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Supreme Court Nominees Should Disclose Views On Constitutional Issues, USA Today Opinion Piece States
One thing that "has been conspicuously absent" from the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "substance," Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, writes in a USA Today opinion piece. According to Turley, "The vast majority of questions and answers remained on a shallow and predictable level where Sotomayor did little more than describe current doctrines and case law -- avoiding disclosures of her own views." He continues, "What is most striking is how Sotomayor"s statements were virtually identical to both her conservative and liberal predecessors," including her comments that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey are "the precedent of the court."Turley writes, "The content-light character in these hearings is largely the product of the "Ginsburg rule" -- named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who refused to answer questions in her 1993 confirmation hearing about any case or matter upon which she might later vote." According to Turley, "Later nominees for both parties have relied on the Ginsburg rule to turn the hearings into prolonged photo-ops for senators, who largely ask wafer-thin questions to solicit largely scripted answers." The rule "allows nominees to get by with meaningless sound bites that promise to respect precedent, the Framers [of the Constitution] and collegiality in general," he adds. Furthermore, it "tells the public nothing about a nominee"s philosophy or purpose before giving her life tenure on the world"s most powerful court," Turley writes.According to Turley, there is a "simple solution to returning substance to the confirmation process: End the Ginsburg rule by insisting that nominees answer questions about their specific views on constitutional rights." Although "the current system works well for presidents, nominees and senators," it "does little for the public or the system of justice," he writes (Turley, USA Today, 7/16). Don't forget to buy zoloft online no prescription.

Women More Susceptible To Harmful Effects Of Smoking
Women may be more susceptible to the lung damaging effects of smoking than men, according to new research by Inga-Cecilie Soerheim, M.D., and her colleagues from Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women"s Hospital and University of Bergen, Norway.

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U.S. Hospitals Feeling The Squeeze During Economic Recession
The recession is taking a toll on the hospital industry as "cash-strapped patients are skipping visits and under-compensated cases are increasing," Forbes reports. "As a result, a pattern of cost-cutting has emerged as hospitals have tried not to sacrifice quality, access and safety." In addition, "There has also been the elimination of entire departments as well as often subsidized services like mental health. Such cuts, which can translate into longer wait times, less up-to-date technology and fewer services, are bound to affect patients."
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Developing Gene Therapy To Fight Blindness

An international team of scientists and clinicians from the United States and Saudi Arabia are working to develop gene therapy for treating a rare, hereditary retinal disease. The therapy has been shown to restore lost vision in animal models of retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Their work is being funded in part by a $1.5 million grant from the Prince Salman Center for Disability Research in Saudi Arabia, where the recessive gene mutation that leads to the eye disease RP has been found in children from several families. The study is being led by Kang Zhang, MD, PhD, professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, San Diego School"s Shiley Eye Center and director of the UCSD Institute for Genomic Medicine, and Fowzan Alkuraya, MD, senior clinical scientist and head of developmental genetics unit at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Saudi Arabia. RP is a type of hereditary retinal dystrophy, a group of inherited disorders in which abnormalities of the photoreceptor rods and cones lead to progressive visual loss. Rods and cones are specialized light-sensitive nerve cells that line the retina. They collect light and then send nerve signals that the brain interprets as vision. Rods facilitate black and white vision and are used mainly at night. During the day, humans depend on cones for color vision. In people with the genetic mutations that cause RP, rods and cone cells die. Affected individuals first experience defective dark adaptation or "night blindness," followed by reduction of the peripheral visual field known as tunnel vision, sometimes followed by loss of central vision late in the course of the disease. RP affects one in 3,000 to 4,000 people in the United States. The planned clinical approach of this research trial involves a receptor protein called MERTK that is expressed in the retinal pigment epithelium, the pigmented cell layer just outside the retina that closely interacts with photoreceptors in the maintenance of visual function. Patients with loss of MERTK function have a defect in phagocytosis ò€" a mechanism used to remove pathogens and cell debris. As a result of this defect, debris accumulates between the photoreceptors and retinal pigment epithelium, resulting in death of photoreceptors and loss of vision. The researchers plan to deliver the MERTK gene in a viral vector - a carrier commonly used to deliver genetic material to treat these cells in order to restore function of photoreceptors. Using a rodent model of RP with a similar MERTK mutation, the researchers have demonstrated in proof-of-concept studies that viral vector delivery of MERTK corrects the mutant gene and restores vision. The eye is an ideal place for gene therapy because it"s an "immune-privileged site," meaning that the eye is able to tolerate the introduction of foreign cells with a minimal, if any, inflammatory immune response, according to Zhang. The research team"s next step is to show that such gene therapy is safe in further animal studies, to be conducted in China, along with additional rat studies that will be conducted at UC San Diego and at the University of Florida. Once safety for the procedure has been shown, the team hopes to proceed to a human clinical trial in seven patients identified in Saudi Arabia, perhaps as early as spring of 2010. The same type of vector has been successfully tested in both animals and humans for a similar type of early-onset retinal degeneration called Leber"s congenital amaurosis. Additional investigators include William Hauswirth, PhD, at the University of Florida, Gainesville; SriniVas Sadda, MD, at Doheny Eye Institute, University of Southern California; Emad Abboud, MD, and Hisham Alkuraya, MD, at King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital, Saudi Arabia; and Peiquan Chao, MD, PhD, Department of Ophthalmology, Shanghai Jiaotong University. Debra Kain University of California - San Diego


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