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dkf's JournalAdvances in breast cancer genetics study
In a move that could alter the way that breast cancers are treated, researchers have redefined the disease into four main classes and determined that one type of breast cancer has more in common with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer than other breast cancers.
The finding that a form of breast cancer may be genetically similar to a type of ovarian cancer underscores a new way of thinking about cancer that moves away from defining cancers by the organ of origin.
The findings are the result of the largest and most comprehensive study of the genetics of breast cancer to date and could offer new hope to cancer patients.
"We're going to move farther and farther from the practice of classifying cancers by where they arise and more and more by what their molecular composition and wiring is all about," said Dr. Christopher Benz, an oncologist at UCSF and co-principal investigator of a partnership between the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato and UC Santa Cruz.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Advances-in-breast-cancer-genetics-study-3887472.php#ixzz27SewbEoa
Local/State Camden plans to disband police, starting anew
CAMDEN, N.J. - September 23, 2012 (WPVI) -- The Camden police force is about to be disbanded and replaced with a new county police department.
Camden County officials say it's a way to get out from under a costly union contract and bring more police to the street that consistently ranks as one of the nation's most dangerous.
But unless police unions agree to the change, many officers could lose their jobs. And those who remain will see their take-home pay reduced.
The Fraternal Order of Police lodge that represents city officers is fighting the plan in court but has also started talks with Camden County officials to try to save officers' jobs.
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=8821420
If we want Medicare to work we are going to have to raise Medicare taxes and premiums.
I don't see how we can expect a system to work where we pay $100,000 - $150,000 and get back $300,000 - $400,000.
Maybe if that were the payback for a minority of the recipients, but it that's the average, it doesn't look sustainable to me.
Without Steve Jobs Apple is Without a Map
Steve Jobs was famous for his temper, especially when faced with what he considered sub-par work. He was also known for his attention to detail. He'd do the unthinkable to get everything right, once famously requiring -- just days from the official launch -- that the original iPhone switch from a plastic display to the glass it ultimately was launched with.
Steve Jobs might thus have been the ultimate quality control that large bureaucracies usually fail to enforce. His near-psychotic drive for quality found itself reflected in Apple's (AAPL) products, rendering them as close to perfection as you're ever going to get in consumer electronics.
But Steve Jobs is gone, and with him his paranoid drive towards perfection might also have vanished from Apple. Ever since Steve Jobs died, this has been a lingering fear, yet it seemed the jewel-like appearance of the new iPhone 5 was proof that such fears could have been overdone. They weren't.
I have already talked about how Apple's attempt at a Mapping solution, made to drive Google's (GOOG) solution away from iOS, was inferior to Google Maps as well as Nokia's (NOK). However, this was just a detail, one feature where Apple didn't measure up, I thought. Reality, though, surprised even me. Apple basically shipped a feature filled with bugs and utterly lacking quality.
http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/882911-without-steve-jobs-apple-is-without-a-map?source=email_rt_article_readmore&ifp=0
The Cancer “Breakthroughs” that Cost Too Much and Do Too Little
In his more than 35 years of practice, Dr. Lowell Schnipper has seen a lot of women die from breast cancer. A patient’s options start to dwindle by the time tumor cells set up outposts in the bones, lungs, and other organs, defying all attempts to keep them under control. But in June, when the government approved Perjeta, Schnipper had something new to offer. The drug is one of an innovative class of drugs known as “targeted therapies.”
As the chief of oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Schnipper knew Perjeta was not a cure: added to a standard treatment with Herceptin—another targeted therapy that was hailed as a breakthrough in 1998—Perjeta gives the average woman only about six months more of calm before her disease starts to stir again. Given the limited benefit, the price was startling. For most women, a full course of the drug combination will cost $188,000—enough, he says, “to give anybody a cold sweat.”
Americans spent more than $23 billion last year for cancer drugs, more than we paid for prescriptions to treat anything else. But many oncologists are starting to question what we are getting in return for that bill, whether the war on cancer has become too much of a race to produce the next blockbuster. “In general, progress for cancer has been halting and slow,” says David Howard of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University. So far, most new drugs offer only marginal extensions of life and few cures. Howard says new so-called breakthroughs “overpromise and underdeliver.” Consider the popularity of Avastin, a targeted drug approved for metastatic colon cancer in 2004. A recent study found that almost 70 percent of patients on chemotherapy were receiving Avastin within a year of its release. In clinical trials, the drug increased survival by about five months. The cost? About $10,000 a month.
Treating cancer has never been cheap, but today, the price of each new treatment seems to outpace the one before, with little bearing on its efficacy. According to figures from insurer United Healthcare, a standard cocktail of drugs for treating lung cancer used to run about $1,000 a month. Today’s regimens cost from more than $6,000 to almost $10,000—for about two more months of life. “There is no such thing as a cancer drug coming on the market that is some sort of regular drug price,” says Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who studies the impact of cancer costs on U.S. health care. “They’re all priced at spectacularly high levels.” Which leads to an unsettling question: how much is a little more time worth? Would you spend $50,000 for four more months? How about $15,000 for two weeks?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/26/the-cancer-breakthroughs-that-cost-too-much-and-do-too-little.html
Pakistan minister calls for filmmaker's death
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) - A Pakistan government minister has personally offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who kills the man who made the anti-Islam movie that is drawing ire throughout the Muslim world.
Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour announced the bounty at a news conference Saturday, but he made clear to CNN he was speaking for himself and not as a government representative.
Asked whether he was concerned about committing or condoning a crime as a government official, Bilour said, "I am a Muslim first, then a government representative."
He said he invited the Taliban and al Qaeda to carry out the assassination.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/23/world/meast/pakistan-film-bounty/index.html?c=world
CNN finds, returns journal of late ambassador
(CNN) - Three days after he was killed, CNN found a journal belonging to late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. The journal was found on the floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded.
..
The journal consists of just seven pages of handwriting in a hard-bound book.
For CNN, the ambassador's writings served as tips about the situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. CNN took the newsworthy tips and corroborated them with other sources.
A source familiar with Stevens' thinking told CNN earlier this week that, in the months leading up to his death, the late ambassador worried about what he called the security threats in Benghazi and a rise in Islamic extremism.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/22/world/africa/libya-ambassador-journal/index.html
Senate votes to shield U.S. airlines from EU's carbon scheme
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Saturday that would shield U.S. airlines from paying for their carbon emissions on European flights, pressuring the European Union to back down from applying its emissions law to foreign carriers.
The European Commission has been enforcing its law since January to make all airlines take part in its Emissions Trading Scheme to combat global warming, prompting threats of a trade fight.
The Senate approved the bill shortly after midnight, as it scrambled to complete business to recess ahead of the November 6 congressional and presidential elections.
Republican Senator John Thune, a sponsor of the measure, said it sent a "strong message" to the EU that it cannot impose taxes on the United States.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE88L06C20120922?irpc=932
America's hidden unemployed: too discouraged to count
Economists, analyzing government data, estimate about 4 million fewer people are in the labor force than in December 2007, primarily due to a lack of jobs rather than the normal aging of America's population. The size of the shift underscores the severity of the jobs crisis.
If all those so-called discouraged jobseekers had remained in the labor force, August's jobless rate of 8.1 percent would have been 10.5 percent.
...
The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one has fallen by an unprecedented 2.5 percentage points since December 2007, slumping to a 31-year low of 63.5 percent.
"We never had a drop like that before in other recessions. The economy is worse off than people realize when people just look at the unemployment rate," said Keith Hall, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE88M07D20120923?irpc=932
Well her plane just had an emergency landing and smoke is reported in the cabin.
That sounds rather stressful.
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