Disease Cause Is Pinpointed With Genome
March 12, 2010
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen
The studies, which would not have been possible a year or two ago, are the first real delivery of the promised transformation of medical science from the Human Genome Project’s mapping of the human genetic code.
One was also made possible by some of the $5 billion that U.S. President Barack Obama directed to the National Institutes of Health in September from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.
And in that study, the genetic researcher was himself one of the patients.
Dr. James Lupski of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has a recessive genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome. It affects the nerves stretching from the spinal cord to the arms, legs and feet.
Lupski has been experimenting on himself and his own family for years.
“We tried every other method for 25 years to find out which mutation was important,” he said in a telephone interview.
“With this methodology we were able to do it. This is the first time whole genome sequencing has applied to actually find the cause of a disease.”
Lupski had been taking blood samples from his grandparents, parents and siblings for years. He got close but the research was considered too risky for funding by the National Institutes of Health.
“He was only able to complete this study because of the stimulus money that we got,” said Dr. Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Her institute designated Lupski’s project for about half a million dollars of the money that Obama directed to the NIH.
RECESSIVE GENES
Lupski’s team used a gene sequencer from Carlsbad, California-based Life Technologies to read the entire DNA code in the samples from Lupski and three of his siblings who have the syndrome, his parents and four other siblings who do not.
“It is a recessive disease and neither of my parents have the disease. Each of us who has it got one mutant allele (gene) from my mom and one mutant allele from my dad,” he said.
Researchers know about 40 different genes that can cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth. But in each family, only one of these genes is involved.
The sequencing revealed a gene called SH3TC2, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Other groups are already working on a drug that may affect that gene, Lupski said.
The researchers also found that family members who inherited just one faulty copy of the gene had a predisposition to carpal tunnel syndrome, in which a nerve in the wrist can get pinched.
As prices are coming down on the cost of sequencing a human genome, more such research will be possible.
“We estimate that the entire effort would currently cost less than $50,000,” the researchers wrote.
In a second study, Jared Roach of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and colleagues sequenced the entire genomes of a family of four affected by two recessive genetic diseases — Miller syndrome, which can cause facial disfigurement, and primary ciliary dyskinesia, a lung disorder that raises the risk of respiratory infections because the hairlike extension on cells called cilia fail to move properly.
“Our results demonstrate the unique value of complete genome sequencing in families,” they wrote in the journal Science.
They used a sequencer made by another one of the companies exploiting genomic sequencing, Complete Genomics based in Mountain View, California.
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Girl Gets Rare Disease After Swine Flu Shot
February 12, 2010
KTBS
By Chrissi Coile
A Shreveport girl is battling a rare disease.
In December 5 year old Hannah Pham started complaining her leg was numb. When her parents took her to the hospital doctors diagnosed her with Tranverse Myelitis. It’s a disease doctors say infects about 1 in a million people.
Experts say the disease is a neurological disorder which typically follows a virus.
Hannah got an swine flu shot in early December. The Pham family is worried that’s what caused the illness, but the CDC hasn’t reported any cases of Tranverse Myelitis following swine flu shots.
Hannah has been hospitalized for five weeks, meanwhile her family is praying for her recovery.
Employess at Spa Concepts where Hannah’s parents work are collecting donations and raffeling off spa treatments to help the family pay medical costs. They also set up an account at Capital One. If you would like to help out the account number is 573-240-4947.
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Chemicals Pass Through Breast Milk to Cause Cancer
February 9, 2010
Natural News
by: David Gutierrez
Higher exposure to toxic chemicals may explain the difference in testicular cancer rates between Denmark and Finland, researchers from the University Department of Growth and Reproduction have found in a study on breast milk.
“Our findings reinforce the view that environmental exposure to [endocrine-disrupting chemicals] may explain some of the temporal and between-country differences in incidence of male reproductive disorders,” said lead researcher Niels Skakkebaek.
