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Category Archives: Transhuman News

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Posted: October 2, 2012 at 7:17 am

New York,1October2012 - Secretary-General's message on International Day of Older Persons

Rapid population ageing and a steady increase in human longevity worldwide represent one of the greatest social, economic and political transformations of our time. These demographic changes will affect every community, family and person. They demand that we rethink how individuals live, work, plan and learn throughout their lifetimes, and that we re-invent how societies manage themselves.

As we embark on shaping the post-2015 United Nations development agenda, we must envision a new paradigm that aligns demographic ageing with economic and social growth and protects the human rights of older persons. We are all -- individually and collectively -- responsible for the inclusion of older persons in society, whether through developing accessible transportation and communities, ensuring the availability of age-appropriate health care and social services, or providing an adequate social protection floor.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing. As the proportion of older persons in society grows, the bold vision it put forward -- of building a society for all ages is more relevant than ever.

Longevity is a public health achievement, not a social or economic liability. On this International Day of Older Persons, let us pledge to ensure the well-being of older persons and to enlist their meaningful participation in society so we can all benefit from their knowledge and ability.

Statements on 1October2012

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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

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Novartis Progresses with AIN457

Posted: at 7:17 am

Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company, Novartis AG (NVS) recently announced phase II data on its pipeline candidate, AIN457 (secukinumab), which is being developed for the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis on the hands, feet and nails.

Data from the double-blind phase II study showed that during the first month, weekly treatment with AIN457 helped reduce pain associated with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis on the hand and feet almost three times more than placebo (54.3% versus 19.2%).

Additionally, after 12 weeks of treatment with AIN457, 39% of the patients experienced either clear or minimal psoriasis. AIN457 was also found to reduce signs and symptoms of finger nail psoriasis in patients, when compared to placebo.

Further data presented at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (:EADV), by Novartis, for the relief in signs and symptoms of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis showed that 12 weeks of treatment with AIN457, improved the quality of life (skin-related) in 25 times more patients in comparison to placebo.

Novartis stated in its press release that plaque psoriasis affects about 2% of the worlds population, out of which more than one third of patients suffer from its moderate-to-severe form.

Novartis is currently on track with pivotal phase III studies on AIN457 and expects data in 2013. The company is planning to file for regulatory approval once phase III results are available.

Novartis is also studying AIN457 in phase II trials for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.

We note already approved drugs for the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis include Johnson & Johnsons (JNJ) Stelara, Abbott Laboratories (ABT) Humira and Pfizer Inc. and Amgen Inc.s (PFE/AMGN) Enbrel.

Our Recommendation

Currently, we have a Neutral recommendation on Novartis. The company carries a Zacks #3 Rank (Hold rating) in the short run.

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Novartis Progresses with AIN457

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Study: Psoriasis patients more prone to diabetes

Posted: at 7:16 am

Research links psoriasis, Type 2 diabetes

While psoriasis and Type 2 diabetes seem like completely different medical problems, a new study of more than 100,000 psoriasis patients shows there is a link, and doctors are taking note.

Psoriasis is caused by an imbalance in the immune system, and it affects 2 percent to 4 percent of the population worldwide. The symptoms of psoriasis include red, scaly, itchy patches on the skin.

Mercy Medical Center dermatologist Dr. Janet Lin said psoriasis patients have several other health issues they need to keep their eye on, including a new one researchers are just learning about.

"Psoriasis is an independent risk factor for heart disease, for stroke, for obesity and for depression, and now they're even finding that if you have severe psoriasis, you're twice as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes," Lin said.

The study was done in the United Kingdom and published earlier this year in the "Archives of Dermatology."

"The most recent studies show there was an increased risk with the severity of the psoriasis. We think that's due to inflammation in the blood stream. The psoriasis releases some markers, increases inflammation and leads to insulin resistance and, eventually, Type 2 diabetes," said Dr. Amber Taylor, the director of the Diabetes Center at Mercy.

She said although the risk is fairly low for most psoriasis patients, they should still be screened.

Brenda Phipps said she's been suffering with psoriasis for 16 years.

"It takes a toll on my life, daily. I have my good days, and I have my bad days. It's very depressing," she said.

