A new study indicates that while more Americans than English citizens get cancer, they die of it less frequently (the money we spend here is double what they spend in England).

Yet the richest among us have rates of disease comparable to the poorest classes in England. Adult white Americans suffer diabetes at double the rates of their English counterparts.

Having lived in England for a year once upon a time, I’m going to hazard a guess as to why… People there walk WAY more there than we do here. It’s just a part of life to walk to the store and to the “tube” (rapid transit) and to the local restaurants and pubs. Far fewer Englishmen even own a single car–something like 50% (stats here), whereas car ownership statistics for America as long ago as 1996 say there’s a car for every person with a drivers’ license–and that 60% of families have two. But why not? The way we’ve built our average American cities–everything is far apart. Suburbs have created incredible sprawl.

And then there’s the chance that stress in America is a lot higher. But that’s a whole ‘nuther post…

Soldiers at war are subjected to extreme conditions in addition to the bullets and bombs. I remember some of my dad’s WWWII recollections centering on the crappy food, the waking up in puddles of water, endless marching in rainy, disgusting weather conditions, etc. I’ve heard true horror stories about the conditions soldiers endured during the Vietnamese conflict.

While research on replenishing energy is not new, the search is going new places. With our growing understanding about the power of oxidants (free radicals) to damage the immune system, investigators at Appalachian State University have received $1.1 million to look at the possibilities for quercetin, a yellowish-green pigment occurring naturally in red apples, red berries, red onions and other fruits and vegetables. Technically, quercetin is a phytochemical that contains lots of antioxidants. Some think it will produce viable solutions for protecting the immune systems of soldiers under pressure.

Using volunteer cyclists, university scientists are doing placebo control studies that test how effectively quercetin boosts the immune response of exhausted people (3 hours a day of cycling for 3 days in a row is supposed to simulate the type of stress a soldier is exposed to on an intensive, prolonged mission). Previous studies have looked at how certain drinks might help prolong the time to exhaustion–this one’s about keeping soldiers healthier despite the extreme stress to their bodies. Too bad we’ll never be able to eliminate the causes.

I’m seeing articles and conferences and reports everywhere about the very real potential for a flu pandemic. The U.S. government is actually preparing plans that will designate who’s considered essential (and will likely get vaccinated) and who isn’t.

I wouldn’t want to be the person assigned to this task. Here’s the latest thinking of their strategy:

“…instead of giving medicine to first responders and health-care workers, as currently planned, it might be wiser to give the drugs to every person with symptoms and others in the same household.”

The World Health Organization held a conference in Vietnam on what to do about avian flu. Vietnam’s had 37 human cases, 29 of which were fatal. The European Commission banded together with the government of China and the World Bank at an avian flu conference to talk about how to collect money to fight this looming threat.

For more information, recent WHO avian flu statistics here and the CDC Q&A here.

With all these giant organizations collectivizing for the onslaught, it seems reasonable to be concerned. But I am going to hope–pray–that the bird flu will reveal itself as another Chicken Little alarm like the worldwide hullabaloo generated by Y2K fears. Perhaps our finest scientific minds working together on it with such fervor will indeed make it so.

I met the New Scientist folks at their booth at the BIO conference in Chicago this week–and look what they’re telling us now!
Look out stem cells–here comes tissue printing. Seems scientists are able to literally print living cells onto “biopaper” and let them grow together to form new tissues–they seem to be attracted to one another and as they grow closer, begin to beat in synch.

They’ve already successflly grown things like arteries and bladders…now they’re working on making the process faster and more efficient. Who knows how complex an organ this process will eventually be able to form? For those who know they’re going to need a new organ sometime in their future (people with heart valve problems, bad hearts, failing livers), this could be truly exciting news.

Pumping carbon dioxide through the nose relieved seasonal allergic symptoms for a bunch of people in this recent study.

The study was small, but the results were dramatic.

About 20 million sexually active people in the U.S. are infected with the HPV (human papillomavirus). Symptoms may include genital warts–or no visible symptoms at all. Most will clear the infection on their own (in women, usually within 2 years), but 1/3 of the virus types can lead to cervical cancer.

If you know any young woman who’s been frightened when a pap test revealed precancerous cells, you’ll be glad to hear about this new HPV vaccine which experiments indicate can protect against cervical cancer for up to almost 5 years after the dose.

