Stem cell failures we don't hear (much) about

Stem cell treatment causes nasal growth in woman's back - health - 08 July 2014 - New Scientist

I've always been somewhat skeptical of stem cell therpy, and the enthusiasm with which researchers wanted to mash up embryos to get them.  (I know, the title story of the nose growing on a woman's spine is not involving embryonic cells, but I am still leery of playing around with embryos for any reason.)

So it's interesting to note that there have been spectacular failures in their experimental use, and that we don't seem to ever hear much about them:

There are thought to be more than 1000 ongoing stem cell trials, including two on the US clinical trial register ClinicalTrials.gov, which use olfactory ensheathing cells (see main story, above). However there is an unknown number of people visiting private clinics for unregulated stem cell treatments.

As there is no global register it is unknown how many people have developed additional problems as a result of such therapies, but a few cases have come to light of tumours or excessive tissue growth. One of the first people to receive fetal cells to treat Parkinson's disease was a 50-year-old US citizen in China. Upon his death in 1991, 23 months later, he was found at autopsy to have a teratoma growing in his brain that contained hairs and cartilage (Neurology, doi.org/tjt).


A more highly publicised case was in 2009, when an Israeli teenager developed brain and spinal tumours  after receiving several implants of fetal stem cells in Moscow to treat
a rare degenerative condition. And in 2010, a 46-year-old woman developed multiple tumours in her kidney after having her own bone marrow stem cells injected at a private clinic in an attempt to treat her kidney failure.

There have also been at least three cases of people developing leukaemia after receiving stem cells from umbilical cord blood. However, that is less surprising as ordinary bone marrow
transplants – which are a source of blood stem cells – also carry that risk.

As someone says in the article:

"It is sobering," says George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Harvard Medical School who has helped write guidelines for people considering stem cell treatments. "It speaks directly to how primitive our state of knowledge is about how cells integrate and divide and expand. "

The case shows that even when carried out at mainstream hospitals, experimental stem cell therapies can have unpredictable consequences, says Alexey Bersenev, a stem cell research analyst who blogs at Cell Trials. "We have to realise complications can also happen in a clinical trial," he says.

Meanwhile, in Bahrain

Man arrested for cross-dressing in Bahrain | GulfNews.com

A man was sentenced to one month in prison followed by deportation after he was apprehended for wearing women’s accessories and makeup in Bahrain.

The expatriate Arab was arrested by a police patrol as he was walking “in a feminine way” in the Bahraini capital Manama and attracted the attention of the servicemen.

He said that he worked in a women’s beauty salon and that his profession demanded that he always looked elegant and wore the latest fashion accessories to set a positive example for his clients.

The public prosecution was not convinced by the arguments and charged him with encouraging debauchery. He was subsequently referred to a court that ruled to keep him in jail for one month.

Well, I certainly hope that Arab police are given adequate training at their academies on how to spot questionable "walking in a feminine way".

More generally:

Cross-dressing is banned in Bahrain and in the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states — Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Foreigners who are apprehended for their “unacceptable looks” in public are often jailed for a short period before they are sent home.

Local conservatives have regularly called for tougher measures against cross-dressers and gays, accusing them of spreading vice, particularly among young people.

Sort of good news

Significant step towards blood test for Alzheimer's

Remote writing

Chasing Orwell’s Ghost | Roads & Kingdoms

I happen to think that 1984 is a vastly overrated work, but it is still of interest to read this photo essay about the remote Scottish island location where Orwell went to finish it.    Very bleak, like the novel (although the black and white photography doubtless makes it look as bleak as possible.)

Oats back on the agenda

Winter is breakfast oat season, and I know my readership is fascinated by which brand I am currently enjoying.  (Well, 2012's post on the topic got 5 comments, a veritable torrent of interest!)

This year I have tried three different types, 2 of those being of the fruit flavoured individual serves in sachets.  These sachets are a bit borderline small for my appetite, but I get by with a cup of coffee too.

I don't recommend the Uncle Toby's version of these.  The flavours are weak and the amount of fruit added is tiny.

There is another brand that has nicer fruit mixes, but I can't find it on line at the moment and I actually forget if it is Quakers or another brand. 

However, this morning, I tried this one:

and it was pretty delicious.   On special at Coles for $4.  

From The Guardian

Don't axe the tax: emissions trading supporters make last-ditch plea | Environment | theguardian.com: A costing by the parliamentary budget office has found budget revenues would be $18.1bn higher over the next four years if the carbon price was retained.

The effort to save the current scheme did not have a large enough public profile, if you ask me.

The fact that giving up this revenue meant the government had to cut harder elsewhere was simply not understood by enough people.

