Category Archives: Gene therapy

Take a close look at the athletes competing in this year's Summer Olympic Games in London --their musculature will tell you a lot about how they achieved their elite status. Endless hours of training and commitment to their sport played a big role in building the bodies that got them to the world's premier athletic competition. Take an even closer look--this one requires microscopy--and you'll see something else, something embedded in the genetic blueprints of these young men and women that's just as important to their success. [More]

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From Nature magazine

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One day in early 1995 a man named bob massie walked into my office at the outpatient clinic of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Massie told me he had been infected with HIV--the virus that causes AIDS--for 16 years and yet had never shown any symptoms. My physical examination confirmed he was healthy, in stark contrast to all other patients I saw that day. At that time, a new combination of drugs was being tested that would eventually slow the progressive decline in immune function that HIV caused. In 1995, however, most people who had been infected with HIV for a decade or more had already progressed to AIDS--the stage marked by the inability to fight off other pathogens. The young man standing before me had never taken anti-HIV medication and strongly believed that if I learned the secret to his good fortune, the information could help others to survive what was then generally thought to be a uniformly fatal disease.

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Tears and a runny nose can be unpleasant on a windy day, but these mucosal secretions play a vital role in protecting the body from viruses and other malicious microbes. Unfortunately, mucus is also adept at washing away medication designed to treat infections and inflammation that occur when an infectious agent is successful in penetrating the body's defenses [More]

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I stared at my desk incredulously, not a pen in sight.  In fact, I scoured the office up and down for minutes without luck.  Apparently, I wouldn't be able to write that all important script. One could conclude from this exercise that my office staff needs to better monitor our supply reserves.  Or, one could draw the conclusion that physicians are greedy, overpaid, untrustworthy scoundrels.

That's right, doctor's used to suck on the teet of big pharma by taking advantage of their logo bearing gifts of writing utensils.  Yet, some genius in the government decided that such influence was affecting prescribing patterns and unethical.  Unethical?

Wake up America!

Has anyone looked at the government lately.  How do you think congressman and ...

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Editor's Note: Read our blog series on psychiatry's new rulebook, the DSM-5.

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