General MedTech & New Methods

This is an interesting subject that came up over the weekend and now it is fact already. It will also open full gender transmutation with full viability in time. The defintion of birth gender will become like saying "birth parent". Some will keep theirs the same and others will choose alternatives.

Still nascent tech but the real tests of applications are now beginning. Clearly what I am talking about is not how it will start but once the option is proven by those that need it the next step is inevitable.

Womb Transplants Possible in Three Years - Scientists
Tue Jul 1,10:43 AM ET Science - Reuters
By Patricia Reaney
Mice With Transplanted Wombs Have Babies

MADRID (Reuters) - Human womb transplants will be possible in two or three years, Swedish scientists said on Tuesday.

Professor Mats Brannstrom, of Sahlgrenska University in Gotenburg, said women who had been born without a womb or had had it removed would be the first candidates for a transplant.

Possible donors could be a sister who has completed her family or the woman's mother. Age would not be a barrier.

"We hope to do this in two to three years," Brannstrom told a fertility conference. "It could be that you could give birth to a baby from the uterus that you yourself were born from."

He and his colleagues have already produced two generations of mice from a transplanted womb. After further studies in mice and pigs to perfect the technique, they hope to begin human transplants.

The donated uterus must be genetically matched, which is why a blood relative would be ideal. Drugs would be needed to prevent rejection of the transplant.


ADVANTAGES OVER SURROGACY

The surgery would be comparable to a kidney transplant and would offer advantages over surrogacy, which is not allowed in many countries.

"In most parts of the world surrogacy is considered unethical or is not permitted by law," said Brannstrom.

With a womb transplant any health risks of pregnancy, such as high blood pressure, are taken by the genetic mother. There is also no economic motivation as there is in surrogacy.

It also removes any legal complications about who is the mother. In some countries the legal mother is the woman who gives birth, regardless of whether she is the biological mother.

"With transplantation, the mother will be the social mother, the gestation mother and the genetic mother," he said.

In three or four percent of infertile women a problem with the uterus is a factor. There would probably be no shortage of women willing to try the technique because Brannstrom said he has already received hundreds of inquiries from women who have read about his success with uterine transplants in mice.

"There is a demand," he said.

In-vitro fertilization would be used and the child would be born through Cesarean section.

A womb transplant has already been done in Saudi Arabia but it was removed after 99 days because of blood clotting.

Brannstrom believes he and his team have an edge because of their success with producing live mice from a transplanted womb.

And to lend a strange parallelism to today's news this related and interesting sidelight on how to save thy King, Human Pollination ) [?]

http://story.news.ya...tility_sperm_dc
Expert Sees Home Storage Soon for Sperm Samples
Tue Jul 1, 4:01 PM ET Science - Reuters

MADRID (Reuters) - Men having fertility treatment may soon be able to have their sperm dried and store it at home if a new method being developed in Saudi Arabia is successful.

Air-drying sperm does not damage DNA and the sperm can later fertilize an egg with a technique used for male infertility, Dr. Daniel Imoedemhe of the Erfan and Bagedo Hospitals in Jeddah told a fertility meeting in Madrid Tuesday.

At present, sperm samples have to be preserved in large and expensive liquid nitrogen tanks or special chemicals in fertility clinics and laboratories.

"These methods are time-consuming and cumbersome compared to our simple technique of air-drying," Imoedemhe said. "The process can be further simplified by allowing patients to take responsibility for storing their air-dried sperm at home."

Air-dried sperm can be stored at normal room temperature or in the refrigerator, but must be re-hydrated in the laboratory before being used.

More research and tests are needed, but once the technique is perfected Imoedemhe believes air-dried sperm could be transported without special equipment. Men could store their sperm in their own home and make decisions about its disposal or use.

Air-dried sperm would be able to fertilize an egg using a technique called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in which a single sperm is injected into the egg.