The killer is that men develop and carry this infection without symptoms. No tests have been developed for them because it doesn’t seem to affect them long term. Estimates are that 80% of women will have acquired genital HPV by the age of 50. Ladies, if you thought getting a pap test was a waste, think again. If you’re sexually active, please schedule one regularly.

You know the old saying: You can make statistics say anything you want. In the case of research studies, the same thing is true–all you have to do is leave out one small but significant factor and the results you get won’t be worth a dime…unless of course no one remembers to ask about that missing factor. If no one does, then you can probably sell millions of books and make money in a hundred other ways if your “discovery” is exciting enough.

Now take the idea–“proven” in study after study–that drinking moderately can be good for you. Here come some scientists who decided to ask the control non-drinking group why they don’t drink. Ouch. Down the drain goes the lovely idea that drinking a little bit of alcohol every day is good for your heart.

Well, evidence is in that your heart is more than just an organ–it’s the very control center of you. It has the power to raise or reduce your stress levels and can literally make you healthier when it’s calm and peaceful.

So I say, if a little bit of alcohol makes you calmer and more at peace, go for it and the studies be damned.

I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to read about this kind of thing. In Japan, scientists have been busily figuring out how to get rid of nuclear waste by transmuting it. That is, disposing of radioactive waste by breaking it down into less-damaging components.

I put this in the same category as non-invasive surgical procedures and stem cell therapies–this is where we’re supposed to be going. This is what science is all about–discovering and cooperating with the magic of nature rather than inventing ways to combat it.

I could be dreaming, but it seems to me that science has largely broken free of many old restraints since physicists discovered the quantum factor. After quantum physics demonstrated unequivocally that the observer normally finds what he or she is looking for, it became clear that science was looking in painfully limited ways at how to find solutions.

Now the dam is broken, and everyone is realizing that nature itself contains the power to heal. That we don’t always have to think of ways to kill things; perhaps all we have to do is think of ways to harness our body’s own capabilities.

I feel blessed to be living in this age of wondrous breakthroughs in our approaches to medicine and healing. We are dumping bleeding-with-leeches attitudes left and right. Thank God–just in time for my old age…

It’s billed as the world’s largest biotechnology convention–18,000+ bio professionals are expected to attend April 9 through 12 at Chicago’s Navy Pier. And a dozen state Governors are coming along to show their love for the biotech sector–and the improvements a strong biotech/biomed community usually brings to a state’s economy.

Sending your governor to the conference is one way to gauge the level of passion for courting the bioscience industry. States that are doing so include: Illinois (Rod Blagojevich), Alabama (Bob Riley), Florida (Jeb Bush), Indiana (Mitch Daniels), Massachusetts (Mitt Romney), Michicgan (Jennifer Granholm), Minnesota (Tim Pawlenty), Missouri (Matt Blunt), Ohio (Bob Taft), the self-governing commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Anibal Acevedo-Vila), and Wisconsin (Jim Doyle).

Panel discussions will feature healthcare and regulatory issues such as:

• opportunities and challenges in plant-based pharmaceuticals
• ethics and race-based drug development
• results of a national survey on the relationship of the FDA to the life science industry
• new discoveries in cancer treatment
• business and the metabolic syndrome (how business and funding affects treatments for a cluster of common conditions like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease)

Conference attendees are looking at how scientific discoveries can lead–faster and less expensively–to better treatment options. This is what bioscience is all about. Learn more here.

Promising news comes in this report that German scientists have been able to grow “embryonic” stem cells from some simple cells taken easily from the testes of male mice. Reason says women probably harbor similar capabilities–they just haven’t identified which and where yet in females.

Clearly, we’re going to have to come up with a different word now for these almost infinitely potent stem cells that can grow into virtually any other living tissue. The term “embryonic” has negative connotations related to the controversy over when an embryo-should-be-considered-a-fetus-should-be-considered-a-child. Despite the routine destruction of frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures, the use of such discarded (abandoned) embryos to generate stem cells has raised huge debates in the United States, though not in many other countries.

We can only hope that this discovery will quickly lead to developing simple procedures for harvesting human cells that will let us all experience the miraculous benefits of stem cell therapies without compromising anyone’s ethical positions.

And we can sit back again and marvel at the wonders of the universe–that we carry within our bodies the ability to heal ourselves. Hey, if a humble planaria worm can grow a new head, why wouldn’t humans be able to grow new body parts? In just a few years, we’re all going to wonder what took so long.