will only sit around on waiting lists for two or three years, eventually in order to control costs you have to claw it out of other budgets - like Defense. Socialized health care is the biggest cause not just of the infantilization of the citizenry but of the state."

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2Q0OTg2NGUyOGJlNjMwYmZhNWU4ZmFlY2UxNmY5YzI=>Social Irresponsibility and Socialized Medicine

[clarice]

Everytime Congress gets involved in energy policy it simply reduces energy production--raising energy costs and making our already dying car industry sicker. Imagine what it could do to big pharm if it decided to regulate that industry?

[Soylent Red]

Clarice:

As you have probably discovered, Dalrymple is a genius. Maybe not a genius, but certainly he has a genius in pointing out what should be painfully obvious to everyone.

He has a new book out on healthcare and pharma. My sources tell me it's very good.

[Semanticleo]

"autism is continuing to rise even after thimerosol was taken out of vaccines?"

That's your argument against mercury's role
in autism?

Mercury is perhaps the most toxic substance on earth and it is stored in fatty tissue. It does not leech out of the organism. Thimerisol is not the sole source of mercury in neurological disorders, BUT IT WAS ADDED TO IMMUNIZATIONS FOR CHILDREN ON PURPOSE!!! It is not a byproduct of manufacturing dumped into water tables with no thought of the consequences, but was a deliberate action designed to maximize profits.

You see, it is more costly to manufacture single dose ampules when multi-dose can be safely protected from bacterial contamination with the preservative thimerisol, which is composed of 49% mercury. But, as long as it creates more cash for dividends dispersements, I guess you're ok with that. What need to regulate people willing to pump poison into our kids?

[clarice]

Soylent, I love Dalrymple, too.

[Soylent Red]

a deliberate action designed to maximize profits.

Yes. We can't have businesses maximizing profits. That would fly in the face of socialism.

Here's the problem with your argument, as I see it...

You suggest that Pharmas must small batch produce, raising cost of production, but avoiding the need for preservatives like thimersol. That leads to two possible outcomes:

a. small batch vaccines become so expensive no one can afford to buy them. Libs demand government step in to regulate pricing.

b. pharmas small batch product, eat the increased cost of production, and eventually go out of business or move to more profitable ventures, leaving vaccine production behind all together.

Ever wonder why we have to pay British companies (and subsidize U.S. companies) to produce flu vaccine? Precisely because of regulatory interference in the process.

[Paul Zrimsek]

There's your answer, folks, courtesy of the prestigious All-Caps Journal of Medicine: If your brain is made of fatty tissue like Sanctimoneo's, mercury will accumulate in it and give you Alzheimer's.

[Soylent Red]

Semanticleo:

I think you have mixed up the definitions of "corporation" and "bleeding heart charity organization".

The purpose of business is to maximize profit. Ethics sugest that you don't kill people or break the law to do it. But anything up to that line is fair game.

So if you got, and they want it, they gotta pay what you're asking. There is no ethical or legal consideration involved.

And let me hip you to one more thing: Businesses don't have your best interests in mind. None of them. Not big Pharma or Little Ceasar's.

They want your money in return for the minimum amount of satisfaction that will keep you coming back to give them more money.

That is your relationship with business.

[Soylent Red]

Oh and by the way Semanticleo...

In line with my previous wisdom for you, here's another: Hookers don't have to love you either.

I'm giving you that one for free.

[fortif]

I thought that Alzheimers was from using, like Reagan did. You know using the eye for things like remembering or not forgetting. That memory that Lucifer has floating around out there just for you. Like, you might not remember to check the mail, but, suddenly you find the reminder floating there as you pass the mail box. Not like in your head or seeing it with your eyes closed, just floating around. So, if you check the mail, you get alzheimers because some psychopathic luciferian has claimed your life cause he used(closed his eyes and stared at shit) to figure out what your doing or have done in your life. The luciferian then diseases you because he is a psychopath and wants to be part of your life. Anyhow, this gets confusing when they explain the real reason luciferians 'make' you is to raise you from the dead with memories from life, but that's probably bad since your existence continued in hell or somewhere else and God ceased you and they raised you from the dead to torture you again in existence because they are insane people and mad they are luciferians when they chose that freely and know it costs everyone else on the earth the perfect existence God gave us...........