Here are three for three. One article each day for three days all related and derivative of a plot I created along with others. This issue is part of the reason that many are afraid of reproductive cloning but perhaps it is their own id's they are in fact afraid of. The goal of this research was not to let these children go to term but it is time that we face the fact that intersex children are also born naturally and treated just as abominably by what are essentially social primitives claiming moral superiority and acting like savages. Compassion and civilization?

Perhaps it is time to lead by example.

Oh but that may be the problem, the example set by society at large is generally paranoid, ignorant, coarse, insensitive, brutish and vulgar and this is the standard touted as preferrable to rational, considerate, tolerant, and loving?

Creation of Human 'She-Males' Sparks Outrage
Wed Jul 2, 1:05 PM ET Science - Reuters

MADRID (Reuters) - Scientists in the United States have created hybrid human "she-males," mixing male and female cells in the same embryo, outraging fertility experts and anti-abortionists.

Dr. Norbert Gleicher of the Foundation for Reproductive Medicine in Chicago and a colleague injected male cells into female embryos in research which they believe could lead to better treatments or cures for single gene disorders.

But their work provoked revulsion when they presented it to the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

"There are very good reasons why this type of research is generally rejected by the international research community," Dr. Francoise Shenfield of ESHRE said on Wednesday.

"I cannot conceive of any situation in which this particular technique would be acceptable, and if it cannot be applied there is not much use in experimenting with it," she added.

Gleicher and his colleague used male cells because they were easier to track as they studied the development of the embryos up to six days.

Their work also sparked outrage from abortion opponents who described it as run-away science.

"This is gross manipulation of human life," said Nuala Scarisbrick of British anti-abortion charity Life.

"The creation of a 'she-male' is disgusting, but not surprising."

Gleicher's study was not the only research presented during the four-day conference which enraged pro-life groups.

An Israeli scientist who said eggs retrieved from aborted fetuses could relieve the worldwide shortage of human eggs for fertility treatments also stoked fears that science was advancing before legal and ethical consequences could be considered.

I read an interesting science fiction novel once.. (the title which escapes me).. in which children of a certain future society were born with both (albeit undeveloped) sex organs and that at puberty they chose the gender they had the highest affinity for... I wonder how many people today might have chosen differently than that which 'god' gave them given that choice..

Edited by kperrott, 03 July 2003 - 04:34 AM.

Ursula K. Le Guin's " Left Hand of Darkness" in the "Hainish Series," about worlds populated by Social Anarchists (Libertarians and Randians), and if my memory serves me (its been over twenty years since I read them) the Dispossessed.

http://www.angelfire...ofdarkness.html

Background of The Left Hand of Darkness.

In the light of this history, Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, first published in 1969, presents a real change. Human relationships take center stage; everything else is subordinate to the development of a profound and meaningful relationship between two human beings. The great achievement of The Left Hand of Darkness is the creation not of a new technology or of science-fiction gadgets but rather of a new society of truly equal human beings. It is her depth of thought, emotional involvement, strong moral values, and philosophical thinking that place LeGuin among the very top contemporary science-fiction writers.

Feminist book.

In her article "Is Gender Necessary?" LeGuin herself openly discusses what inspired her to write The Left Hand of Darkness. It was, she writes, in the mid-1960s when the women's movement began to awaken after half a century of stagnation. Although as a writer she had never been treated unfairly or patronizingly on account of her sex, LeGuin was bothered by the question that besieged many women then and even now: What is a woman? This question had motivated the French philosopher and writer, Simone de Beauvoir, to write what has been considered the bible of the women's movement, The Second Sex (France 1949, United States 1953), the exploration of women's situation throughout the ages. This question also inspired the American feminist Betty Friedan to write The Feminine Mystique (1963).

In "Is Gender Necessary?", written in 1976, seven years after the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness, LeGuin, suprisingly, rejected the notion that hers was a "feminist" book. Although she considered herself a feminist (holding that every thinking woman is a feminist), she emphasized that "the real subject of the book is not feminism or sex or gender ... it is a book about betrayal and fidelity." However, in 1987, eleven years later, LeGuin revised her essay, or rather added comments that attest to her own growth as a conscious feminist. In "Is Gender Necessary? Redux", she admits to having been defensive and resentful that critics had concentrated on the gender problems "as if it were an essay, not a novel." In her revision she writes that "there are other aspects of the novel" inextricably involved with its gender aspects.

