Thursday 07-28-11

Long-term, universal flu shot on horizon

A universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains may be within reach in the next five years, replacing annual shots developed for specifics flu viruses, the chief of the National Institutes of Health predicts.

By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, says a universal flu vaccine may be within reach in the next five years.

Francis Collins told USA TODAY's Editorial Board on Tuesday that he is "guardedly optimistic" about development of a long-term shot to replace the one "you'd have to renew every year."

About 200,000 people are hospitalized with the flu every year, and an estimated 3,000 to 49,000 die, making the flu one of the chief causes of preventable death in the USA.

Collins cited the long-term flu shot in a wide-ranging discussion of many advances coming from NIH research. Amid budget debates now underway in Washington, D.C. that could also trim NIH's $31billion budget, he made the case for research investments that improve the nation's health.

VIDEO: 5 questions with NIH Director Francis Collins
A universal flu vaccine "seemed completely out of reach only a few years ago," Collins said. That's because flu viruses mutate yearly, causing small changes in surface coatings, which make old vaccines obsolete.

Recently however, scientists have found "there are parts of the viral coat that don't change …. If you designed a vaccine to go after the constant part of the virus, you'd be protected against all strains," Collins said.

A universal flu vaccine is "not a question of whether, but when," says Arnold Monto, of the University of Michigan. "I think five years is a bit ambitious, given where we are now."

Scientists around the world are working on the problem. In February, researchers in the United Kingdom reported preliminary success developing a universal flu vaccine in humans.

Collins pointed to other advances springing from investment in biomedical research:

• Alzheimer's studies suggest inflammation, rather than brain-tangling proteins, triggers many cases of the dementia that afflicts more than 5million, according to NIH.

• Diabetes research is finding that exercise and nutrition coaching is more effective at checking symptoms than drug treatment.

•HIV studies suggest screening everyone in the country for HIV could lead to early treatment to prevent some of the 56,000 new cases each year.

"We might be able to end this epidemic," Collins said. Given that the lifetime cost of HIV/AIDS treatment is $1million — a total of $56billion to treat just the newly infected each year — universal screening "begins to look cost-effective." He cautioned there is no proposal for such screening.

NIH already runs pilot programs to test and treat high-risk people in Washington, D.C. and the Bronx, N.Y., says Anthony Fauci, head of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Scientifically, we know it works."

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/coldflu/story/2011/07/Long-term-universal-flu-shot-on-horizon/49671698/1

You can take a look at the charts at the link, it is worth looking at.

Are We Broke Yet?

Two simple graphs, updated daily, that show exactly how screwed the federal government's finances really are.

Here's one way to express how catastrophically screwed the U.S. government's finances are: If the entire U.S budget were cut to zero, effective immediately—the military, all entitlements, the electricity bill for the Capitol—there still wouldn't be enough money to cover the payments on old debt that come due every day. In fact, by Slate's calculations, the payments would have dried us up in under a month. So for decades the strategy has been to borrow new money to pay down old debt—plus a little extra to kick to the Treasury's coffers, since we habitually spend more than we take in. That continued to work this year until May 16, when we maxed out our congressional credit card. Since then, the Treasury has been living on savings and whatever revenue comes in. The first graph here very simply shows the balance in the Treasury's bank account, which is published every weekday. The light-colored bars at the end represent the Bipartisan Policy Center's projections for how long we can make it before the money all dries up. That date is Aug. 3.

Update, July 26, 10:12 a.m.: The most recent Treasury statement, for July 22, reports a balance of $84.4 billion, slightly below projections. Funds are still on track to run dry on Wednesday, Aug. 3.

Below it is a graph of the total national debt. Note that the scale begins at $13.5 trillion, not zero.


Jul
July 14, 2011
$14.294 trillion
As you can see, as the debt approaches the point of no return, the U.S. coffers take a major hit. But you will also see some spikes in revenue after borrowing is maxed out. This can be attributed to many things—an influx of tax revenue, profits from the Federal Reserve's holdings, and the general movement of funds and debt between accounts. We are continuing to borrow money as well, but only in equal amounts to the debt we pay off, so as to remain under the debt ceiling.


http://www.slate.com/id/2299845/







When al Qaeda is defeated, can we have our liberties back?

Last week brought the unsurprising news that the Transportation Security Administration had terrorized yet another 6-year-old with a humiliating pat-down. Dog bites man, federal agent gropes child -- we're getting all too accustomed to this sort of thing in post-9/11 America.
Meanwhile, even the administration's top terror warriors are starting to admit that al Qaeda is a spent force. Two weeks ago, in his first public comments after moving from Langley to the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta noted that al Qaeda's defeat was "within reach."

When we kill or round up some 10 to 20 remaining senior operatives, Panetta said, we'll "really cripple al Qaeda as a threat to this country." In fact, the al Qaeda threat has looked anything but robust for some time now.

Last summer, al Qaeda's online journal Inspire, a sort of Soldier of Fortune magazine for wannabe jihadis, suggested using "a tractor or farm vehicle in an attack outfitted with blades or swords as a fearsome killing machine" -- perfect for "mowing down the enemies of Allah."

Among the treasure trove of materials seized from the Abbottabad compound was a missive from Osama bin Laden himself, condemning that scheme as "indiscriminate slaughter" -- an odd objection, coming from a mass murderer.

Yet somehow, the terrorist mastermind missed the more obvious objection: The plan is utterly screwball -- an embarrassment -- the dumbest scheme since ... well, since al Qaeda operative Iyman Faris' 2002 plan to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. As I've said before, sometimes you get the sense that these guys aren't the sharpest scimitars in the shed.

The global intelligence firm Stratfor put it more politely in a recent analysis: "The jihadists seem to be having a problem ... finding people who can master the terrorist tradecraft" and travel freely to the West.

They've been reduced to urging potential sympathizers who already live here to stock up at gun shows and shoot some infidels at the mall. But, as Stratfor observes, "the very call to leaderless resistance is an admission of defeat."

We may be winning, but don't dare imagine that "victory" will take the form of a restoration of lost liberties. That's "defeatist" thinking. I suppose that's why, shortly after SEAL Team 6 killed bin Laden, Congress and the president's autopen got together to reauthorize the Patriot Act. The threat recedes, but the surveillance state must live on.

And there can be no talk of beating porno-scanners into plowshares. The Department of Homeland Security recently warned that terrorists might "surgically implant explosive devices" in their bodies.

Slate.com reports that several firms are already hard at work on scanners that can look inside our bodies instead of just inside our clothes. Like all other bureaucracies, the bureaucracy of fear has a merciless logic of its own. It exists to exist, generating new invasions of privacy -- and new federal contracts -- however speculative the threats.

Ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush laid out his vision of al Qaeda's demise: heirs to the "murderous ideologies of the 20th century," they'd end up "in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

Nearly a decade later, U.S. Navy SEALs pitched the head murderer's body off the side of the USS Carl Vinson into the North Arabian Sea -- a watery grave that's a pretty close approximation of Bush's imagery.

Wired magazine defense analyst Spencer Ackerman asks the right question: "Why does the U.S. still need to devote such overwhelming resources worldwide against a force that's seeing history pass it by?"

As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, isn't it time we started thinking about a "peace dividend"?

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/07/when-al-qaeda-defeated-can-we-have-our-liberties-back#ixzz1TK2fu7eO