So, the device that is memory to luciferians is just not attainable. Memory of all things. Mars. Already know all about it. It's not attainable because, being psychopathic luciferians, they chose to go after human bodies. This is the error that Lucifer made and was damned. The mind and soul are part of the body too. they don't just disease. So, we had to sell off what luciferians think is human because that is how lucifer damned, which makes humans more human. So, what's important to some luciferians is that humans understand that luciferians will just use the more human human(God's creation), but that's probalby what lucifer's problem was, everything seems to repeat. Psychopaths.

Anyway, there's Omgega 3s and Collagen. You can tell the psychiatrist your an alcoholic and they have an even better pill.

[Semanticleo]

I can choose not to eat pizza, chemotherapy
is another issue. Big Business (per your admission) cannot be trusted with the public health, being sociopathic by nature.

BTW; Why are flu vaccines outsourced to other countries? Not because of lawsuits or regulation;

http://www.atla.org/pressroom/FACTS/products/VaccineShortages.aspx

[RichatUF]

ATLA-> Association of Trial Lawyers of America

I'm sure they don't have a dog in that fight.

And it must be a full moon rising...cleo with a soft focus version of "poisioning the well" [pharma companies making you sicker?] and well fortif, I don't speak conspiracese...

Maybe I'll do some yard work today

RichatUF

[Soylent Red]

being sociopathic by nature

There's part of your problem. Anthropomorphication of business.

Desire to maximize profits and shareholder value is not sociopathic. It is the defining mission of any business.

Businesses do not exist for your well-being. They exist for the well-being of their shareholders, and to some extent employees. That is the fundamental thing you are ignoring.

[Semanticleo]

"Maybe I'll do some yard work today"

By all means, distract yourself from the labor of refuting the information provided.

[Semanticleo]

"They exist for the well-being of their shareholders,"

Hence the need for constraint. Or do yo wish to relieve the overcrowding of prisons by releasing all those willing to submit 'Mission Statements'?

[clarice]

Semantic, the ATLA -Scaremongering junk scientists have been working together for years. Nader would exaggerate a problem; NBC would do a fake account(fuel tanks exploding) and the ATLA lawyers would be racing to the courthouse to argue before brainwashed jurors. The press knew but never reported that St Ralph has grown rich off ATLA contributions and exploiting thick witted college kids who worked for him for nothing on this propaganda gravy train.

[Soylent Red]

Shareholders, by means of the market, are the constraint.

Company poisons your children or gives mom and dad Alzheimer's? Damn sure won't be seeing that stock on the rise, and thus corporate stakeholders must reform the company/product.

All we are saaaaaaying...
Is give capitalism a chance.

[Semanticleo]

Clarice;

You forgot Johns Hopkins

[Semanticleo]

"Damn sure won't be seeing that stock on the rise,"

When the thimerisol lawsuits reach light of day, their stocks will adjust as well.

Marketplace correction.

[clarice]

"But there is an even more pervasive myth about Nader. As ex-Nader aide Gary Sellers once put it:: "Because Ralph is self-sustaining, he is responsible only to his own conscience. The others aren't—they're in the middle of a web of interests, and they have to compromise their ideals to protect present income or future sources."

Last year FORBES found evidence that Nader had not in fact miraculously levitated above the "web of interests" in which other human beings are caught, but instead was intimately entwined with a group of rich lawyers: the plaintiff bar.

Our 1989 survey of the best-paid lawyers in America revealed that the top legal looters are not Ivy League corporate paper-pushers in Wall Street firms, but obscure plaintiff attorneys around the country-specialists in suing, often in personal injury cases. They are getting rich from the interaction of contingent fees, which get them 30% to 40% of any damage award in addition to expenses, and the litigation explosion resulting from the rewriting of "tort" law, covering personal injury and accidents, by a generation of reformist judges (FORBES, Oct. 16, 1989).