Rates of testicular cancer, genital abnormalities, low semen quality, and other male reproductive disorders are four times higher in Denmark than in nearby Finland. These conditions have previously been linked to exposure to industrial chemicals that disrupt the hormonal (endocrine) system.
Endocrine disruptors have also been linked to birth defects, neurological problems, and increased rates of cancer and heart disease. The most dangerous chemicals are known as persistent organic pollutants, because they resist environmental degradation and accumulate in the environment.
Most of these chemicals bind to animal fat. As a consequence, animal-based foods tend to contain higher concentrations. So does human breast milk.
In the current study, researchers tested the breast milk of 68 women in Denmark and Finland for 121 different chemicals. They found significantly higher levels of pesticides, dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the Danish breast milk.
The higher rates of testicular cancer and other reproductive disorders in Denmark may not be explained directly by contamination via breast milk. Breast milk contamination is thought to be a reliable marker of prenatal chemical exposure, which is likely to pose an even greater risk.
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Genes May Influence Preterm Births
February 5, 2010
Reuters
By Xavier Briand
They said gene variants in the mother and fetus can make them susceptible to an inflammatory response to infections inside the uterus, raising the risk that a baby will be born early — before 37 weeks of gestation.
A preterm baby has a 120 times greater risk of death than a baby born full term, and survivors are at risk of breathing difficulties, bleeding into the brain, and having a significant neurological handicap such as cerebral palsy.
“Preterm birth costs the United States $26 billion per year. It is one of the most serious and significant challenges to medicine and society and one whose importance is not fully recognized,” said Dr. Roberto Romero of the National Institutes of Health, who presented his findings at a meeting of the Society for Material-Fetal Medicine in Chicago.
Romero said the findings support the notion that preterm delivery is an evolutionary mechanism intended to protect baby and mother from infection.
“We have established that one of every three premature babies is born to a mother who has an intra-amniotic infection,” an infection in the normally sterile amniotic fluid that surrounds the developing fetus, Romero said.
Because the response to infections is controlled by genes, Romero and colleagues set out to identify which are most likely to play a role in response to infections in the amniotic fluid.
HOPING FOR A DNA TEST
For the study, the team analyzed 190 genes and more than 700 DNA variants from 229 women and 179 premature infants in Chile. They compared these to genes from 600 women who delivered their babies full term.
“What we found was there were some DNA variants in the fetus that were associated with the occurrence of premature labor and delivery, and there were some genes in the mother that also increase the risk of premature labor and delivery,” Romero said in a telephone interview.
In the fetus, the strongest gene influence was the interleukin 6 receptor, which is involved in the body’s response to inflammation.
In the mother, the team focused on one gene called tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 2, or TIMP2, which affects structures in the cervix and uterus that get broken down at the start of labor.
Romero said when there is an infection, the combination of these two genetic profiles raises the risk of preterm labor as the body attempts to preserve the mother’s and baby’s lives.
The hope is that the findings may lead to genetic tests that assess whether a woman is predisposed to premature labor, he said. “We are not there, but this is the beginning.”
About 500,000 U.S. babies and 13 million babies worldwide are born prematurely each year.
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Dealing With forced Vaccinations
December 16, 2009
NHF
By Dr. Russell Blaylock, M.D
Those who are observant have noticed a dangerous trend in the United States, as well as worldwide, and that is the resorting of various governments at different levels to mandating forced vaccination upon the public at large. My State of Mississippi has one of the most-restrictive vaccine-exemption laws in the United States, where exemptions are allowed only upon medical recommendation. Ironically, this is only on paper, as many have had as many as three physicians, some experts in neurological damage caused by vaccines, provide written calls for exemption, only to be turned down by the State’s public-health officer.
Worse are the States, such as Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland, where forced vaccinations have either been mandated by the courts, the state legislature, or have such legislation pending. All of such policies strongly resemble those policies found in National Socialist empires, Stalinist countries, or Communist China.