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Study: Psoriasis patients more prone to diabetes

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Translational Regenerative Medicine: Market Prospects 2012-2022

Posted: at 7:16 am

NEW YORK, Oct. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

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Report Details

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Translational Regenerative Medicine: Market Prospects 2012-2022

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Novel gene associated with Usher syndrome identified

Posted: at 7:16 am

Public release date: 1-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Allison Elliott allison.elliott@uky.edu University of Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 1, 2012) Usher syndrome is a hereditary disease in which affected individuals lose both hearing and vision. The impact of Usher syndrome can be devastating. In the United States, approximately six in every 100,000 babies born have Usher syndrome.

Several genes associated with different types of Usher syndrome have been identified. Most of these genes encode common structural and motor proteins that build sensory cells in the eye and inner ear.

In a paper to be published in the November 2012 issue of Nature Genetics, a team of researchers from multiple institutions, led by Zubair M. Ahmed from the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, and including Gregory Frolenkov, associate professor in the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Department of Physiology, reported a novel type of gene associated with Usher syndrome - a calcium and integrin binding protein 2 (CIB2).

Zubair M. Ahmed, Saima Riazuddin, Thomas B. Friedman and their teams have identified this gene on chromosome 15 and determined that its mutations are responsible for nonsyndromic deafness and Usher syndrome type I. CIB2 was found to be interacting with other proteins associated with Usher syndrome.

Suzanne Leal and her team at the Baylor College of Medicine found that in Pakistan, CIB2 mutations are one of the prevalent genetic causes of nonsyndromic hearing loss.

Inna Belyantseva at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the National Institutes of Health, established that CIB2 is localized at the tips of mechanosensory stereocilia of the inner ear hair cells, exactly where the conversion of sound waves into electrical signals occurs.

Frolenkov and his team at UK demonstrated that disease-associated mutations in CIB2 change the ability of this protein to bind intracellular calcium; in a zebra fish model, its loss disrupts mechanosensitivity in the hair cells.

Furthermore, Tiffany Cook, Elke Buschback and their team at University of Cincinnati knockdown CIB2 analog in Drosophila (fruit fly) eyes and observed calcium-dependent degeneration of photoreceptors and loss of sensitivity to repetitive light pulses.

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Novel gene associated with Usher syndrome identified

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The 54 Percent: In defense of political correctness

Posted: at 7:16 am

There is no denying that politically correct has become a pejorative term in todays society. Miles Bradys opinion piece on the topic, published in TNH last week, is just one indication among many of a general disdain for the practice.

Being PC is often portrayed as a manner of policing self-expression that drains an essential color and vivacity from the English language, robbing writers of their unique voices, as well as an almost sporting pursuit among the liberal, academic and social justice communities. I concede that adherence to the canon of political correctness does not necessarily mean that the speaker cares deeply about issues of discrimination and that PC speech can be used to mask antipathy and even hatred. But using PC language simply to avoid contention over the issue is akin to following the letter of the law while violating its spirit.

In its best incarnation, political correctness is not a threat to free speech, nor a rigid primer added to and circulated each year. Speech is often ambiguous, and meaning depends heavily on the speaker and its context. Many offensive words have been reappropriated by the communities they target. There can be no list of words and phrases that are verboten. Political correctness is simply a guide to help you use language thoughtfully and with careful regard to the feelings and experiences of others.

To assert that one should not be offended by something because the majority of people find it inoffensive misses the point rather profoundly (even leaving aside the fact that it is very hard to choose not to be offended when something truly hurts you). Words are considered politically incorrectbecausethe vast majority of people find them acceptable, and use them freely, despite the fact that they serve as shorthand for the mistreatment of a small group on the part of that same majority. Words do not become offensive over time because the social justice community is playing some absurd game of discrimination bingo in which the board gets increasingly larger. Words become offensive because they are used hatefully. The word retard, once a clinical term, became politically incorrect because over the years it was used to dehumanize and marginalize a group of people.

