Howard Dean as FDA Commissioner? A compelling argument. Also, stem cell research continues, no matter how far into the ground this administration buries its head.

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The Medical Corner of the News: Howard Dean, M.D. as Secretary of Health or FDA Commissioner?

[this article was originally published at my blog on mybarackobama.com; details are at Transworldnews]

Howard Branch Dean III, M.D., may have higher goals than being Health Secretary or FDA Commissioner in the Obama Administration. He is, after all, the brains behind the 50 state coordinated strategy which might actually bring back a 60 vote filibuster proof majority to the Democrats in the Senate, and where do you go from there, having done that? He might be too smart to be in such a job, so that would be up to him, of course, and to President Obama.

But just for a minute, remembering the speeches we have heard and the letters we have read from Dr. Dean: imagine having a populist consumer protectionist physician of Dr. Dean's calibre (there are no others) at the helm of the FDA, the single most important Federal Agency, since it directly oversees 25% of the American economy, instead of the glut of corporate serving lackeys we have had in the past 8 to 16 years.

Just like I want to see a major internationalist like William Blaine Richardson III as Secretary of State, and the recent placement of his speech at the Democratic Convention proves others are thinking along the same lines; similarly, I want to see a massive overhaul of the American regulatory system in terms of food additives, chemicals, preservatives, sweeteners, etc., as I am sure they killing millions, and not just in the USA.

Further. we need an Attorney General with the positive record and proven stance in protecting consumers rather than corporate bottom lines would be California Jerry Brown, and an Attorney General who will work to restore American Constitutional freedoms and 850 years old measures like Habeas Corpus, instead of tearing them down, and routing them whenever it seemed to suit their fancy or their deluded view of terrorism and national emergencies that they themselves caused, whether directly or indirectly.

I am in the process of determing what Dr. Dean has to say about this, and who the FDA Commissioner is going to be is mighty important to the American people, whether they realize it yet or not; hopefully, it wouldn't be a step down for him to go in to the FDA in January, and start to correct many or all of the ghastly mistakes by the FDA, particulalry the Bush Commissioner, Dr. Andrew Von Eschenbach, in the latter's penchant for coming up with corporate-pleasantries as policy. If it doesn't appeal to Dr. Dean to do this, who would he in turn recommend?

The FDA is a state of abject failure, and a large part of the failure stems from the cozy relations it has with Big Pharma, which unforatunately spills over into the far larger field of Big Grocery, with ghastly consequences for us every time we sit down to eat, or everytime we go to a regular commercial grocery store, to dodge the carcinogens and neurotoxins in the food additives.

The fundamental perspective has to be overhauled in the next FDA: it is there for the consumers, not for the coporations. There are not many people I would trust to put in charge of overseeing and regulating 25% of the US economy, but I do trust Dr. Howard Dean to do that in an intelligent, agressive, and creative manner, just like he has run the Democratic party over the past few years.

IN FACT, HE WOULD BE BRILLIANT.

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THE ENTIRE INTERFACE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND STEM CELL TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH IS ABOUT TO CHANGE, FOR THE BETTER....

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Japanese scientists have devised a method of creating stem cells from wisdom teeth which would otherwise have been discarded, allowing them to find cures to diseases without the controversy implicit in using embryos. "This will prove to be a major breakthrough," said Dr Hajime Ogushi, from his Osaka laboratory of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

His team extracted dental pulp from wisdom teeth removed from a 10-year-old girl three years ago and had been stored in a freezer, and from that pulp, stem cells with the ability to develop into replacement human organs or nerves can be grown. Research on stem cells taken from human foetuses has resulted in criticism from the Catholic Church, for destroying human life. The research seeks cures to a range of illnesses, including diabetes and cancer.

"These teeth were extracted three years ago and would have simply been thrown in the rubbish," said. Dr Ogushi. "Skin or bone marrow for this sort of research is quite difficult to obtain but this sort of operation is routine and very straightforward."