In The Left Hand of Darkness LeGuin has aspired to reach beyond the question of "What is a woman?" to broader and deeper questions of "What is sexuality?" and "What is the meaning of gender?" Besides physiological differences, are there really any differences between men and women? Being a novelist, her explorations of these questions are the basis of The Left Hand of Darkness.

To be precise, the book does not offer ultimate answers, and readers will not find there the answer to the basic question of "What is a woman?" Actually, when the male Envoy from Earth is asked by his friend from the new planet to explain what a woman is, he embarrassedly hesitates, fails, and finally admits that he does not know what a woman is. But more important than the answers are the questions and the hypothesis that LeGuin offers, in her "thought-experiment," as she calls the novel in her intriguing introduction. The book serves as "the record of my consciousness, the process of my thinking" in the laboratory of the mind. It offers alternative modes of thinking not about the future but about ourselves in the present.

The result? "Messy," according to LeGuin, "dubious and uncertain." The same experiment done by someone else, she maintains, and even by herself several years later, "would probably give quite different results" (in her revision she replaces the word "probably" by "certainly").

However, LeGuin has been frequently criticized for making her Gethenians, although they are menwomen, too much like men. Feminists have accused her of not going far enough and for using male protagonists. In her recent essay, "The Fisherman's Daughter" (1988), LeGuin admits that these critics were right, that until the mid 1970s "men were the central characters, the women were peripheral, secondary." And she adds that feminism has empowered her to criticize her society, herself, and feminism itself.

All that aside, however, in the New Republic, Derek de Solla Price emphasizes that he knows of no "single book [that is] likely to raise consciousness about sexism more thoroughly and convincingly than this one."

A bit of Bio: http://www.fictionwi...eGuineBooks.htm

Ursula Kroeber was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California, where she grew up. Her parents were anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and the author Theodora Kroeber, author of Ishi. She went to Radcliffe College, and did graduate work at Columbia University. She married Charles A. Le Guin, a historian, in Paris 1953; they have lived in Portland, Oregon, since 1958, and have three children and three grandchildren.

Ursula K. Le Guin has written poetry and fiction all of her life. Her first publications were poems, and in the 1960’s she began to publish short stories and novels. She writes both poetry and prose, and in various modes including: realistic fiction, science fiction, fantasy, young children’s books, books for young adults, screenplays, essays, verbal texts for musicians, and voicetexts for performance or recording. As of 2000 she has published over a hundred short stories (collected in eight volumes), two collections of essays, thirteen books for children, five volumes of poetry, two of translation, and seventeen novels. Among the honors her writing has received are a National Book Award, five Hugo Awards, five Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Art and Letters, etc.

Her occupations, she says, are writing, reading, housework, and teaching. She is a feminist, a conservationist, and a Western American, passionately involved with West Coast literature, landscape, and life. 

http://news.bbc.co.u...ure/3059559.stm

Oil industry tool sniffs out cancer
Friday, 11 July, 2003, 23:05 GMT 00:05 UK
By Carolyn Fry

An extraordinary collaboration between geologists, physicists and cancer specialists has generated a sensor which can "sniff out" oil reserves and detect the early stages of lung cancer.

The device looks for ethane in a person's breath
The LightTouch sensor was designed to measure tiny amounts of ethane naturally seeping from hydrocarbon reservoirs.

But doctors visiting the laboratory of Scottish physicists who built it commented that ethane is also exhaled by lung-cancer patients.

Now, the technology is being used for both applications ­ and may have a far-reaching impact for oil prospectors and cancer sufferers alike.

Ethane detector

In 1997, scientists in Holland were developing sensors for detecting leaks in refineries.