By rich, we mean very rich. Total contingent fee payments, excluding expenses, are now estimated to exceed $10 billion a year and to be rising. FORBES identified at least 62 plaintiff attorneys who made more than $2 million in each of the previous two years. Top moneymaker in 1988: Houston's Joe Jamail, with $450 million to $600 million.

Perhaps out of an uneasy conscience, the plaintiff attorneys were eager to tell us about their financial support of the noble Nader.

"We are what supports Nader, " said Pensacola's Frederic Levin ($7.5 million, 1988 income). "We contribute to him, and he fundraises through us." "We support him overtly, covertly, in every way possible," said San Antonio's Pat Maloney ($6 million). "I should think we give him a huge percentage of what he raises."

Why? Says Austin's Bob Gibbins ($3.7 million): "Nader supports all of our issues, and we support all of his."

The most visible aspect of this mutual support is the devastating bombardment of unfavorable publicity that Nader and his affiliates, through their unrivaled media contacts, are able to bring down on corporations which are simultaneously defending a product liability issue. Nader organizations have collaborated in such recent firestorms as the Audi 5000's alleged "sudden acceleration," which government investigators subsequently showed to be totally false.

Regardless of the merits, bad publicity can cripple a defendant's business and compel him to consider settling out of court in the hope of a quiet life-generally the most profitable outcome for the plaintiff attorneys. And for Nader, successful lawsuits are just another way of imposing his policy prescriptions, despite the plaintiff attorneys' expensive rakeoff.

(more)"
http://www.vdare.com/pb/nader.htm

[Paul]

May I be the first to say

I BLAME BUSH!

If Kerry and Edwards had been elected in 2004, ALL DISEASES KNOWN TO PERSONKIND would have been cured by now.

[RichatUF]

An interesting article about autism

graf-

...autism was first listed as a primary diagnostic category for special education in the early 1990's, as a result of being mandated by part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990 as part of Public Law 101-476.28. Before Public Law 101-476, there was no separate autism category. What that meant is that and children with autism enrolled in special education were lumped together for administrative purposes in the legal definition of the "other health impairments" (OHI) service category. Shattuck states: "However, no reliable data exist that would indicate how the enrollment of children with autism was actually distributed among other enrollment categories before the 1990's." States were required to begin using the new category in 1993, and 1994 was the first year that all states used it. Using a variety of statistical analyses, Shattuck looked at the rates of autism and a variety of other diagnostic criteria reported as special education recipients over a 20 year time period. He also used a method to correct for the possibility that diagnostic substitution was taking place simultaneously among several diagnostic categories...

I suppose its just easier to sue vaccine makers out of business

RichatUF

[Semanticleo]

Clarice;

Why do I sense an Edwards diatribe in the making. Rich? He's worth 30 mil.

I thought conservatives worship greed and avarice. Why aren’t ya’ll salivating with entrepreneurial envy at Edward’s success?

Oh, it’s the way he got his money? Trial lawyers and such truck?

What if he’d been the founder of Blackwater or Boeing? That way only people’s blood would be the price, not corporate blood,eh?

[clarice]

Why do I sense that you have no respect for talent and hard work, Semantic, and like a Russian peasant think that if only someone would only give you one of the two cows the "rich kulak" has all would be right with the world?

[Semanticleo]

"Why do I sense that you have no respect for talent and hard work,"

I do, I do. But I have even more respect
for those who exercise 'noblesse oblige'.

[Lesley]

According to a Tufts University study: in 2001 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market was $802 million. In 2006, the average cost of bring a new biotech drug to market was $1.2 billion.

http://csdd.tufts.edu/Research/Milestones.asp

Evil Big Pharma. The nerve of them to take that risk and hope to recover their costs and make some dough for their shareholders.

[RichatUF]

more from the link (since I goofed the first time

graf-

from the study linked to [fixed link?

...Second, Newschaffer concludes with a plea to turn from the intractable, and perhaps unanswerable, question of whether autism's true prevalence has increased over the past 2 decades toward a greater prospective focus on conducting epidemiologic and genetic research related to autism. I agree that we may never be able to fully understand the dynamics behind historical changes in autism prevalence and of course agree that we need more research into etiology. However, autism diagnosis is based on observing behavior rather than clearly identifiable biological markers, diagnostic agreement among clinicians is not perfect, black children tend to be identified later than white children, and clinicians have reported a willingness to give a diagnosis of autism for children with ambiguous symptoms if they know it will result in the child obtaining more services...

