“…more patients are taking control of their healthcare situations via the Internet. They are searching out information on cancer, heart disease, and other afflictions, and many times, when motivated by their own illness, are finding cutting-edge medical research online that their personal physician has not yet received. ”

Scientists can learn faster from each other with the web. Doctors must learn faster from patients who are more invested in finding solutions for their own health. No one today can afford to sit back on their laurels and count on having prestige because of a medical or other degree–the world is simply moving too fast.

So intimates a press release today. Protein vaccine protects mice from lethal aerosol attack with ricin toxin (from the castor plant), it says. Scientists have developed an”…experimental vaccine against ricin, a potential biological threat agent, which fully protected mice from aerosol challenge with lethal doses of the toxin. The study was performed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). ”

When inhaled, ricin causes severe respiratory symptoms that kill within 72 hours. Ingested, it can cause severe gastrointestinal symptoms that cause vascular collapse and death. It’s readily available and highly toxic–especially used as an aerosol–and could be a significant agent of biological warfare or terrorism. No vaccine or therapy is currently available for human use.

Saw a not-so-outrageously-imaginative movie tonight about how science can implant control devices into human brains (The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington). The potential for good and evil is what makes bioscience so compelling a topic for most of us.

Non-traditional medicine is gaining a foothold in modern western circles. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (part of NIH) just awarded a $250,000 grant to The Cleveland Clinic for a two-year study on how Reiki can help prostate cancer patients. Reiki practitioners use a slow light touch to help heal pain, both physical and emotional.

Neurology

Inventors are working feverishly to perfect a gunlike device that stops electrical activity in the nervous system that’s often a prelude to a migraine headache. Success rates in test subjects so far are 100% in the “aura” stage (before the headache actually starts) and 75% once the headache is underway.

Productivity in schools and workplaces is profoundly affected when individuals suffer from migraines. Being able to stop the migraines of the 24 million Americans between 10 and 40 who regularly suffer this serious type of headache could make a big difference.

At 7 percent of employment, Iowa’s bioscience sector is already bigger than the national average of 5.6 of the workforce. Hoping to achieve the report’s prediction of 16,000 new jobs in the bioscience field, the state of Iowa is reviewing the report they asked technology research group Battelle to create on building bioscience muscle.

Recommendations include having the state invest $300 million, increasing support for commercialization efforts, selling bonds of about $175 million over ten years for recruiting faculty, supporting research and funding new technology.

The female president of the Royal College of Physicians in the U.K. has worried out loud whether the imminent preponderance of female researchers and physicians will result in the profession losing its status and its power. Senior level professors and execs in medical organizations are disagreeing, saying that women gravitate towards specialist areas other than, for instance, cardiology (which requires gruelingly long hours) because of their greater requirements for flexibility and for family-friendly work policies.

A report from a professor at the London Chest Hospital indicates that women are being “actively discouraged” from pursuing such specialist areas–but according to this article in Independent News Co, it seems to be guessing at the reasons: the need for more reasonable hours, family-friendly policies and for more flexible training options. The CEO of the Medical Research Council argues that those needs, when combined with the fact that the glass ceiling continues to keep women out of senior positions, is very likely to lead to a retention problem.

Comments from other medical science lights indicate that the need is huge (England’s national health care system is in shambles for lack of doctors), that half of all those entering doctoral or research work are women, and that reforming the system so that neither sex has to work unrealistic hours and sacrifice a personal life is the answer.

Now Medicare patients with brain cancer will be able to benefit from Guilford Pharmaceuticals’ brain implant wafer. The government has created a new classification for it*–and that means hospitals will receive higher payments for using the GLIADEL(R) Wafer for Medicare beneficiaries with newly diagnosed high-grade malignant glioma. The brain implant wafer is designed to be used in combination with surgery and radiation.

* DRG 543, Implantation of Chemotherapeutic Agents or Acute Complex Central Nervous System Principal Diagnosis

Endocrinology

A new method of treatment–a slow-dissolving tablet that stays in the mouth for 12 hours–has been approved by the FDA for replacing testosterone in males with a deficiency and/or hypogonadism. Signs and symptoms of hypogonadism can include decreased sexual desire, erectile dysfunction (ED), fatigue, depression, reduced muscle mass, and osteoporosis. The product is called Striant(R) (testosterone buccal system) mucoadhesive (CIII) and is manufactured by Columbia Laboratories. Read more about the safety concerns of using Striant when other conditions are present.

The safety of HRT for women has already been called into question. But for some people the effects of HRT may be powerful enough that they will choose to overlook safety concerns.

Yes, you read the headline right. Doctors are using maggots–extremely effectively–to clean out dead tissue from wounds that won’t heal. Diabetic ulcers so severe that doctors had decided to amputate were healed with ten rounds of maggots set to feed on the dead tissue. Research indicates this therapy is twice as effective as traditional wound debriding (removing debris) for healing “hard to heal” wounds such as:

• when the patient is under nourished (malnutrition)
• cancer
• diabetes mellitus
• other chronic medical conditions (e.g. heart disease)
• infection (which may continue due to dead tissue or foreign material within the wound)
• poor blood supply

Traditional debriding techniques include:

• surgical (physically removing or cutting away debris)
• chemical (using chemicals to remove the debris)
• enzymatic (using natural proteins called enzymes to remove the debris)
• autolytic (enhancing the natural processes of the body by encouraging a moist wound environment)
• mechanical (washing the wound or adherent dressings*)

And now maggots (considered a bio-surgical technique). What might this mean for our world? A diabetic who doesn’t have to lose a toe or a foot? I know a woman who began to get gangrene from an improperly inserted rod when she broke her shin and ended up losing her toes–and then her leg from the knee down. The cost of a maggot treatment is a mere few hundred dollars–the savings in unneeded surgeries and extensive followup could be huge. How many doctors know about this technique for preventing infection of wounds? This article says patients who feel squeamish will usually take maggot treatment over losing a piece of their bodies.

This treatment has been in use since the Civil War. Antibiotics replaced it–with varying degrees of success. Some of our “modern” discoveries have clearly contributed to the soaring cost of medical care. Read more about how other of nature’s creatures supply us with healing capabilities.

Naming a new controlling body the Kansas Bioscience Authority, Kansas’s governor just named 9 prestigious members to this group that will be in charge of allocating tax revenue from bioscience companies into additional R&D (an expected $500 million to $600 million over the next 10 years.). Appointees are from a wide range of stations: from entrepreneurs to top names from research organizations and universities from Kansas and other states, and include former STERIS founder Bill Sanford, now of NanoMaterials in Manhattan and Victoria Franchetti Haynes, Ph.D., president and CEO of RTI International at the Research Triangle in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina.

High-powered lights of the industry coming together to help yet another state compete for dollars and prestige. The bioscience-hub race heats up.