Dragging Doctors to the Info Age

By Randy Dotinga, Wired News: 02:00 AM Jun. 18, 2004 PT

Frustrated by the hospital industry’s achingly slow adoption of basic technological safeguards, the Bush administration and Congress are gearing up to put more pressure on doctors and administrators. For perhaps a decade or more, however, millions of patients will continue to endure the high risk of deadly medical mistakes because there’s no computer to catch the errors.

U.S. hospitals are hardly as computerized as, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Internal Revenue Service. Physicians can spend entire days without touching a keyboard, and nurses routinely track patients’ progress through a series of handwritten notes passed from person to person.

“It’s this huge, ridiculous game of telephone,” said surgeon Dr. Robert Wachter, co-author of a new book exploring why medical errors kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.

More potential disaster looms on the medication front, where the “chicken scratch” on prescription forms often confuses pharmacists, who end up providing the wrong drugs and, in some cases, killing people.

Enter the politicians — finally. On the federal level, members of Congress announced plans earlier this month to form a caucus to push for better hospital technology. The Bush administration is drawing praise for hiring a health information technology czar, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has formed a think tank devoted to exploring the challenge of equipping hospitals.

“The government has finally realized in the last month or two that unless it steps in … many people will die because of the absence of reasonable computer systems in American health care,” said Wachter, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and co-author of Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America’s Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes.

Maher, Brendan A. (2004) The Makings of a Microarray Prognosis. The Scientist, March 15, pp. 32-36.

“Countless things can go wrong in the complicated cell division process. Checkpoints fail, genomic instability increases, and when anarchy reigns, cancers spread. In trying to assess what is doing the damage and predict the damage yet to be done, doctors have an admittedly blunt set of tools to porfile renegade cells. Histopathology andgeneral prognostic indicators such as health, age, and metastatic spread do little to account for the breadth of tumor variety even within fairly specialized tumor types.

“Snce researchers first stated toying with microarrays, they have considered the molecular pofiling of tumors to be an important potential use. The genes that switch on and off may reveal a cancer’s biology and future, and, some hope, its responses to a variety of treatments.”

Metastatic models of cancer are changing due to analysis of gene behavior in tumors. The ability of a tumor to spread to other organ systems was previously considered a phenomenon that occurred late in the tumor life cycle. It now appears that certain tumors are prone to metastasis from the beginning and that they have subpopulations of cells with affinity to certain organ systems.

The implications of this is that treatment should be different for cells prone to metastasis and those with less aggressive tumors should not be exposed to unnecessary chemotherapy.

For example, a recent study looked at 20 year old tissue samples from breast cancer patients without lymph node metastasis. At that time they were not treated with chemotherapy. Out of 98 women younger than 55, there were 34 with a recurrence. Today, in the U.S., 95% of these patients would be treated with chemotherapy. This means that 65% of these patients would not need chemotherapy, but would get it anyway leading to excess costs and morbidity.

So it looks like patients should demand the health care system do a more detailed examination of their tumor before they rush to chemotherapy. It could not only save them severe debilitating effects, it could reduce healthcare costs.

Calorie restriction molecular mechanism found

Life Extension Update, 3 June 2004

Research in mouse tissue conducted by MIT professor of biology Leonard Guarente and colleagues, published in the online version of Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/) on June 2 2004, found that calorie restriction effects a protein that controls whether fat is stored or released. Calorie restriction has been found to extend the lifespan of every species in which it has been tested, and many humans have adopted the diet in hope of extending their own lives. The protein is the product of the mammalian gene sirtuin 1 (Sirt1), similar to the SIR2 gene that has been found to mediate the effects of calorie restriction in yeast. When Sirt1 senses short-term famine, such as is mimicked by calorie restriction, it turns off the receptors that keep fat in fat cells, and fat is released or metabolized rather than stored. The authors explain that the “Sirt1 protein activates a critical component of calorie restriction in mammals; that is, fat mobilization in white adipocytes. Upon food withdrawal the Sirt1 protein binds to and represses the genes that are controlled by PPAR-gamma, the fat regulator.”