But as I have said before, any benefit of a one off reduction in energy bills is not going to be remembered for long as those bills resume their rise for other reasons.

Scathing Quiggin

John Quiggin � With Reformicons like this, no wonder the Reactobots always win

 JQ is amusingly scathing about the attempts of the tiny number of conservatives who are at least making some attempt at getting some intellectual credibility back into the Republicans in the US.

His comments on the IPA,CIS and Quadrant in Australia seem about right to me, too.  (Although, as someone in comments notes, about the only issue the right wing "think tanks" in Australia are more open about than their equivalent in the US is their attitude to homosexuality.)

Speaking of right wingers who keep getting their heads on the ABC, did I hear a snippet of Judith Sloan on Radio National this morning (in an advertisement for a forthcoming show on the issue of the size of government) suggest we could be more like South Korea, which is successful with (apparently) a very small government sector?

I know little about the country, except that I thought its system there was famous for its crony capitalism which presumably horrifies Judith.   I should try to listen to that show, since I presume someone with a less incredibly facile take on economics than hers will be on it...

As suspected

Climate engineering offers little hope of mitigation

The problem is it is thought likely to help some parts of the world at the expense of others.  How can we expect international consensus on doing it large scale, then?

World War 1 discussed

The docu-drama 37 Days, which I mentioned favourably last week, became very compelling in last Friday's episode.   Well worth watching on SBS on Demand if you missed it.

Via Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog, which is always brimming with great links, I caught up with two great pieces on the War over the weekend.  First, this article from the Guardian which I had overlooked, about the extraordinary and tragic circumstances in which many of the soldiers were executed for desertion.  It makes it very easy to understand the psychic scars it must have left on those who did come back from the war.

The other one was from the New Statesman, by Simon Heffer, looks at the history of the historians' attempts to analyse the causes of the war.  A good read.

Lockyer Valley visits

One of the nice things about living where I do in Brisbane is that it's not a far drive to get out to the Lockyer Valley, the large vegetable and fruit growing area between the city and Toowoomba.

Yesterday, we drove out to the Mulgowie Farmer's Market, which is held only on the first Saturday of every month, and even then only from 8 to 11am.   It was the second time we had been there, although we have now had a few trips to the Lockyer Valley in the last 6 months, for various reasons.

There is nothing else to see at Mulgowie - it has a (not very physically impressive) pub and a country hall beside it where the market is run.  That's it.  No shop, no school; but it's a lovely setting, closer to the hills than at many other parts of the so-called Valley.

The reason to go there is that it is genuinely a farmers market - there are several stalls with people who grow the produce they sell, and the freshness of most of what is on offer is really like nothing at any other market I have been too.   Yesterday, we bought beans, lettuce, corn, daikon, potatoes, radicchio, and the osso bucco we had for dinner.  The earth on the potatoes smelt fresh as I peeled them last night; the beans were as crisp as if picked from the yard.  The quality is just great, the price modest, and the stallholders all happy to talk about what they grow. We also had some nice olives, grown almost within sight of the market.

It's not the largest market around, and it feels a bit like a secret that you don't want too many people to know.  But from where we live, it's an easy and pleasant drive of just under an hour (I recommend going through Rosewood, if anyone is coming from Brisbane), but it really doesn't feel far.  I love it.

In fact, maybe I was a farmer in a previous life, because I just generally get a bit of a thrill from driving around fertile farm areas like the Lockyer, and guessing which vegetable or produce is in which field.*  The soil is a fantastically fertile looking black all around the region.  Some of the smaller roadside farm vendors are also worth visiting - yesterday we got some great strawberries from one of them, and the woman was able to point across the field to where they had been grown.

The region was badly hit by the 2011 floods.  Perhaps part of reason it is so fertile is that it is a bit of a flood plain.  But the bigger towns of Laidley and Gatton don't seem to be doing too bad.   We also drove into the Gatton University of Queensland campus yesterday, where they teach veterinary science and other agricultural related things - it has some pretty remarkable old buildings, but I didn't take photos.  Worth a look if you are in the area, though.  

*  some actual comments from me in the car:  "Look:  that's beetroot!...What's that?   Cabbage I think....Hey, we could recreate the cropsprayer scene from North by Northwest in that patch of dead corn stalks! ....Put away the iPod will you and look out the window you two!!"

Chromecast takes over the world

At the cinema today, there was an ad for the Chromecast.  I'm not sure how well it has sold, but I suspect it is really going to put more billions into Google's pockets.  It works well, even if it takes a bit of fiddling to get it to work with sites other than Youtube at the moment.

Tonight, I got Vimeo to work on it (using Chrome with Vidcast added - look it up), and it worked very well indeed.  All Vimeo content seems to be of very clear quality.