Let the US Gov't take over "Big Pharma" because they have done such a good job with education

RichatUF

[clarice]

Really? Like setting up a poverty center to keep your staff paid until you start campaigning again? Like the Kennedy's who are generous with my money when theirs' is in tax free trusts sheltered in Tahiti, or Edwards' whose is in the Cayman Islands or Teresa's socked away in tax free munis.

This is not "noblesse noblige"--this is robbing the most productive, civic minded , hard working people to give to the poor(often lazy, unproductive and criminal) for votes. Plain and simple.

[RichatUF]

Edwards running afoul of Clinton again

graf-

...And according to experts on nonprofit foundations, Mr. Edwards pushed at the boundaries of how far such organizations can venture into the political realm. Such entities, which are regulated under Section 501C-4 of the tax code, can engage in advocacy but cannot make partisan political activities their primary purpose without risking loss of their tax-exempt status.

Because the organization is not required to disclose its donors — and the campaign declined to do so — it is not clear whether those who gave money to it did so understanding that they were supporting Mr. Edwards’s political viability as much or more than they were giving money to combat poverty.

I'll be sure to wait for the NYT's expose of the Clinton Machine...any minute now

RichatUF

[clarice]

Isn't it funny how lefties love rich people in charge? Even if they got rich--as most did--by inheritances and tax dodges and use their wealth for power to control our lives?
Take Chris Dodd, for example, rich and in politics because of his corrupt father who today is touting two years of mandatory community servuce for all Americans...ROFLMAO

[MikeS]

Edward’s success?

Oh, it’s the way he got his money?

I don’t have a problem with Edwards’ legal practice turning a profit. What I do have a problem with is the way he operates his charity. Seems to me that while charity was his occupation, poor people lost about $1.2 million that donors had intended for them. All the while his campaign staff gained from his charity.

If we compare John Edwards to Dick Cheney, which one has done more to fight poverty?

[RichatUF]

MikeS-

"Fighting Poverty" is big business...my perferred formulation is "Do Gooder Cartel"*

* that's lifted from someone, but don't recall from whom

RichatUF

[RichatUF]

Ha...a minute's thought:

The Cartel of Good Intentions

RichatUF

[MikeS]

Do Gooder Cartel:

Would Edwards' charity qualify?
I mean are the good intentions required?

[Semanticleo]

Ok,ok.

You folks have a problem with certain personalities. How about the concept itself?

Noblesse Oblige;

" the obligation of those of high rank to be honorable and generous (often used ironically)

[Semanticleo]

How about 'The Golden Rule'

Hint; it's not "He who has the gold, makes the rules".

[clarice]

No problem with the concept just with your application to tax dodging grifters .....

[MikeS]

The Golden Rule

The question at the root is whether Edwards is a generous man or a greedy man.

[Rick Ballard]

What 'nobility' is involved in compelling 'generosity' by force? You think Robin Hood is a positive role model, don't you? Armed robbery being the forte of socialists, how could you not?

[Semanticleo]

"or a greedy man."

Just assume 'greedy' and elevate him a notch
in your personal appraisal.

[MikeS]

elevate him a notch in your personal appraisal.

Call me a cynic, but it seems to me that stealing money intended for the poor and using it for his campaign makes Edwards seem a wee bit hypocritical.

[windansea]

Noblesse Oblige;

" the obligation of those of high rank to be honorable and generous/i

Cheney and wife gave 75% of their income last year to charity

[MikeS]

75% of their income

How much was that in dollars?

[windansea]

US Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife earned 8.82 million dollars last year, some 12 times the amount President George W. Bush made, the White House said Friday. But the Cheneys donated 6.9 million dollars of their income to charity

[windansea]

I'm sure Cleo will explain that this was just a tax dodge and that Clinton donating used undies for tax writeoffs is somehow more noble.

[fortif]

The National Service thing is old. Dems have been trying this for a while now. Peace Dept, etc. It's mandatory. It's no pay. It's for 'the poor' to avoid a draft from mandatory service.