Dr Guarante elaborated, “The ability of fat cells to sense famine and release the fat is regulated by this gene. We like to think this applies to people as well as mice, but we don’t know for sure. If we could make this happen in people, it wouldn’t just make them live longer; it might also help prevent diseases of aging, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease . . . If we could make a drug that would bind to Sirt1 and fool the body into thinking that it needed to release that fat, then maybe people could get the benefits of calorie restriction without the side effects.”

Because white adipose tissue makes hormones, including leptin which controls satiety, Guarente speculates that fat cells also tell the body how fast to age. He added, “Conversely, fewer fat cells tell the body that it’s time to hunker down for survival. This means that evolutionarily speaking, fat plays a very important role.

Longevinex™: First Red Wine Dietary Supplement To Confirm Biological Activity (Activation of Sirtuin 1 Gene)

An independent laboratory test confirms that Longevinex™, a red wine dietary supplement, exhibits significant biological activity, potently activating the Sirtuin 1 gene, known as a survival factor in living cells. Resveratrol is a component of red wine and is well known for its healthy properties.

Among 14 brands of resveratrol dietary supplements independently tested, only Longevinex exhibited significant biological activity. At equal concentrations, none of the other 13 brands of resveratrol exhibited significant Sirtuin 1 activity. Longevinex (3.551) has six times greater effect than the best other resveratrol supplement (0.499). A number of resveratrol supplements exhibited biological activity that was barely measurable.

Surprisingly, three non-resveratrol supplements (IP6 rice bran extract 0.966, butyric acid 1.214 and genistein soy extract 1.393), produced 2-3 times greater Sirtuin 1 gene activity than 13 brands of resveratrol, though these products were not considered to exhibit significant biological activity either.

A freshly published report in Nature Magazine last week confirms that resveratrol mimics the beneficial biological effects of calorie restriction. Previous studies have shown that pure resveratrol exhibits the strongest Sirtuin 1 activation levels among 17 polyphenol molecules tested. [Nature 425(6954):191-6, Sept 11, 2003].

But the question remains, do dietary supplements exhibit significant biological activity similar to the laboratory-grade resveratrol? This study confirms that it is possible for resveratrol dietary supplements to exhibit significant biological activity (i.e. Sirtuin 1 gene activation) at achievable concentrations in living cells.

Most people have trouble convincing their physician that Rife technology will kill micro-organisms, much less cancer cells. However, if you talk to an MIT scientist, you will find they are already killing cancer cells with frequency devices and other labs are working on even more sophisticated stuff.

DNA Computer Kills Cancer Cells

MIT Technology Review

Technology Research News May 11, 2004

Researchers from the Weizmann Institute in Israel have constructed a molecular-size computer that is programmed to find signs of cancer cells, and when they are present, dispense DNA molecules designed to eradicate those cells.

The researchers’ computer is a proof-of-concept that works only in a test tube, but the device is meant to eventually work in the human body.

The computer is small enough that one trillion of them fit in a drop of water and consists of three modules made from strands of DNA: input, computation and output.

The input module strands contain stretches of bases that pair up with and so identify certain stretches of messenger RNA. The computation module processes a series of input modules to determine whether the balance of certain types of messenger RNA indicates the presence of cancer cells. The output module administers a drug in the form of another DNA strand when cancer cells are indicated.

The researchers’ prototype includes a second DNA computer that is programmed to release a DNA strand that inhibits the first computer’s drug molecule if cancer cells are not present. Both DNA computers must register the presence of cancer cells for the cancer-fighting DNA strand to be administered.

The molecular-scale computer could take 10 years to reach clinical trials, according to the researchers. Even though the materials are biologically compatible, the device will require major modifications to be made compatible with living systems, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the April 29, 2004 issue of Nature.

