Fertility transplant...T + 2 years

For the first time, a woman who had her only ovary removed and frozen, then transplanted back again, successfully conceived naturally and gave birth. Oh, this all happened in Denmark and was published in 2008, but for some reason we are all noticing it now. Anyone know why?

Obama takes on obesity

Obesity has been quite the ubiquitous, serious issue talked about for some time. And our government's realized that posting calories and banning trans fats (in NYC at least) might not be enough to keep us Americans from eating ourselves to death.

So here is a more unique government program created in some time: LetsMove is the new initiative, to be led by Michelle Obama, to promote healthy diets for children.

The program is a partnership between the US Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health, and Human Services, which will put in $400 million a year to make sure children eat the right kinds and right amount of food with more well-placed grocery stores and placement of healthy foods. How? Through "innovative financing" and grants.

Maybe they should just get rid of agricultural subsidies and save us $12 billion annually on higher food prices from backwards Great Depression-era protectionism.

Stem cell research gets a leg up

Here's some good news for the $1.5 billion vitamin industry, especially for vitamin C, which makes up for the most of that market share.

According to a study published in Cell Stem Cell, a ton of researchers supported by grants and foundations in China, vitamin C is not useless! Apparently vitamin C can greatly in stem cell development.

Ever since scientists figured out how to turn human adult cells into stem cells in 2007, therefore bypassing that ethical issue, research still hasn't gone the way researchers hoped because it the transformation was frustratingly inefficient- only getting 0.01 percent of of cells to change into stem cells.

Well these researchers discovered vitamin C can speed up that process over 100 times, making transformation and thus research much more viable, and also increase chances of survival for the stem cell.

Besides that very interesting development, maybe even more intriguing is that this research was supported by 13 grants from China, with one of them, EFBIC RED, being related to China. One of my friends who works in biotech has been complaining about the dangerous shortage of grants in the US, despite this administration's friendlier attitude toward scientific research. So China has been drawing scientific talent instead.

But scientific research is one of those things that builds on other's research, and it doesn't really matter where that research came from except when it comes to patents. Maybe Obama knows this and is willing to take the backseat for now (since we are battling greater troubles). But either way we should really step it up soon or risk losing to China in more ways than Americans would like.

Gene therapy is the new steroid?

In a report published today by three researchers in Science journal, steroids won't be the only thing athletes might be seduced by. Gene therapy might become, or already is, an untested and extremely risky way for athletes to gain an edge over competition:

"Some athletes and coaches will be tempted, prematurely and unwisely, to take advantage of results packaged by some as performance enhancement 'breakthroughs,' even if they are untested in humans and the only 'breakthrough' is faster or stronger mice."

And they aren't just speculating. From athletes begging for help from gene therapist Lee Sweeney and a doctor caught trying to give gene therapy to a fictitious American Olympic swimmer in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the market is certainly there. Plus two of these researchers have worked with the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, established more than a decade ago with International Olympic Committee funding.

So if there's going to be gene therapy doping, we need new tests since steroid doping isn't going to detect anything. And they're on that too, with WADA doing research into developing "biological passports" to monitor an athlete's biological profile over time.

You just wonder, with all this superhuman business going on, from Speedo LZR bodysuits to simply changing yourself biologically, what the point of sports will be. Watching people do incredible stuff with aids of all kinds? Then again I'm not a sports fan in the first place, so even without the doping I wouldn't know the answer.

Vaccines: Good For You!

Autism to H1N1, I can't say enough how important vaccines are. And it's truly scary how few people are getting vaccinated now.

According to a study released today by the Trust For America's Health, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 50,000 people die from vaccine-preventable illnesses a year. This year, only a third of adults were vaccinated flu.

But again this might not be exactly newsworthy, since it happens a lot. In fact, this year had twice the number of people getting vaccines than usual, with H1N1 and FluMist spurring people to action.

So I'd love to see number of vaccine taken charted against flu cases. Unfortunately I don't have access to VaccineTrack by SDI, which seems to be the only thing that records vaccine data. Until I get my hands on the info, let's keep getting vaccinated anyway.