"We made the intuitive leap that if we could track down leaks in refineries we could probably also track down leaks from reservoirs," explains Dr Bill Hirst, Principal Scientist Instrumentation for Shell Global Solutions.

Ethane is a good indicator of buried oil and gas because it is produced by cracking - the breaking down of large molecules into smaller constituents - which generally only happens within a reservoir.

The device is normally used to sniff out oil deposits
So the team called on optics expert Miles Padgett, Professor of Physics at the University of Glasgow, to create an ethane detector.

To test its new toy, the team mounted it in the back of a vehicle along with an anemometer and laptop computer.

They divided a 400-square-kilometre area of Oman's desert into a grid and took measurements at various points.

Along with levels of ethane, the team recorded the wind direction in three dimensions, wind speed and turbulence.

"If there is a source in one particular cell of the grid then the wind is blowing that, and you'll get a cone-like plume of gas, albeit very diluted, from the source," Dr Hirst told BBC News Online.

"As long as the sensor is within the cone, it will pick up a measurement, down to 10 or 20 parts per trillion."

Breath tests

As the results from the field trial began to reveal LightTouch's potential to considerably cut the cost of exploration surveys, Professor Miles Padgett began using the sensor to analyse breath samples from 50 patients at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.

In response to cancer, free radicals within the body increasingly break down cell membranes into hydrocarbons, including ethane.

Twenty-one of the patients had lung cancer, and all but one gave a high ethane reading.

However, five of the patients without cancer also provided high counts, possibly because another disease or a particular food eaten that day may affect the output.

Padgett is now embarking on a two-year research project to find out more using a newly built sensor dedicated to cancer detection, while the geologists plan to offer LightTouch surveys commercially to oil prospectors.

"Everything in science is a long shot, and this is no exception," says Professor Padgett.

"But I think both these applications have the potential to be massive."

This article belongs in a few places. It certainly crosses over to genetics and cancer but as the focus will be new diagnostic techniques I will stash it here and suggest that we spin back some references from more established journals rather just today's news.
LL/kxs

http://story.news.ya...ancer_spread_dc
U.S. Team Finds Hints of How, Why Cancer Spreads
Fri Jul 11, 3:03 PM ET Add Science - Reuters
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said on Friday they were starting to find clues left by cancer when it begins to spread, and hoped to develop them into tests that may save the lives of future patients.

They found several of the genetic and protein markers in the blood and tissue of patients whose cancer had killed them.

Some of those markers should serve as early tests for the spread, or metastasis, of cancer, they told a meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research.

If caught early enough, cancer is highly curable.

"People don't die because they got cancer. People die because they got cancer and we didn't detect it at a point where we could do something about it," Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, head of the National Cancer Institute (news - web sites), told a news conference.

Metastasis is responsible for 90 percent of cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.

Joan Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and colleagues have been making a painstaking search for the products used by cancer cells to spread.

The tumor cells must first travel around the body, find the bone, brain or other tissue they will invade and then literally break in. Each process will require different genes and proteins.

The research team started with tissue samples taken from a patient who died of breast cancer (news - web sites), but Massague said they were making similar findings in samples from other breast cancer patients as well as those with prostate cancer (news - web sites) and melanoma.

First, they inoculated them into specially bred mice -- a standard first step in cancer research. The mice develop tumors made up of human cells, which can be studied.

They noted which genes were overactive in those tumors and then did a reverse test -- genetically engineering normal cells with those genes and seeing if they metastasized in mice.

Using that method, they identified 48 genes and their protein products that seem to help tumor cells spread, Massague said.

Some of them are "secretory products" -- proteins sent out by the cells, which can be measured in the blood.

One is MMP-1 or matrix metalloproteinase 1, an enzyme frequently targeted by cancer researchers.

It is used by cells to break open the collagen bonds that hold other cells together.

"We are finding in serum samples of patients with metastatic breast cancer that they have high levels of MMP-1," Massague said.