Back on Youtube, the recently viral video of a drone flying through fireworks does look great on a a big LCD TV.   Or you can watch it here:

At last - the problems of surrogacy noted

I'm not alone in being against surrogacy after all. The cultural soft left dominance of the media means that problems and ethical doubts about surrogacy are rarely discussed in detail (quite the opposite in fact - surrogacy by rich pop singers and movie or TV stars is positively celebrated with not a doubt in sight), so it is indeed refreshing to see that the New York Times has a lengthy and detailed article which gives some detailed examples of how it can and has gone wrong.

It's well worth reading.  

It's also surprising to see that quite a few comments are against it generally - it seems like a lot of people have been waiting to read something like this.  Here's one comment as an example:

As someone who is both gay and adopted I find it absolutely abhorrent the amount of couples I know who seem to think nothing of raising a child completely separated from one of its biological parents. 
The rallying cry seems to be the outdated notion that only the people who raised you are your parents and the resulting children should remain grateful and naive about the process. Anyone who has been in a similar situation will tell you life is more complicated than that. Simply loving someone doesn't trump their basic biological drive to understand their identity. 
This is much more complex than smiling pictures of babies and happy families implies. And it's an issue I feel like the media and public is largely ignoring because they don't want to trample on anyone's notion of 'gay rights.'

The future of Hollywood

Further to my recent post about the importance of the Chinese market to the future of Hollywood, this article in the Atlantic says that this is already the reason Hollywood has given up on comedies.  (Or, at least, non animated comedy.)   In fact, this chart from the story shows that animation has a strong, strong future:



Speaking of animation, the kids and I saw How to Train Your Dragon 2 today.  It's pretty good, for a sequel, and is really remarkable for the over the top complexity of some of the settings, let alone the quality of the foreground animation.  (It reminded me a little of a souped up version of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 in this respect.)    In a way, I think animation can overdo that aspect now - the level of detail can be a bit overwhelming.  Still, the movie does slow down a bit when it needs to, and hits emotional marks, so I forgave the over-busyness of many sequences.

For my future reference: spicy osso bucco recipe

Before I forget, tonight's successful osso bucco cooking must be recorded:

For 4:

About 1kg osso bucco
large carrot, diced
large onion, or a few small ones, diced fine
1 teaspoon each fennel seeds and cumin seeds
3 largish tomatoes
about half a small can of tomato paste
1 cup beef stock
1 cup red wine

Trim osso bucco pieces, season well with salt and pepper, and coat generously with flour.  In pressure cooker, fry for few minutes each side in olive oil to brown.  Puree the tomatoes in a blender.  Add onion, carrot and fennel and cumin seeds to the pressure cooker, stir with meat and fry off for a few minutes.

Add pureed tomatoes, beef stock and wine, and tomato paste.  Stir, and seal up pressure cooker (higher pressure setting.)   Cook for 40 - 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, get some mashed potatoes going, and beans or other green veges.

The meat will probably fall off the bone when serving, but doesn't matter.  I think it is the presence of the marrow dissolved in the sauce that gives it a rich taste.

Recipe is my version of one by Gabriel Gate, except he used white wine and water instead of red wine and stock, and he also stirs in fresh spinach at the end (which is nice).  Celery or fennel could be added to the pressure cooker too, if handy, but just this basic version works very well for a good sauce of the right thickness.

An enjoyable blast

Austrian Economists, 9/11 Truthers and Brain Worms - Bloomberg View

I don't really follow what the "Austrians" claim and know which economist I may have heard of is in that group, but from this enjoyable blast against them, they obviously hold many of the views that turn up in the posts of the libertarian/conservative economists of Catallaxy.  I wonder if obsession with Say's Law is an Austrian thang?

An appalling "doctor"

Euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke criticised over support for 45-year-old who committed suicide - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

There's no way this guy should continue to be allowed to be a doctor.  His attitude has always been to presume that everyone who wants to commit suicide, no matter what the age, and the reason why, is acting rationally and reasonably and who is he to stop them?  In fact, he'll tell them how to do it the easiest way possible.

He came over as a complete and utter jerk on the ABC interview last night.  The interviewer was calm and forensic; the only question I would have liked to hear was "when was the last time - if you ever have - you declined to advise someone who has asked you how best to commit suicide, or recommended they get properly assessed and treated for possible depression?"

The very dubious Bentham

The last time I mentioned Bentham, it was about his underpants.

It's not a stretch from there to note his libertine views on sex, which get a description in this recent review of a book on the subject.  