Vaccines & Autism

I've always been skeptical of vaccine paranoia. Not only was all that fuss about H1N1 turned out to be just fuss, it looks like vaccines' link to autism might finally see its day of reckoning.

Andrew Wakefield is the one we can thank for all the hubbub about the vaccine-autism thing, when he came out with a paper in 1998 that said autism was a rare side effect of vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). So he recommended that the vaccines be given space out, a year apart.

Even when the paper came out, it was pretty controversial. But leave it to parents to shun vaccines altogether, despite countless studies proving the contrary (Danish study, Court of Federal Claims), with even people trying to rationalize such irrational paranoia. Thankfully though, parents might just stop needlessly endangering their kids to scare diseases like MMR (death, infection of spinal cord, swelling of testicles or ovaries, just to name a few).

In a statement by the editors of The Lancet last week, they found in an investigation panel that "several elements of the paper are incorrect," therefore fully retracting the paper from public record. Looking forward to seeing what anti-vaccine camp responds with.

Homeopathy, Beware

Yesterday 400+ Brits took a "massive overdose" of homeopathic remedies to protest Boots' (their equivalent of our Duane Reade, but with better, actually fresh, food) endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies.

Homeopathy has always struck me as a strange science, if science at all. The vitalist philosophy, born all the way back in 1796 to a German doctor, doesn't just concern all things herbal - it's based on a few (interesting) principles, some of which include the following:

1. Water has memory

2. Therefore diluting something with water makes it stronger, making some remedies so diluted that there aren't even any molecules from the original solution

These two are pretty much agreed upon actual homeopathic ideas. But certain homeopaths also adhere to others, like what ails you can cure you (ie caffeine - diluted, remember - to cure insomnia) and stuff involving pinning the patient with a piece paper with the remedy written on it, which borders on superstition.

Anyhow homeopathy is much bigger in Europe (compared to Americans, where most just think it's "something herbal..?"), where insurance covers it and even Sweden did some 5 year study and found it wasn't cost-effective enough to concern itself with the idea. It seems to be the biggest in India actually, where it's recognized as a national system of medicine.

Yesterday's stunt, called the 1023 campaign, was actually preceded by a letter of complaint the Merseyside Skeptics Society sent to Boots protesting homeopathy a week ago. So I guess there are other people besides me who aren't exactly convinced of homeopathy's efficacy.

They don't really say why they're targeting Boots and not homeopathic manufacturers and physicians themselves. Maybe Boots sells so many of the homeopathic remedies, that Boots is where MSS can dent?

It's hard to tell as the company was taken private in ₤11.1bn takeover in 2007 by now-Executive Vice Chairman Stefano Pessina, so sales figures on homeopathic or even health products aren't available. But he did say in May 2009 that the health and beauty division had sales of ₤6.2bn, so looks like there's a lot at stake, anyway.

Well I guess since this is not taking place in the US, few Americans care. I don't know if I believed much in homeopathy in the first place, but who knows about these things? Just as long as another philosophy doesn't get in the way of you getting medical attention or care when you need it (vaccines, surgeries, which MSS says severe homeopathics do cut out), I don't see why it's so bad. They just better not touch acupuncture, because I tell you that stuff really works.

FDA Crackdown on Fake Botox

As scary as fake Botox is, the FDA has been doing something about it! ..Only recently, though.

It started in November 2004, when four people became paralyzed with severe botulism poisoning in Florida. The difference here though, as opposed to unfortunate Faith He's case, is that this was a doctor who was passing it off as authentic Botox.

Since then, the FDA started cracking down, and the whole thing turned into 210 investigations against health professionals, 31 arrests and 29 convictions of individuals who "purposely injected an unapproved, cheaper substitute toxin for FDA-approved Botox Cosmetic into nearly 1,000 unknowing patients."

They actually tracked down (one of) the sources of this lethal stuff to a California lab, which also sold to an Arizona distributor, from which doctors would buy at a lower price (they marketed it as a cheaper alternative) and sell to patients at the usual $470 per vial, adding to the paranoia of the modern consumer. One giveaway though: the vials were clearly marked as "For Research Purposes Only, Not For Human Use."