The dems want more federal jobs in a beurocracy created by Congress to run more money and take power away from the federal government like DoD, who they will use to 'retire' the Congressional agency when they are done. The problem is that these mandatory jobs (volunteer work) are not paid or are paid very little. The jobs should pay the same as the military.

Requiring high school students to volunteer(work at a job) is a nice idea, but, if it's required, mandatory like a draft, then it should be paid at the same rate as the military.

Cytos means cell and I can't stop thinking of Plame and stem cells.

As far as curing all the diseases created by Lucifer in humans, when they're cured, are we back to God's creation as humans and, if we are, is that being done by God or Satan, and, like are we saved in a baptism like a new man and new name in a new covenant, purified, confirmed and transfered into a new life? Luciferians will just destroy the new life. So, we were saved into a new life by a baptism by something other than God's creation, which is a new life in God's creation, which will then be destroyed by Luciferians. It looks like we'd just be back where we started; created in perfection and damned by Lucifer and Luciferians. So, why bother with the new life and covenant when we just used something other than God to become what we were only to be damned again by Lucifer and Luciferians? Well, the answer would be that everlasting life is life here. Freedom is ceasing existence once we are done here. We are free from Lucifer and and the damning and there is no real way for humans to be damned because they don't exist and raising the dead would be something other than what they were while they were in everlasting life. So, it would just be a life being used by Luciferians. The person would be free.

[Rick Ballard]

Good translations of Demotic Klingon are very rare and transliteration fails to provide the texture necessary to fully assimilate the ideas presented.

At least that's my take.

[richard mcenroe]

Well, on the upside, since Semanticleo is clearly too high minded and ethical to use the drugs produced by these criminal enterprises, we won't have to listen much longer...

[Charlie (Colorado)]

That's your argument against mercury's role
in autism?

Not the only one, but a pretty definite one, yeah. See, hon, that's the way science works: if there's some experimental evidence that disproves your theory, the theory suffers. In this particuar case, we might also note that Hg has been in the environment for a long time --- in fact, it occurs naturally --- that total exposure in industrialized areas has probably been *dropping* for the last hundred years, and that young children in particular are being exposed to much less than they were; see, the funny thing abou young children is they're *young* and so haven't been exposed to historical sources.

Honey, all I can say is I hope you don't fall for the line about how he's going to leave his wife, too.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

That memory that Lucifer has floating around out there just for you. Like, you might not remember to check the mail, but, suddenly you find the reminder floating there as you pass the mail box....

WTF?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Noblesse Oblige;

Cleo, I think that's a very good concept. I just think that ascribing it to ATLA and its members strains credulity. It's a little too easy to see Edwards' expectation that the "poverty stricken" people he's "helping" should appear at the gates of his new mansion, tugging the forelock and holding their proletarian cloth caps, to thank him for his selflessness.

[clarice]

Charlie, fortif speaks Klingon apparently and do not for God's sake get him started on the peace corps (pc to him).

We loved ir when we broke thermometers when I was a kid--we got to play with the mercury and no one dreamed of multi $k cleanups when we did it, either.Probably I shouldn't confess to that. Maybe it explains my constant typos.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

We loved ir when we broke thermometers when I was a kid--we got to play with the mercury and no one dreamed of multi $k cleanups when we did it, either.

God help anyone who put mercurichrome on a cut, too.

[clarice]

In summertime they positively bathed us in that stuff, Charlie.

The soil in Japan BTW has a great deal more lead in it and yet lead poisoning is rare. Why? The practice of washing hands and removing shoes whenever they come in from the outside .

[SlimGuy]

OFF TOPIC 

Message for JMH

Saw you were looking for the snail mail address over a Mike Yon's site

Staff replied in the comments later

Use this page go all the way to the bottom. 

The snail mail info is found there. 

 

[Bruce Hayden]

The Autism/ mercury thing is quite easy. When mercury was eliminated from vaccines here, did the incidence of Autism go up or down? The answer is that it continues to go up, with the latest cohorts to be diagnosed never having had any mercury in their vaccines.