Those who proudly describe themselves as politically incorrect seem to see themselves as truth-telling, rule-breaking cowboys living on the linguistic frontier. But the adamant assertion that one is not racist, not sexist, not classist, not ableist, not any kind of -ist does not negate an antecedent statement that says exactly the opposite. Our understanding of other people is limited in scope we cannot read minds, and a person who says things that violate his purported beliefs must not hold them very strongly, or else has a very tenuous grasp on the concept of communication. So who, among these two camps, is obscuring truth? Who is hypocritical? Who is using inexact language? From where I am standing, it is not the proponents of political correctness.

Taboo words and phrases have a power derived from their reserved nature. Their utterance carries a weight that attracts attention, and this makes people want to use them, almost as they would swearing. But a distinction must be made between speech that is offensive because it is vulgar, and speech that is offensive because it is intrinsically tied to years of institutionalized discrimination and hatred. Similarly, censorship of media because of graphic or sexual content cannot be conflated with political correctness, which is, in its most basic form, simply the choice not to use offensive, hurtful language. A word is much more than a word, and using politically incorrect speech is not avoiding euphemisms in order to embrace truthfulness. Along with their literal meaning, these statements drag with them a whole host of injustices, and prejudices and insults that have, over time and with repeated use, become inexorable from that word or phrase, and call into memory the very personal pain of being told you are less than.

There are enough words in the English language that we can deploy exactly the one we need at any given moment without having to call on another that not only does not accurately represent how we purport to feel, and hurts people in the bargain by carelessly perpetuating discrimination, marginalization and hatred. While politically correct speech cant singlehandedly right the wrongs of society, the power of making people think about the implications of their word choice cannot be overlooked. When coupled with empathy and precision of language, political correctness is a powerful force for good.

Aliza Harrigan is a junior political science major and English minor. The 54 percent denotes the percentage of the UNH student body that is female.

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The 54 Percent: In defense of political correctness

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Kurt Vonnegut, Harper Lee, and Other Literary Greats on Censorship

Posted: at 7:16 am

Some of these authors were censored, but they certainly weren't silenced.

Some of history's most celebrated works of literature have, at various times and in various societies, been bannedfrom Arabian Nights to Ulysses to, even, Anas Nin's diaries, to name but a fraction. To mark Banned Books Week 2012, I'll be featuring excerpts from once-banned books on Literary Jukebox over the coming days. But, today, dive into an omnibus of meditations on and responses to censorship from a selection of literary heroes from the past century.

Kurt Vonnegut writes in his almost-memoir, A Man Without a Country (public library):

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And yet libraries have had a track record for exercising censorship themselves. When Virginia's Hanover County School Board removed all copies the Harper Lee classic To Kill a Mockingbird (public library) in 1966 on the grounds that it was "immoral," Lee wrote the following letter to the editor of The Richmond News Leader, found in Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird:

Editor, The News Leader:

Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that "To Kill a Mockingbird" spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.

Harper Lee

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Kurt Vonnegut, Harper Lee, and Other Literary Greats on Censorship

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Read-out being held to raise awareness for banned book week

Posted: at 7:16 am

Read-out being held to raise awareness for banned book week

Top 10 challenged books of 2011:

Source: The American Library Association

Sections of banned and challenged books will be read aloud Wednesday to protest censorship and recognize the national Banned Book Week.

The OU School of Library and Information Studies and the Oklahoma Library and Information Studies Students Association will be holding a Read-Out from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday on the South Oval, according to the schools website.

Last year, they set up a table and took turns reading aloud, and it was so cute to see all these college students sitting down listening to each other read aloud to teach tolerance, said Cecelia Brown, professor and director for the OU School of Library and Information Studies.

Each year, the American Library Association receives hundreds of reports from libraries, schools and the media on attempts to ban books in communities across the country, according to the associations website. The association holds a Banned Book Week to raise awareness of and condemn censorship to ensure free access to information.

These books are challenged for different reasons, ranging from language to culture to anything that people disagree with, Brown said. A successful challenge results in these books being banned from schools, public libraries

and other institutions.

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Ron Paul Supporters Contemplate a Write-in Campaign

Posted: at 7:16 am

With Rep. Ron Paul's, R-Texas, latest and final quest for the presidency now history, his small but committed group of supporters are now mulling what to do now. Some are contemplating writing his name in as a protest vote.

Others maintain that writing in Paul would do little but make the re-election of President Barack Obama more possible, something the libertarian-leaning Paul supporters would seem to loath to do.