Another is interleukin-11, which is active in osteoclasts -- the cells that break down bone. "The tumor cell growing as it metastasizes in bone needs to eliminate the bone matrix in order to have room to grow," Massague said.

Another in the examples of how gene splicing techniques will overlap numerous aspects of how to extend the human lifespan. This probably also belongs in a discusion on ASC and perhaps the Nature article should go to the thread on Stem Cells. This is very interesting because of the fusion of issues as we are learning how to modify the ASC cells genetically and tailor the applications better. It is also targeting a direct high probability cause of death, heart failure, and should have significant benefit to those of us over 40.

http://story.news.ya...cience_cells_dc
Study: Bone Marrow Cells Can Repair Damaged Heart
1 hour, 27 minutes ago Science - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bone marrow cells can be used to repair a heart damaged by a heart attack, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

The cells, genetically engineered to make them stronger and more likely to survive, restored the heart's pumping capacity by 80 percent to 90 percent in animal models in rats, the team at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said.

Writing in the September issue of the journal Nature Medicine, they said they hoped their experiments will someday lead to a treatment for human patients whose hearts are irreparably damaged by heart attacks.

"This is a very positive development that we think holds immense promise," Dr. Victor Dzau, who led the study, said. "But there is certainly more work to do."

His team used bone marrow cells called mesenchymal stem cells. These cells are already used to repair cartilage and bone defects.

They should, in theory, be able to generate new heart tissue but experiments in pigs have failed so far because the cells die.

So the team added a gene called Akt1, which can prevent transplanted cells from dying.

It worked.

"The results were truly remarkable," Dzau said in a statement.

"The hearts that received the stem cells modified with Akt1 exhibited an amazing amount of reparative growth, significantly, if not completely, restoring cardiac function."

When injected into the hearts or rats given artificial heart attacks, the stem cells hooked up with the heart cells and generated more heart-like cells, the team reported.

"The hope is this sort of process can be turned into a gene therapy for humans," added Dr. Abeel Mangi, formerly of Brigham and Women's and now at Massachusetts General Hospital.

As a separate but related discovery coming from England a new understanding and possible approach to treating plaque build-up in blood vessels that lead to Heart Disease.

http://news.bbc.co.u...lth/3134923.stm
Saturday, 9 August, 2003, 23:00 GMT 00:00 UK
Enzyme offers heart drug hope
By Caroline Ryan
BBC News Online health staff

Scientists believe they may have found the target for a new generation of drugs to treat heart disease.
They have discovered an enzyme which seems to play a key role in the formation of dangerous plaques which build up in the arteries.

Atherosclerosis is linked to high levels of cholesterol, and can lead to heart failure if it affects the coronary arteries.

Researchers from the University of Leeds have found levels of enzyme, endothelin-converting enzyme (ECE), and the protein it produces (ET-1) are higher in the condition.

The enzyme constricts cells and also causes some kinds of blood cells to proliferate.

Blocking the action of the enzyme with drugs could reduce levels of the protein, and therefore the development of atherosclerosis.

Activity

They follow the same principal as a class of drugs currently used by doctors called ACE inhibitors, which block the action of a different enzyme which raises blood pressure.

ACE inhibitors work by expanding blood vessels and decreasing the pressure the blood needs to be pumped at to travel around the body.

The researchers found levels of two particular kinds of the enzyme in atherosclerotic tissue from around a dozen patients.

The levels were significantly higher than would be seen in healthy tissue.

When the cells were treated with LDL (bad) cholesterol, the levels of the enzyme increased.

Tony Turner, professor of biochemistry at University of Leeds, told BBC News Online further research was now planned.

"We will be looking at inhibiting the activity of these enzymes.

"There are some molecules that inhibit these enzymes, which may be able to promote the cells growth - ECE inhibitors.

"In the future, we would hope we would be able to find a way of preventing the growth of the cells and preventing the development of atherosclerosis.

"It could be the next generation of ACE inhibitors."

Professor Turner said it could be around five years before such drugs were developed."

