Category Archives: Transhuman News

Public release date: 3-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Katie Delach katie.delach@uphs.upenn.edu 215-349-5964 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

PHILADELPHIA A team of researchers led by Samir Mehta, MD, chief of the Orthopaedic Trauma & Fracture Service at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has received a $2.5 million grant from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP), provided through the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), to begin Phase 2 human trials of a study that examines the effective treatment of post-surgical orthopedic infections using Microbion Corporation's topical BisEDT drug. The University of Pennsylvania will work with a team of researchers from Microbion and the University of California-San Francisco on the trial, set to begin pending FDA approval.

"We're honored to be given this award from the DoD, and are hopeful that the Phase 2 trial will allow us to offer improved treatments and standards of care to a significant number of patients," said Mehta. "Orthopaedic trauma and fracture patients are at an increased risk for infection. If successful, this new treatment strategy could be a significant step toward reducing instances of amputation, disability, and even death."

Studies show that patients requiring orthopaedic trauma surgery may be three times more likely to experience post-operative infections (8.7 percent) than patients undergoing other forms of surgery (2.8 percent) as a result of the high-energy nature of the injury. With approximately 2.6 million orthopaedic devices implanted annually in the United States, approximately 4.3 percent (112,000 patients) will suffer from a post-operative infection.

Orthopaedic extremity injuries also constitute the majority (65 percent) of combat casualties experienced in recent U.S. military conflicts. The risk of infection developing after surgical treatment of traumatic, open military wounds represents an extremely serious threat; reports indicate that military wound infection rates may be as high as 77 percent. Such infections frequently lead to death, amputation, disability, and other significant morbidity, despite the best available care.

"The goal of our study is to examine the efficacy and safety of administering a single application of Microbion's topical BisEDT gel to infected extremity wounds," said Annamarie Horan, MPA, PhD, director of Clinical Research for Penn Orthopaedics. "The gel is not a replacement for standard antibiotics, but the promising results of the Phase 1 trial provide strong evidence suggesting the drug may be an effective supplemental treatment."

Phase 1 human trials of BisEDT were successfully completed in 2011. In June 2012, the CDMRP award team met with the FDA in Washington D.C. to discuss the team's plan to advance to Phase 2 human clinical studies for the treatment of infections associated with orthopedic trauma. Clinical studies for Phase 2 will begin next year at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital.

Last year, the World Health Organization noted a significant rise in the rate of infections that are able to ward off antibiotic treatment. The alarming rate of antibiotic resistant infections has since been labeled a global health crisis. The research team is hopeful that future research and development of drugs like BisEDT will lead to new standards of health care and improved treatments for all patients.

Dr. Mehta and Dr. Horan do not have any financial affiliation with Microbion Corporation.

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US Department of Defense awards Penn researchers funding to investigate new anti-infection drug

Todays National Post front page carries a story about the exploratory mission to Iran being organized by Terrance Nelson, former chief of Manitobas Roseau River First Nation, and a small delegation of like-minded Canadian aboriginal activists. Nelson believes that Irans dictatorship can be a helpful partner in addressing Canadian human rights abuses because the Ayatollahs have always promoted the human rights issues of indigenous peoples in this country.

These Iranian leaders, of course, would be the same folks who ordered the rape, torture and killing of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi (dont worry, Mr. Nelson, shes not indigenous) not to mention countless other barbaric crimes too numerous to list in this space. But never mind that: Nelsons militant rhetoric casts Ottawa as the enemy of Canadas natives. And by the logic of the-enemy-of-my-enemy, the holocaust-denying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is perversely imagined to be a kindred spirit.

Its a sick joke. And its not even the first time its been told: The spectacle of militant Canadian natives traipsing off for photo-ops with one of the most reviled, human-rights-abusing regimes on earth played out in exactly the same way 25 years ago.

In August, 1987, in advance of a visit by then- External Affairs Minister Joe Clark, South Africas white supremacist government flew in four Canadian Indian leaders for a Pretoria news conference and a lavish, all-expenses paid fact-finding tour aimed at discrediting Canadas sanctions regime. Among the stooges whod been brought to South Africa for the propaganda event was Gerald Wuttunee described by the South Africans, somewhat hilariously, as a Red Indian Chief from Sescatchewan. (The Canadian delegation, Toronto Star correspondent Peter Goodspeed reported at the time, also had several non-Indian members including one Eileen Presseler, who was then president of something called the British Columbia Free Speech League. In Pretoria, she declared that Canada was into a period of censorship, book banning, political show trials, that kind of thing, thought crimes.)

A few months before that, in March, 1987, Louis Stevenson, then chief of the Peguis Indian Reserve north of Winnipeg, invited South African ambassador Glenn Babb to conduct a fact-finding tour of his impoverished community. Babb readily agreed, and he showed up with dozens of journalists in tow.

The visit suited the agenda of both men: Stevenson was able to press his case for more government funding through the national media, and Babb used the suffering of Canadian natives as a backdrop for his claim that Canada and the West more generally had no moral standing to criticize Apartheid (a policy Babb described as benign).