Yes, theoretically it could be just the diagnosis. But I don't believe that. It is real. One friend with Aspeger's nears 50 and yet, when looking back, it has been present throughout this person's life, at least since age one or two. This person has always been a bit odd, we just have a diagnosis, and therefore a way to address the issue, which is quite helpful.

Edwards though is not best known for this, but rather, for suing ob/gyns for failure to perform c-sections, based on what is now obviously junk science. And thanks to this, he got rich, and malpractice insurance increases ran this sort of doctor out of town. The result is that fewer and fewer doctors were willing to deliver babies, and do so conveniently to the mothers.

Yes, you could argue that that is capitalism at work. But esp. if you add in the Nader element, it can also be seen as a fairly corrupt way to do so - fund junk science or technology, get the MSM behind you, then sue on a contingency basis based on that junk science.

The solution to doctors fleeing practice in a state based on this sort of thing is really straight forward - cap non-economic damages for malpractice. Texas recently did so by initiative, and guess what? They are returning in droves. But all that contingency fee tort money is keeping state and federal legislatures paid off and this sort of limitation off the books in many states.

[Bruce Hayden]

I think that the better explanation for autism and AS is assortive mating. When our ancestors were all working on farms, they tended to marry people who lived recently close geographically.

But recently, the best and the brightest have started living and working together, and ultimately marrying. So, you have a lot of engineering types living together in, for example, Silicon Valley, and when they marry, some of what made them great engineers when combined with the same is probably the major cause for the increase.

And note the timing here - it was only when a lot of women moved away from their families and started working in this sort of career, that these disorders really started to grow. Sure, some of it could be better diagnosis, but a lot is likely assortive mating - men who carry the right genes now marrying the women who do too, and doing so because that is who they live and work with.

[Bruce Hayden]

I am really excited about the possibility of this cure for Altheimer's. I have watched a number of people in my parents' generation get it, and fade away. And the toll on their loved ones is brutal.

And, yes, maybe this is a result of better diagnosis - at one point it would likely have been called senile dementia, and it would have been assumed that everyone got it ultimately, if they lived long enough. But most didn't, so it was just what happened when you got old.

But I know plenty who are going into their nineties who never got it. Sure, their memories fade. But not like that. There is a big difference between not remembering where you left your glasses and where you have lived for the last 30 years.

I am a baby boomer, and am starting to see my friends from my generation starting to come down with a lot of those age related diseases and disorders. And it is scary. I am still 10+ years out from Social Security and yet know people dying of heart attacks, cancer, etc., and more that have decreased mobility for one reason or another.

[Rick Ballard]

For those unfamiliar with Bruce's use of the term "assortative mating", here is a primer (actually a bit more than a primer).

[cathyf]

Edwards though is not best known for this, but rather, for suing ob/gyns for failure to perform c-sections, based on what is now obviously junk science. And thanks to this, he got rich, and malpractice insurance increases ran this sort of doctor out of town. The result is that fewer and fewer doctors were willing to deliver babies, and do so conveniently to the mothers.

There is a more subtle effect, which is that it kills mothers. For reasons which you can debate endlessly, when something goes wrong with the baby at birth, it's the doctors fault -- even though whatever went wrong has absolutely no possible relation to anything that the doctor did, like for example a genetic mutation. On the other hand, clear outrageous negligent malpractice against mothers is almost never punished. (Given that before birth the cultural value is that babies can be sacrificed on no more than their mother's whims, it's rather a bizarre and total cultural flip-flop.)

While c-section is marginally safer for babies, it is much more dangerous for mothers. But in the legal/ethical environment which says that babies are many times more valuable than mothers, doctors are behaving rationally when they do unnecessary c-sections. So when women die in them, and subsequent babies die from uterine rupture, people like Edwards made their own important contributions to those deaths. Just like when the autism lawsuits loot out the vaccine injury funds and then the lawsuits drive the pharma companies out of the vaccine business, it will be the lawyers' fault when kids start dying of measles and whooping cough.

[Neo]

Ultimate question ..

What if you forget to get the vaccine ?

[sophy]

I do not know how to use the Hellgate gold ; my friend tells me how to use.