I get a lot of questions about digital cameras and which ones are best for use in frequency analysis. I’ve had photos sent to me taken by all major camera vendor products. Most of them will not produce a native TIF file on the camera and, as a result, are not as useful as the Sony DSCV1 described below. I have several digital cameras and use the DSCV1 exclusively for frequency analysis. The only photo sent to me that I liked as well as DSCV1 photos was taken with a much more expensive Nikon digital camera.

I hope this the photo below amazes you as much as it amazed me. As I walked out of my house on the evening of 8 Nov 2003 after a family dinner, we looked up and noticed the moon getting dark. Since I had not read CNN news on the lunar eclipse, I had no idea this would be happening. I ran in and grabbed my Sony DSC-V1 digital camera and without any adjustments whatsever took the following shot. You can see the roof of my house on the right. Blowing up this photo, it was blurred by hand movement during the lengthy automatic exposure.

Running back into the house to retrieve my tripod, I captured the following shot. No adjustments to the camera. No retouching of the photo.



I’m posting this within minutes of taking the picture and I think you will agree that it almost as good as the 1993 NASA telescopic photo published on the web by CNN today. Digital camera technology has become truly awesome.

Discuss

I surprised that there is so much controversy about nanobacteria when they can clearly be seen under a microscope hiding out in cell walls and dramatic clinical effects are immediately evident when you kill them with electronic frequencies. The ignorance of “modern” medicine is sometimes appalling.

About half the people I test have a nanobacteria infection, most of them asymptomatic. When they apply the correct frequencies to themselves, their immune system starts working better immediately and they notice they need less sleep at night. One researcher eliminated this organism in a teenager with a severe infection who was sleeping almost constantly, to the point that his parents were concerned about his survival. He turned into a normal kid overnight.

Nanobacteria revelations provoke new controversy

New Scientist, 19 May 04

Some claim they are a new life form responsible for a wide-range of diseases, including the calcification of the arteries that afflicts us all as we age. Others say they are simply too small to be living creatures.

Now a team of doctors has entered the fray surrounding the existence or otherwise of nanobacteria. After four years’ work, the team, based at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has come up with some of the best evidence yet that they do exist.

Cautiously titled “Evidence of nanobacterial-like structures in human calcified arteries and cardiac valves”, the paper by John Lieske and his team describes how they isolated minuscule cell-like structures from diseased human arteries…

These particles self-replicated in culture, and could be identified with an antibody and a DNA stain. “The evidence is suggestive,” is all Lieske claims.

Critics are not convinced. “I just don’t think this is real,” says Jack Maniloff of the University of Rochester in New York. “It is the cold fusion of microbiology.” John Cisar of the National Institutes of Health is equally sceptical. “There are always people who are trying to keep this alive. It’s like it is on life support.”

See also: Claim made for new form of life by Paul Rincon, BBC News Online science staff

One of the basic principles articulated regularly on this website is that 50% of disease, clinic visits, and hospitalizations are totally unnecessary because they can be eliminated by simple nutritional or lifestyle strategies. Here is one for Alzheimer’s disease that reduces risk by 45%. There are other strategies that will drive the risk down even lower.

Wine May Cut Alzheimer’s Risk

Life Enhancement Foundation, May 2004

Just in case you needed another justification for drinking wine (but only in moderation, of course), here comes a study from Columbia University in New York that seeks to determine whether elderly American wine drinkers enjoy a degree of protection from Alzheimer’s disease similar to that of their European counterparts.1 (We already know about the cardiovascular benefits of moderate wine consumption, which also seems to confer protection against cancer.)

For 4 years, researchers followed 980 elderly Manhattanites who were free of any dementia at the outset of the study. During that period, 260 of the subjects developed dementia: there were 199 cases of Alzheimer’s disease and 61 cases of vascular dementia.