The media circus at Peguis was somewhat surreal, according to a report by the Stars Derek Ferguson, with Stevenson dressed in deerskin and full headdress, and Babb in an expensive blue serge suit and navy cloth overcoat, surrounded by bodyguards. Stevenson gave a speech in which he requested $99-million in aid from the South African government. Babb said he would see what he could do.

In the last 25 years, nothing has changed, apparently: Militant native leaders, who purport to be pursing the cause of racial justice, make common cause with the most openly hateful and bigoted regimes on the whole planet. All thats missing, in 2012, is for Irans version of Glenn Babb (had he not already been thrown out) to go traipsing around Kashechewan or Attawapiskat with a Press TV camera crew.

One hopeful note for me to end on: In response to Stevensons 1987 stunt, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) unanimously passed a resolution condemning Babbs visit to Peguis. Twenty-five years later, it would be nice if the AFN gave a similarly full-throated condemnation of Terrance Nelson and his like-minded band of useful idiots.

National Post jkay@nationalpost.com Twitter @jonkay

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First Nations stooges: South Africa in 1987 and Iran in 2012

Human rights are essential to all peoples, but also institutions, for without protected human rights, social instability reigns, writes Mona Makram-Ebeid

These are extraordinary times with incommensurable feelings of optimism and dread in the air. Still unfolding are struggles for supremacy between forces of democracy and others inwardly looking, whose references are to a past that has long vanished, a fragile global ecosystem and the much vaunted but highly elusive more equitable economic order. Woven into this matrix of power relations are challenges to gender, religious beliefs and class inequities perpetuated by institutions with inherent patriarchal, intolerant and autocratic tendencies. The tensions these struggles create cause fear and uncertainty for many people, but for those who work in human rights, there has never been such a moment of unique opportunity to introduce the future to the present.

Human rights activists, politicians, academics, lawyers, judges, reformers and "movers and shakers" now have an unprecedented opportunity to develop new values, mechanisms and strategies to guide and shape the future. 2011 in our Arab region, was the year of the people, "the power of the powerless", the year of the revolution, and most importantly a revolution anchored in -- and inspired by -- the power of an idea: human rights, and of international human rights law -- freedom, human dignity, social justice; in other words, the internationalisation of human rights and the humanisation of international law, as the revolutionary change agent of the human rights revolution.

Today one of the most prescient demands of all the political forces in Egypt, intellectuals and youth movements is to move to a State of Law, which must be clearly embedded in the constitution. It is this notion of a jurisprudential revolution as a revolutionary change agent from an arbitrary system, to a State of Law that will determine the real success of the 25 January Revolution. The only way to lay the foundation for a civil, democratic, modern and egalitarian state is through the establishment of a genuine national consensus on the principles of constitutionalism that guarantees equality and equal participation for all Egyptians without distinction on grounds such as religion, race, and class or gender.

On the other hand, the standard of humane incorporation requires that non-Muslims in a Muslim majority country be granted equal citizenship with equal opportunities to enjoy their own religious identities, particularly that there is a long and rich history of accommodation and cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims in Egypt. Moreover, there is sufficient Islamic theological and legal basis for this accommodation and cooperation. The role of the human rights movement must therefore be one of strategic advocacy impelled by the imperative of solidarity, on the one hand, and the interdependent universe we inhabit on the other, and that strategic advocacy must be seen as being empowered by the people and the idea of human rights as tools of the revolution.

One of the most important advocacy functions and indispensable to the promotion and protection of human rights is the investigation, documentation, exposure and denouncing of violations of human rights and violators themselves. In other words, what is involved here is the mobilisation of shame against human rights violations, whether it be governments or individuals; the notion that the "whole world is watching".

Accordingly, this fact-finding function is crucial to the protection of human rights. In many countries, government themselves have become increasingly dependent on the fact-finding of non-governmental human rights organisations and even the intergovernmental machinery, such as the UN Commission on Human Rights or the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, would be virtually incapacitated in the absence of NGO briefs, petitions, documentary evidence, legal analysis and written and oral interventions.

Today, NGOs are increasingly playing a formative role in the initiation, drafting, interpretation and application of international human rights agreements. For example, the work of women's rights groups played an important legislative role in the initiation and enactment of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women as well as highlighting the global pattern of violence against women. But as long as the perception of women's role as reproducers and caretakers is not changed, human rights will never be human.

The educational process towards creating a culture of human rights and respect for the right to be different is especially important during a period of transition to democracy, because the struggle for human rights is not only to curb abuses of power but also to promote the democratic exercise of power.

A corollary to and support system for the development of the rule of law and the process of democratisation is the "constitutionalisation" of rights in a rights charter. A recent charter of rights for a post-revolution constitutional democracy in Egypt was issued by a group of scholars of different political and religious hues (I was privileged to be one of them) who gathered together under the enlightened guidance of the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the highest authority in the Islamic world, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, a graduate of the Sorbonne.

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Human rights and Egypt's future