Using distribution records, the FDA found that at least 200 healthcare professionals ("from Manhattan to Las Vegas," says one special agent) bought the stuff, and "many" (not most) have been prosecuted.

So what to do when we next desire to expunge those dastardly wrinkles from our stressed-out foreheads!? The FDA doesn't help much. It 's the same "use a trusted professional, ask about the source" routine, but nothing's keeping those doctors from refilling authentic vials with the cheaper, paralyzing stuff.

I guess you only find out when the price of beauty goes terribly high and you find yourself mute and helpless with lockjaw, or need a stomach tube to eat, or respirator to breath. Maybe those wrinkles aren't so bad after all.

Barefoot Study

I always thought there was something to be learned from barefoot running, and now there's a new study supporting the practice.

It appeared in the Nature scientific journal today, but was actually accepted a month after my post. Conducted by eight researchers from different medical and engineering schools (Harvard to Kenya to Glasgow to Ann Harbor), the study is the first to use 3-D infrared tracking to study foot strike patterns. They looked at three groups:

1. People who had always run barefoot

2. People who had always run with shoes

3. People who had switched from shoes to being shoeless

And the study actually proved our shoes really have changed our strides (in a way that years of evolution didn't prepare us for)...which can obviously lead to a lot of problems. SciAm's actually got a few of their quite astonishing pictures.

And it confirms another study published last week in the Journal of Injury, Function and Rehabilitation which found running in athletic shoes increased pressure on knees by 38 percent, and on hips 54 percent.

Anyway I got those Vibram shoes over winter, and other than this healthy-feet reason, I really don't know why I got them as I haven't exercised since..some time last summer. So I've really just been living through Ted. Maybe I'll get around to staving off obesity, and once I do, I'll let you know.

(Lack of) Reproduction In NYC

Just a thought out of left field:

I always wondered, with so many smart, attractive, ambitious types here, why NYC has so many single women.

That men might prefer less powerful women, might be a clue.

Botox, The New WMD

When it comes to beauty, some people don't mind taking risks when they'd be cautious otherwise. It just might be all the unnatural, photoshopped perfection getting to us.

Late last year, my mom's "facialist"—Faith He from China who opened her own relatively successful salon in Seattle about nine years ago—was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for injecting women with fake cosmetic procedures products. As in fake botox, restylane, etc. And she wasn't licensed to do so with the real stuff either.

Apparently an acquaintance of my mom's was getting (re?)married and wanted everything done. And when a laser-peel wasn't doing the trick, she wanted more. And of course, the facialist obliged. (Might be a Chinese reflex—go to Asia and you'll find people will tell you they can do anything you ask for. Whether they can is a risk you are taking, as I found when the broken watch I took in for repairs was even more broken, or when my resulting perm more closely resembled the sheep outside than the model in the picture I brought).

Anyhow, it turns out the products the facialist was using (may or may not be to her knowledge) was unregulated, fake stuff from China, as this woman found out when it coagulated above her cheekbone and a dermatologist sucked some out for inspection.

Ah China, always churning out the most interesting things. But it gets even more interesting, when the WaPo came out saying how the black market for Botox may be more dangerous than suburban housewives getting lumpy cheekbones.

According to WaPo, the essential ingredient in Botox—botulinum toxin Type A—is the most toxic substance known to man. It just might be the new weapon of mass destruction of choice. A grain-sized amount could kill a 150-lb adult, apparently. But a terrorist would have to get hundreds of vials of Botox ($470 a pop) to kill one person. The only reason why we're still pondering anthrax and uranium is that botulinum's quite allergic to heat, degrading the moment the temperature goes up.

This black market, however, poses a new threat. Especially when you consider this:

James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, two scientists found that a biologist with a master's degree and $2,000 worth of equipment could easily make a gram of pure toxin, an amount equal to the weight of a small paper clip but enough, in theory, to kill thousands of people.

Thankfully so far it seems the only people the stuff goes to are youth-seeking types, but obviously unregulated or no, the products can be made with the real stuff. Then we've got more than lumpy cheeks to worry about.

Fat Pride and Cost of Health Care

Obesity is nothing to laugh about when we're talking about shortened life spans, but also means $$$ for our country's health care costs.