Jeremy, I take it from the (sometimes) reliable source of Horrible Histories*, was very eccentric in his personal conduct (and not just because of what he had done to his body after death,) but the review does point out that the permanent bachelor did fall in love with women, and seemingly slept with them.  But he does come across as something of a naive Jim Cairns "free love" type:

Of all enjoyments, Bentham reasoned, sex was the most universal, the most easily accessible, the most intense, and the most copious – nothing was more conducive to happiness. An "all-comprehensive liberty for all modes of sexual gratification" would therefore be a huge, permanent benefit to humankind: if consenting adults were freed to do whatever they liked with their own bodies, "what calculation shall compute the aggregate mass of pleasure that may be brought into existence?"

As someone says in comments following the review:

The article criticises Mill but actually supports his idea that Bentham did not really understand human feelings. Anyone who thinks sex=pleasure, pleasure=happiness and therefore more sex = more happiness doesn't understand human emotion.

On Bentham more generally, while Googling around I found this article from earlier this year, and I was somewhat surprised to read that Jeremy was an early proponent of the "Jesus had male lovers" idea which would re-appear again in 1970's gay rights activism.  (I remember some gay rights guy on the old Mike Walsh Midday show, probably in that decade, causing gasps in the largely female audience by making that claim.  I don't know if it was widely rumoured at the time, or later, that Walsh himself was gay.)

But I was more intrigued by this part of the article, showing that Jeremy was a radical in other ways which should cause people hesitation, at the least, about his judgement generally, and utilitarianism:

Bentham also took up the theme of infanticide. He had considerable sympathy for unmarried mothers who, because of social attitudes, were ostracized and had little choice but to become prostitutes, with the inevitable descent into drink, disease, and premature death. It would be far better, argued Bentham, to destroy the child, rather than the woman. Moreover, it was kinder to kill an infant at birth than allow it to live a life of pain and suffering. 

Well, we don't hear about that view of his so often, do we?

Update:  I see that the topic of Bentham and his justification of infanticide was dealt with at First Things last year.  It's a good article that concludes:

 Bentham has here laid out, quite clearly, a fundamental dispute of the modern age: the good life understood as the satisfaction of preferences and unfoiled desires on the one hand and the Platonic idea that justice is found only through the kind of self-restraint that looks beyond pleasure and pain on the other. There is, as Bentham was well aware, no middle ground. Not Paul, but Jesus excels in making this crystal clear.

* as confirmed with this paper, which notes he was extremely eccentric, and concludes he probably had Asperger's.  Bentham as Sheldon:  it does make sense.

This is getting confusing

Saudi Arabia sends 30,000 troops to Iraq border | GulfNews.com

Seems to be a case of Saudi Arabia getting ready to fight a monster of its (or its citizen's money) own creation.  

Well, that's depressing...

BBC News - Decline in trials for Alzheimer's disease

There is an urgent need to increase the number of potential therapies being investigated, say US scientists.

Only one new medicine has been approved since 2004, they report in the journal Alzheimer's Research & Therapy.

The drug failure rate is troubling and higher than for other diseases such as cancer, says Alzheimer's Research UK.

Dr Jeffrey Cummings, of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, in Las Vegas, and colleagues, examined a public website that records clinical trials.

Between 2002 and 2012, they found 99.6% of trials of drugs aimed at preventing, curing or improving the symptoms of Alzheimer's had failed or been discontinued.  This compares with a failure rate of 81% for cancer drugs.

The failure rate was "especially troubling" given the rising numbers of people with dementia, said Dr Simon Ridley, of Alzheimer's Research UK.

"The authors of the study highlight a worrying decline in the number of clinical trials for Alzheimer's treatments in more recent years," he said.

"There is a danger that the high failure rates of trials in the past will discourage pharmaceutical companies from investing in dementia research.

A sure way to increase teenage use

Maureen Dowd's Marijuana Edibles Problem -- And Mine

This article in Forbes goes into a lot of detail about the "edibles" containing cannabis in Colorado, and my conclusion is:  why did they legalise this form at all if they have any interest in limiting teenage use and experimentation?

It's just nuts - no teen need ever worry about being found out via smell or smoking paraphernalia  - there appear to be hundreds of candies and chocolates (often containing multiple doses) on sale.   And you have gooses like libertarian Gary Johnson praising them as even better than smoking!

I can't imagine a surer way to make it easier for a teenager to try it, and keep using it, as long as an adult friend goes and buys multiple dose candy bars for them.

My prediction remains - give this a couple of years, maybe three.  See what has happened to education and rates of teenage use in the State and in nearby States.  Look at the rate of adult use, and the effect on the economy.   Then tell us whether it has been a success or not.  I expect that there will be at least some degree of walking back from this experiment.