Sure enough, the results showed that drinking wine—up to three glasses a day—substantially reduced the risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Compared with the nondrinkers, the wine drinkers’ risk was 45% lower. No such benefit was seen with other alcoholic beverages—probably because they don’t contain resveratrol, the chemical compound believed to be primarily responsible for wine’s remarkable health-giving properties. (Resveratrol may also play an important role in extending human lifespan; see “Resveratrol May Be a Longevity Molecule” in Life Enhancement, November 2003.)

Two caveats: (1) no benefit from wine drinking was seen in this study in people with the APOE epsilon-4 gene, which predisposes one to Alzheimer’s; and (2) most medical authorities caution against drinking more than one or two glasses of wine a day (three glasses tops), because beyond that amount, the health benefits quickly disappear and become health liabilities.

Anon. Wine seems to reduce Alzheimer’s disease risk. Reuters Health report, New York, April 5, 2004.

As someone who was funded as a Principal Investigator for National Cancer Institute research grants for 8 years, I would like to join the chorus and say the current approach does not work and needs a revolutionary overhaul.

Fortune magazine recently provided a nine part series on this problem and proposed solutions.

THE WAR ON CANCER: Why we are losing the war on cancer and how to win it

By Clifton Leaf

Fortune, 9 Apr 2004

Just count the bodies on the battlefield. In 2004, cancer will claim some 563,700 of your family, friends, co-workers, and countrymen. More Americans will die of cancer in the next 14 months than have perished in every war the nation has ever fought … combined. Even as research and treatment efforts have intensified over the past three decades and funding has soared dramatically, the annual death toll has risen 73%—over one and a half times as fast as the growth of the U.S. population.

Within the next decade, cancer is likely to replace heart disease as the leading cause of U.S. deaths, according to forecasts by the NCI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is already the biggest killer of those under 75. Among those ages 45 to 64, cancer is responsible for more deaths than the next three causes (heart disease, accidents, and stroke) put together. It is also the leading disease killer of children, thirtysomethings—and everyone in between…

And the new cases keep coming. Even with a dip in the mid-1990s, the incidence rate has skyrocketed since the War on Cancer began. This year an additional 1.4 million Americans will have that most frightening of conversations with their doctor. One in two men and one in three women will get the disease during their lifetime. As a veteran Dana-Farber researcher sums up, “It is as if one World Trade Center tower were collapsing on our society every single day.”

So why aren’t we winning this decades-old war on terror—and what can we do now to turn it around?

That was the question I asked dozens of researchers, physicians, and epidemiologists at leading cancer hospitals around the country; pharmacologists, biologists, and geneticists at drug companies and research centers; officials at the FDA, NCI, and NIH; fundraisers, activists, and patients… Most felt, despite their often profound misgivings about the way research is done, that we’re on the right path.

Yet virtually all these experts offered testimony that, when taken together, describes a dysfunctional “cancer culture”—a groupthink that pushes tens of thousands of physicians and scientists toward the goal of finding the tiniest improvements in treatment rather than genuine breakthroughs; that fosters isolated (and redundant) problem solving instead of cooperation; and rewards academic achievement and publication over all else.

At each step along the way from basic science to patient bedside, investigators rely on models that are consistently lousy at predicting success—to the point where hundreds of cancer drugs are thrust into the pipeline, and many are approved by the FDA, even though their proven “activity” has little to do with curing cancer.

“It’s like a Greek tragedy,” observes Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel and a prostate-cancer survivor, who for years has tried to shake this cultural mindset as a member of several cancer advisory groups. “Everybody plays his individual part to perfection, everybody does what’s right by his own life, and the total just doesn’t work.”

People keep asking me about immune supplements and I test them all using my unique methodology. Most of them I have in my lab and have taken myself to experience first hand the relative benefit. Transfer Factor shows about three times the effect of the best supplements I have tried. My experience is consistent with the research literature.

NK CELLS ARE YOUR FIRST AND YOUR LAST LINE OF DEFENSE

Natural Killer (NK) Cells are a type of lethal lymphocyte

Scientists estimate that NK cells make up five to 16 percent of the total number of white blood cells that the body uses to fight infections. Those with defective or absent NK cell activity can contract a wide specturm of diseases, particularly cancers. Results from a number of clinical trials indicate that NK cells can be used to control tumor metastates. The therapeutic uses of NK cell activity will likely increase as their relationships to healthy and diseased cells becomes better known.