According to this study from November by the United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention via America's Health Rankings, we're looking at $344 billion in 2018, or more than one in five dollars spent on health care if trends continue. This means spending attributable to obesity will quadruple. And if we held the obesity rate to its current level, the country would save nearly $200 billion a year by 2018, which is $800 per adult.


By 2018 Colorado would be the only state where less than 30 percent of adults would be obese. But in Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota, more than 50 percent of adults would be obese.

(What's most tragic is that, according to AMR again, the United States has the highest death rate from treatable conditions of 19 industrialized countries.)

This is why I was so surprised to read about Fat Pride Communities about a month ago, who are saying healthy should be the goal, and not thin. A lot of these ideas are also advocated in The Obesity Myth, a book written last year by U. Colorado law professor Paul Campos (something I find interesting as Colorado is the only state with an obesity rate-18.5%-under 20% in the entire US).

Campos writes the following:

First, it's a fake problem. Second, the solutions for the problem are non-existent, even assuming the problem existed. Third, focusing on making Americans thinner diverts resources from real public health issues....The correlations between higher weight and greater health risk are weak except at statistical extremes. The extent to which those correlations are causal is poorly established. There is literally not a shred of evidence that turning fat people into thin people improves their health. And the reason there's no evidence is that there's no way to do it.

Which is pretty much what the Fat Pride Community is saying. But I don't understand how an obese person losing weight-the healthy way, not the liposuction way (which has shown to not make a difference on LDL/bad cholesterol, blood pressure, among other things)-has not been shown to be healthy. Now WebMD isn't the final arbiter on this, obviously, but I challenge you to find someone who will tell you an obese person who loses weight via a healthy diet and exercise regimen is worse off.

And then while Campos may be right that it's hard to lose weight (make a fat person thinner), that doesn't mean our latest efforts of prevention are for nothing. From requiring restaurants to post calorie-content to schools banning junk food, well, I completely support these efforts.

Then you look at how 77% of obesity is due to genetics, and the rate at which we've seen obesity spread, and Fat Pride is saying size discrimination is the same as race discrimination?

In the last few decades we've managed to turn this many people fat. I don't see why we can't do anything to reverse ourselves or prevent more damage.

Obesity is the new lung cancer

Eating more than you burn is worse than smoking, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday.

Declines in smoking in the last 15 years increases today's 18-year-old's life expectancy by 0.31 years, while rising obesity reduces that expectancy by 1.02. So we're looking at a net loss of 0.71 years.

According to the lead author of the study, Susan T. Stewart, in the last 15 years smoking rates declined 20%, but obesity rates increased 48%. So if this continues, nearly half of our population will be obese by 2020.

Her 48% number corresponds with the CDC, which also breaks it down into race groups as well.



Well my free trial to NEJM expired months ago and for some reason NYU will only give the abstract summary of the study, so I've yet to figure out how to get my hands on the entire thing. What I'd like to know if the study takes into account the diminished life expectancy of those who get secondhand smoke, which would be an obvious factor. After all, you don't get fatter by breathing next to fat people. But whatever the accurate number is, I'm sure it wouldn't change the overall message, which is a message we've been hearing for a long time now.

But according to another study last year published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, why obesity happens is attributed 77% to genetics as opposed to environmental factors (prevalence of fast food and poor exercise habits). Which you can take it to mean that obese people are only marrying other obese people, adverse selection ("moderately overweight" women are more fertile), or our environment of cheap transfat calories (read Michael Pollan's books for convincing info on this, or Fast Food Nation, although it was written 5 years ago) has truly become horrendous for your health. This question is unanswered by the researchers themselves.

Hopefully we'll get closer to genome therapy for an "obesity cure" and keep away from the olestra and oily stools (here too). But considering most diseases as far as we know are multi-gene disorders and following the death of 18-year-old gene therapy patient Jesse Gelsinger caused by a massive immune response to the virus vector used to transport the gene into his cells, continue your healthy habits and don't bet on a magic pill just yet.

Philip Morris' $300 million verdict

Big Tobacco's high dividend payout strategy might not be working.