When public-health officers are asked for the legal justification for such draconian measures as forcing people to accept vaccines that they deem either a clear and present danger to themselves and their loved ones or have had personal experience with serious adverse reactions to such vaccines, they usually resort to the need to protect the public.
One quickly concludes that if the vaccines are as effective as being touted by the public-health officials, then why should one fear the unvaccinated? Obviously the vaccinated would have at least 95% protection. This question puts them in a very difficult position. Their usual response is that a “small” percentage of the vaccinated will not have sufficient protection and would still be at risk. Now, if they admit what the literature shows, that vaccine failure rates are much higher than the 5% they claim, they must face the next obvious question – then why should anyone take the vaccine if there is a significant chance it will not protect?
When pressed further, they then resort to their favorite justification, the Holy Grail of the vaccine proponents – herd immunity. This concept is based upon the idea that 95% (and some now say 100%) of the population must be vaccinated to prevent an epidemic. The percentages needing vaccination grows progressively. I pondered this question for some time before the answer hit me. Herd immunity is mostly a myth and applies only to natural immunity – that is, contracting the infection itself.
Vaccinations Doing More Harm Than Good
November 20, 2009
Vactruth
By Andrew Moulden MD, PhD
This is a stern, yet humble, warning to all citizens of the globe. It is now proven that we are all being harmed by repeat vaccinations. This evidence must be circulated broadly in light of the imminent Fall, 2009 plan to turn North American schools into MASS vaccine centers to institute triple flu vaccine to us all. Children will be the first to be injected with experimental flu vaccines. The entire vaccine industry, as it turns out, has been experimental. We did not know that we were causing damages – for us all.
In case you are wondering what will happen, the answers are contained in this article. The same thing will happen as has been happening with all vaccines. Clinically silent ischemic brain and body damages will happen. The only difference is that you can now see these damages, with your own eyes, in the here and now, in real time, and in your family photos going back fifty or more years if you have to.
ALL vaccines are causing immediate and delayed, acute and chronic, waxing and waning, impairments to blood flow, throughout the brain and body. This IS causing us all to become chronically ill, sick, and causing brain damages along a continuum of clinically silent to death. This is causing ischemic “strokes”. In some respects, this is also “aging.” Since the damages are microscopic, we cannot see them as they occur. However, we can now see the neurological aftermath of these damages – within hours and days of vaccination – all vaccinations.
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In Revelations 18:4 by the epistle of Saint John we are told: “And I heard another voice from Heaven saying “Come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues.” All vaccinations, as you can now clearly see, are causing chronic illness and mass disorders on mass scales. The global health consequences clearly amount to plaques.
As a medically trained Doctor, a PhD trained neuroscientist/neuropsychologist, with a Masters degree in Child/language neurodevelopment, I have been trained to follow clinical observations to empirical assessment couched within the scientific model we rely upon to answer questions of: What is normal and what is not? What is cause? What is coincidence? What is factual? What is fancy? What is reproducible? What is random? What is measurable? What is predictable? What is truth? What is consequence? What is “going on”?
Science is only a man made truth-seeking tool. It is fallible. It is a statistical, probabilistic mathematical model. It has limitations. Wielded for profit – truth can become lost.
Scientific methods, design, and analyses can just as soon hide the truth as they can discover truth, or create “truth” de-novo.
Science cannot replace God-given tools of common sense and observation we all have. You do not need statistical probabilistic mathematical models, wielded by experts, to deny what you can see with your very own eyes.
If you place your hand on a hot stove element, you will be burned. If you do not experience pain and you cannot see the burn, then you will not learn that touching hot stove elements is harmful.
All vaccines have been causing “burns” to body and brain. The brain has no pain receptors. You will not feel the pain. You can, however, see the footprints of these “burns” immediate and delayed, from each vaccination. The evidence was before our eyes all along. We simply did not appreciate what these “burns” meant let alone that they were emerging, after each vaccination. The “burns” are largely to internal organ systems. We can ALL now see the damaging effects of these “burns” with our own eyes.
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