Paul himself has not publically commented about a potential write-in campaign.

Write in Ron Paul

In an article in the Hartford Courant, Howard Landis makes the case for writing in Paul's name. He does this by ticking off the positions of both Mitt Romney and Obama in three key areas.

The economic policies, states Landis, of Barack Obama has been abysmal, with the excessive spending, high taxes, and over regulations. By implication, Romney, while not perfect, would be far better on economic policy than Obama.

Landis favors the foreign policy of Obama over that Romney. It seems that Romney would take a more active role in world affairs, attempting to influence events, something that is anathema to a Paul supporter.

On social policies, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, both Romney and Obama get good marks on not being active in pushing those issues. However, the high incarceration rate of people Landis believes have "harmed no one" concerns him and neither candidate will address the issue.

So, the upshot, is that since both Obama and Romney have the correct view on only one issue, Landis will write in Paul's name.

Do not write in Ron Paul

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Ron Paul Supporters Contemplate a Write-in Campaign

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Ron Paul’s underserved cult

Posted: at 7:16 am

By Ben Levin

Published as a part of Maneater v. 79, Issue 12

The opinions expressed by The Maneater columnists do not represent the opinions of The Maneater editorial board.

Ron Paul is never going to be the president of the United States. He didnt win the Republican nomination, and there wasnt a fight at the convention. Im sorry. I know, I know, Ron Pauls a great American hero. Hes not a politician. He delivers babies in his spare time, for goodness sake! I saw him help a grandma cross the street the other day. Whats that, you say? Ron Paul is old? Wrong: Within his blood courses the youthful life force of the American dream.

Yet before we sink any further into hero worship of Americans favorite libertarian, I want you to stand back for a moment and ask yourself, honestly, what it is you like about Ron Paul. You hear it all the time: Ron Paul is the voice of the college student. During his visit to MU last March, Rep. Paul drew the loudest cheer for his endorsement of marijuana legalization. Youll get no argument from me about the point the war on drugs should end. But the drug war is not the most pressing problem facing college students. Its not even in the top five. If you support Ron Paul because of his antiestablishment message and opposition to the drug war, you owe it to yourself to re-examine both his positions and your priorities.

Heres a priority: health care. Obamacare allows young adult students to continue receiving coverage under their parents health insurance plans until the age of 26. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, three million young adults now have access to health care who otherwise would not. Are you one of them? Under President Paul, that policy would be gone, along with the rest of the Affordable Care Act. Goodbye, easy access to health care.

Or maybe you have diabetes. Assuming youre not insured under your parents health plan (remember, weve repealed Obamacare), youre going to need some insurance. So on top of rent, food and tuition, youre going to need to find some insurance company willing to pay for your health care. Its alternately impossible or impossibly expensive, and its real life under President Paul. Obamacare, for comparison, forbids insurance companies from turning you away based on your preexisting conditions.

I can hear you now: Wait, Ben! College students are a mostly healthy bunch! Why should we care about those few poor suckers that arent us? Fair question, friend. Young adults are, on average, healthier than any other age group. We are united by two things: our general health and our general poverty. Many college-age people are in the unique position of not being supported by their parents and not having the time to pay for both their expenses and their tuition. Pell Grants, Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and federal subsidization of college loans allow thousands of students at MU to continue their educations. These programs, more integral to college students than any drug policy, would be abolished under a libertarian philosophy. You would suffer. Your friends would suffer.

Its almost funny Ron Paul is known for his rabid support from college students. It betrays a deep ignorance on the part of those students an ignorance toward the issues that affect students most. Maybe you have your tuition paid by your parents. Maybe you fall under your mothers insurance plan. Maybe even your credit card statements are sent to a faraway mailbox. For those not so lucky, Ron Pauls platform poses an insurmountable obstacle to their health and future. Remembering those students, and that their concerns are greater than the need for a legal joint, will help you decide which politicians deserve your worship.

Concurrence or rebuttal, if you have a strong opinion, let's hear it. The Maneater Forum seeks to publish a diversity of opinions and foster meaningful decision. Readers are encourages to actively contribute to and develop new discussions. Add to ours, or make your own point.

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