A Florida Circuit Court last week awarded a former smoker, 61-year old Lucinda Naugle, $300 million in her lawsuit against Philip Morris (NYSE:PM), finding wheelchair-bound Naugle, who now has emphysema after smoking from age 20 to 45, 10% guilty and the cigarette manufacturer 90% guilty for compensatory damages. Philip Morris shares dropped 1.2% $18.98 on Friday at the news and haven't been doing too well since.

This was actually a case that came out of the so-called "Engle Progeny lawsuits", when in 2006 the Florida Supreme Court vacated a 2000 verdict in a class action lawsuit (Engle v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co). And while the $156 billion verdict was overturned (this lawsuit involved 700,000 smokers) the court allowed plaintiffs to file individual claims and use the liability findings from the trial.

So Naugle's verdict was the 10th Engle verdict this year and 8 out of 10 of these verdicts were against Big Tobacco, although Naugle's was the largest of all of them. And Philip Morris isn't done yet-there are about 8,000 more waiting for their day in court.

Obviously Philip Morris is crying foul, saying the decision is unconstitutional since it allowed the jury to look at previous jury findings and evidence unrelated to Naugles.

You might wonder how this sort of thing comes about. After all, I thought the MacDonald-made-me-fat lawsuits were far and wide decried as pointless. Haven't we had these cases before?

Actually we have: just in 2007 in Philip Morris v. Williams, the Supreme Court overturned an Oregon jury’s award of $79.5 million in punitive damages. This wasn't because the smoker should've known about the harmful effects of smoking though. Rather the Court ruled 5-4 that "the Constitution's Due Process Clause forbids a State to use a punitive damages award to punish a defendant for injury that it inflicts upon nonparties."

This meant that it's unfair for Philip Morris to be held responsible for harm to strangers since the charges would be limitless as well as arbitrary. Which would explain the Engles decision.

If Philip Morris loses the appeal, it'll obviously be a bad sign for Big Tobacco, even if $300 million could be considered small fries when you think about the $206 billion the seven largest tobacco companies agreed to pay in a 1998 nation-wide settlement.

Sex Change Limits in Thailand

In 2007 a willowy, gorgeous 21-year old student Thanyarasmi Siraphatphakorn won the Miss Tiffany Universe pageant—for being the most beautiful transvestite in Thailand.

There are no official numbers for how many transsexuals exist in Thailand. By some estimates it could be around 10,000, with one doctor saying he does procedures three times a week (half of them foreigners), and others say as many as 20% of schoolboys call themselves a transsexual even without a sex change operation, causing one school to install transsexual bathrooms, with a logicial bathroom sign:


I've always wondered about transsexual prevalence, when it seems Asians (at least in the states) are much more conservative than Westerners. Transsexual rights campaigner Suttirat Simsiriwong says, "Thai society and culture tend to be very sweet, very soft, and the men can be really feminine, if we tend to be gay, many of us tend to be transgender" and that the number of transsexuals in Thailand are no more than transsexuals elsewhere. According to the American Psychological Association 1 in 11,900 men and 1 in 30,400 women are uncomfortable being in the body they were born in and wish they were of a different sex.

Maybe transsexuality in Thailand is like bisexuality in Manhattan. And with prices like $1,000 to $6,000 to become a woman (a three-hour procedure), it's no wonder there are so many so-called "katoeys" in Thailand.

So today, the Thai Department of Health issued rules to limit sex change surgeries and make candidates think more carefully about their decisions, which are irreversible:

1. Candidates must be at least 18 (this rule was always in place)
2. Candidates must cross-dress for one year after informing a doctor of the initial decision and undergo hormone therapy
3. Candidates must undergo a mental evaluation before the surgery, obtain approvals from two psychiatrists, and attend follow-up visits with a psychiatrist after the surgery.

There are absolutely no numbers I could find about how much Thais have spend on sexual reassignment surgeries, and not even how many undergo SRS. While I am pretty sure any of those looking to do this are very certain of their decision, and an SRS isn't exactly the same as getting a tattoo, these rules should eliminate any of those "I'm drunk so let's do it" type of decisions.

Anyway I'm guessing waking up the next morning and wishing you hadn't castrated yourself is probably kind of devastating. In any case, I think these rules are a great call.