Natural Killer (NK) cells –

NK cells were discovered in the 1970’s and are a subset of large granular lymphocytes that are cytotoxic cells. They are called “natural” killers because they, unlike cytotoxic T cells, do not need to recognize a specific antigen before swinging into action. They are capable of spontaneously killing tumor or virus-infected cells. In several immuno-deficiency diseases, including AIDS, natural killer cell function is abnormal. Natural killer cells may also contribute to immuno-regulation by secreting high levels of influential lymphokines. Natural Killer (NK) cells have no immunological memory and are independent of the adaptive immune system, NK cells make up approximately 15% of the human white blood cells. Their specific function is to kill infected and cancerous cells.

Recent research reveals that NK cells are involved in multiple effector, regulatory and developmental activities of the immune system. Research has confirmed that low NK cell activity causes one to be more susceptible to autoimmune diseases such as CFS, viral infections and the development of cancer cells.

Any statement that natural killer (NK) cells play an “important role” in human health is as casual as saying that the brain is important for bodily function. If our brain is not present and active we cannot continue “living”. If our immune system is not armed and working well we will also not continue “living” for very long. NK cell activity is to the immune system, what brain activity is to the body.

Activated NK cells produce a variety of cytokines, including interferons, interlukins, TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor, hematopietic cell growth factors and other growth factors. There is substantial evidence that indicates the involvement of NK cells in the interactions of the immune system with the neuroendocrine axis. They also appear to be responsible for activities at the interface between the immune system and the reproductive and neurological systems.

NK cell activity and NK cell count are not the same. NK cells may be present in sufficient numbers, but unless they are activated they are ineffective in doing their job. Decreased NK cell activity is linked to the development and progression of many diseases. According to the Center of Disease Control, low NK cell activity is present in all illness. NK cell function appears to be a biologic marker for disease and is an important indicator for declining or improving health.

The following assertion can be made;

if one is suffering from an illness, be it chronic, recurring or acute, the NK cell activity would be below normal. The restoration of NK cell activity to a high normal would be desirable, if not necessary, for recovery. Low NK cell activity begins with stress of some type. When the body is unable to adequately adapt to the environment there is a resulting compromise of body function. Stress comes through loss of sleep, overwork, emotional encounters, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, exposure to toxins, exposure to germs etc.

Excessive stress causes many detrimental changes in the body physiology and particularly the immune system. There is research evidence that there is a relationship between Natural Killer (NK) cell activity and reaction to emotional stress. There is low NK cell activity in individuals who have difficulty in handing stress and those suffering from behavioral disorders.

Acute low NK cell activity resulting from temporary stress can be eliminated with the elimination of the stress factor. For example, if we are over-tired and under-nourished we can simply rest and eat properly for a few days and recover. However when we become continually immune compromised we start developing recurring problems which may lead into serious or chronic conditions.

NK cell activity level is lowered in times of stress and can become chronically low with chronic stress. Research shows that normal NK cell activity is essential to the recovery and maintenance of good health. One way to offset the effects of stress is to normalize NK cell function.

When the immune system is overwhelmed the communication pathways are compromised and remain compromised until re-established. If the communication networks are not restored there is little opportunity for the immune system to regain full defensive capability.

Communication in the immune system, is accomplished through the cytokine mechanism. These messenger molecules must be activated to energize the communication capability that is necessary for immune system reliability.

Conversely, immune modulation that harnesses the body’s ability to regulate will have an all-encompassing immune response that is not limited to one specific area of immune response. Regulation, upward or downward, in accordance with the needs of the body will be achieved.

Transfer Factor is the ultimate immune system modulator. Research results show transfer factors ability to increase NK Cell activity by 248% over baseline!