The researchers received funding from the National Heart Research Fund.

This is a new drug which has been developed thanks to the tribal customs of the bushmen of the kalahari.Long walks across the desert existing only on bush tucker caused them centuries ago to use a succulant (cactus like plant) in order to suppress their appetite.An english pharmaceutical company has gained the marketing rights for hoodia and it should be on the market in five years time.
The nice thing is that the indiginous population of the kalahari are going to benefit financially form their discovery, though what effect the vast amount of money earned will have on their traditional way of life is yet to be seen [!]

http://www.theage.co...6220476331.html

Add some new data to the discussion on moderate drinking and life extension. This happens to be one I truly flavor as my preference has always been red to white.

I am quite sure that you have all heard of the connection alleged between red wine and longevity but till now we haven't understood so well as to why. I anticipate the tragic Nouveau Beaujolais this year and will have to content myself with a Burgundy, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a Côte-Rôtie, or maybe even a Chianti and American Merlot )

Anybody have a corkscrew?

http://story.news.ya...lth_longlife_dc
Study: Red Wine Molecule Shown to Extend Life
55 minutes ago Science - Reuters
By Greg Frost

BOSTON (Reuters) - Researchers have known for years that cutting calories can prolong life in everything from yeast cells to mammals. But an easier way to live longer may be as simple as turning a corkscrew.

Molecules found in red wine, peanuts and other products of the plant world have for the first time been shown to mimic the life-extending effects of calorie restriction, a finding that could help researchers develop drugs that lengthen life and prevent or treat aging-related diseases.

Researchers said on Sunday that one of the molecules, a compound known as resveratrol, was shown in a study to extend the life span of yeast cells by up to 80 percent. Resveratrol exists naturally in grapes and red wine.

David Sinclair, an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School (news - web sites) and co-author of the study, said he and his fellow researchers hope the molecules will prove to prolong life not just in yeast but in multi-cellular organisms like worms, fruit flies and, perhaps, humans.

Sinclair, whose study appears in Sunday's advanced online edition of the journal Nature, said tests on worms and flies were already yielding "encouraging" results.

"I can't say any more because I will scoop my next two publications," he said, adding that similar trials were already being planned on mice.


"ENTHUSIASTIC" OVER RED WINE

Sinclair said he has become more "enthusiastic" about the purported health benefits of red wine since his research began, and that experts who have reviewed his findings have had a similar response.

"Not many people know about it yet, but those who do have almost invariably changed their drinking habits, that is, they drink more red wine," he told Reuters.

The molecules that were shown to extend life in yeast belong to a family of compounds known as polyphenols. These include resveratrol, which is already thought to make red wine healthy in moderate amounts.

Sinclair said the latest study may help explain why moderate consumption of red wine has been linked to lower incidence of heart disease and why resveratrol prevents cancer in mice.

"We're connecting many dots with this study," he said.

Scientists have known for decades that putting organisms on a calorie-restricted diet dramatically reduces the incidence of age-related illnesses such as cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease.

In the 1990s, research showed that single genes can control how fast organisms age. Because of that, scientists have been racing to find ways of manipulating those genes.

Sinclair and his team have been looking for what he calls the Holy Grail of aging research: molecules that activate the enzymes that in turn influence the genes that regulate aging.

Now, they say, they have found those molecules.

Sinclair's team partnered with BIOMOL, a Pennsylvania company, to screen thousands of molecules to see which ones might activate the enzymes.

Not only did they find a group of 18 molecules that fit the bill -- resveratrol being just one -- but all of them came from plants and were produced in response to harsh environmental conditions like drought.

"We think we know why these plants make these molecules. We think it's part of their own defense response, and we also believe that animals and fungi that live on the plants can pick up on these clues," he said.

To illustrate that theory, Sinclair noted that red wines from regions with harsher growing conditions -- Spain, Chile, Argentina and Australia -- contain more resveratrol than those produced where grapes are not highly stressed or dehydrated.