The cells were extracted from the wisdom teeth and encouraged to develop for a period of 35 days. Tests then confirmed they were stem cells.

Dr Oguchi said it was also simple to store the cells; he therefor plans to develop a tissue bank - as long as the funding is forthcoming, estimating that will take a decade to achieve, and give future scientists a range of genetic codes that can be matched to a patient to minimise the risk of
transplanted organs of tissue being rejected. Dr Ogushi said that people who have their wisdom teeth removed as youngsters could have them frozen and use them later in life for treatment.

Embryome Sciences develops new medical products using embryonic stem cell technology and is a subsidiary of BioTime Inc., reported on 21 August that the company has licensed a portfolio of patents and patent applications from Advanced Cell Technology Inc with respect to induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cell differentiation technology.

The company is applying the license for the commercialisation of products in human therapeutic and diagnostic product markets. The technology covers methods for the transformation of cells of the human body, such as skin cells, into an embryonic and pluripotent state.

Embryome Sciences Inc believes that the licensed technologies could be advantageous in the development of human stem cell products for use in medicine and are, therefore, important advancements in the field. In addition, Embryome Sciences Inc is presently marketing cell growth media, called ESpan, in collaboration with Lifeline. ESpan is designed for the culturing of human embryonic progenitor cells using ACTCellerate technology and other sub licensed technologies.

Red Blood Cells Providing New Incentives for Advanced Cell Technology

Could red blood cells be mass-produced? Advanced Cell Technology (ACTC) is a Los Angeles, California-based company devoted to turning human embryonic stem cells into therapies. On 19 August, the journal Blood published a paper reporting the efficient production of red blood cells from human embryonic stem cells.

Lead author was Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at ACT (his co-authors are from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota). Up to 100 billion cells had been generated from a single plate of stem cells. The cells produced had oxygen-carrying abilities and physiological responses comparable to those of the cells from blood banks used in transfusions.

Advanced Cell Technology has 3 major products in the FDA Clinical Trials Pipleline: one to do with retinal repair, another with myoblast repair, after a heart attack, and the other is a hepatic (liver) repair stem cell product; this latest development puts a very obvious fourth feather in their hat....

The paper "clearly shows that stem cells could serve as an unlimited source of blood for transfusion in the future," Lanza says. "The potential here could be enormous."

"This is a major advance because it shows for the first time that these cells can be expanded; they can create [red] blood cells and they can carry oxygen," says Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "Blood therapies and blood replacement agents are an area of large need."

While the company searches for a big deal to stabilize it financially, Lanza says, "We are still going paycheck to paycheck." That's a familiar feeling for veterans of the 14-year-old company, he notes. "It's probably the fifth or sixth time we've had the phones turned off. When you get in trouble, that's your first warning." Lanza appeared with Barbara Walters on her show on April 1 to discuss in great deal the future and prospects of the specific stem cell research he directs at Advanced Cell Technology.

Although ACTC has in the FDA Clinical Trials pipeline stem cell products in three key ares (retinal respair, hepatic repair, and myoblast [after-heart attack] repair, Advanced Cell Technology has been living precariously on signing smaller licensing deals.

On 21 August, the life-sciences research company Embryome Sciences, a subsidiary of BioTime, announced a licensing agreement with ACT. Embryome, based in Alameda, California, has licensed a portfolio of patents related to virus-free induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cell differentiation technology.

Moving ACT's red blood cell method to the clinic, there are also questions about the commercial prospects for a product that would have to compete with freely donated blood.

"It's certainly a very exciting result from a scientific perspective," says Cathy Prescott, the director of Biolatris, a biotechnology and health-care consulting company in Cambridge, UK.

Thanks to the Telegraph, the London newspaper; to Medical News today (UK), and Dr. Catherine Paddock, to Embryome Press release, and to Meredith Wadman's article in Naturenews.

Submitter: Stephen Fox

Submitters Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Submitters Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev