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WORLD BANK INTERNATIONAL ESSAY COMPETITION 2009

remive4u — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:36:15 GMT

WANTED: The Next Generation of ‘Green’ Entrepreneurs

Climate change has been identified as one of the biggest global threats of our time. Scientists agree that global warming and extreme climate phenomena can be increasingly attributed to human activity - in particular, heavy emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, resulting from industrial processes.

Solutions to those pressing problems could lie in the rapidly growing ‘green economy’: environmentally sustainable enterprises, technological innovations (new sources of clean, renewable energy), energy efficiency measures, economic incentives for low-carbon choices, etc. How can youth contribute?

The Essay Competition 2009 invites youth to share ideas on:

How does climate change affect you?
How can you tackle climate change through youth-led solutions?

Please answer both questions:

1. How does climate change affect you, your country, town or local community? How do you think it will affect you in the future? Think about the consequences for employment, health, security and other areas of your life.

2. What can you do, working together with your peers, to address the problem of climate change in your country, town or local community? Think specifically about the role of youth-led initiatives in the ‘green economy’.

FOR MORE INFOS VISIT: www.essaycompetition.org

Turritopsis nutricula: the world's only 'immortal' creature

remive4u — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:45:41 GMT

The jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula can revert to its sexually immature juvenile polyp state after the adult mating process, unlike other jellyfish that die after reproduction.

“Theoretically, this cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal,” reports the Times of London.

And marine biologists say that the creatures, which are native to tropical waters, seem to be spreading rapidly all over the world, aided by the discharge of ships’ ballast water in ports.

“We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion,” said Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute, to The Telegraph, who said that recent genetic analyses have proven that Turritopsis is spreading.

Marine biologists and geneticists say that the age reversal is achieved through a cell development process called transdifferentiation, during which cells change from one type into another, a process that usually occurs only during organ regeneration, but seems to be a normal part of the Turritopsis life cycle.

The creatures, which are characterized by filmy bells, revert to their younger selves during times of stress, such as when food is scarce. While the species normally reproduces with sperm and eggs, it has the ability to “survive tough times by collapsing into a blob and then growing back into its youthful, stalklike form,” according to Science News.

“This is equivalent to a butterfly that goes back to a caterpillar,” Miglietta said to Science News.

Turritopsis nutricula is a solitary predator and a hydrozoan that measures around 4-5 mm in diameter. It distinguishes itself from other Hydrozoan cnidarians with the ability of its solitary medusa to revert to the polyp stage after achieving sexual maturity, and it is reported that 100 percent of medusa transform in this way in the laboratory.

Vitamin E prevents Lung cancers??by: Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

vergie4u — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:51:15 GMT

News Media Virtually Silent on Positive Vitamin Research

Researchers at the University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center have found that taking more vitamin E substantially reduces lung cancer. Their new study shows that people consuming the highest amounts of vitamin E had the greatest benefit. When they compared persons taking the most vitamin E with those taking the least, there was a 61% reduction in lung cancer risk. (1)

Lung cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer on earth; over 1.3 million people are diagnosed with it each year. With medical treatment, survival rates are "consistently poor," says Cancer Research UK. Lung cancer kills nearly 1.2 million per year. It accounts for 12% of all cancers, but results in 18% of all cancer deaths. (2) Anything that can reduce these dismal facts is important news . . .very important. Yet the mainstream media have virtually ignored vitamin E's important role as a cancer fighter.

A sixty-one percent reduction in lung cancer with vitamin E? How could the news media have missed this one?

The news media probably did not miss it: they simply did not report it. They are biased. You can see for yourself what bias there is. Try a "Google" search for any of the major newspapers or broadcast media, using the name of the news organization along with the phrase "vitamin E lung cancer." When you do, you will find that it will quickly bring up previous items alleging that vitamin E might (somehow) increase cancer risk. You will find little or nothing at all on how vitamin E prevents cancer. Indeed, the bias is so strong that even a qualified search for "increased vitamin E reduces lung cancer" will still, and preferentially, bring up media coverage alleging that vitamin E is harmful. Negative reporting sells newspapers and pulls in viewing audiences. The old editors' adage must still be true: "If it bleeds, it leads."

Here's more positive vitamin E cancer research that the media "missed." A study in 2002 looked at patients with colon cancer "who received a daily dose of 750 mg of vitamin E during a period of 2 weeks. Short-term supplementation with high doses of dietary vitamin E leads to increased CD4:CD8 ratios and to enhanced capacity by their T cells to produce the T helper 1 cytokines interleukin 2 and IFN-gamma. In 10 of 12 patients, an increase of 10% or more (average, 22%) in the number of T cells producing interleukin 2 was seen after 2 weeks of vitamin E supplementation." The authors concluded that "dietary vitamin E may be used to improve the immune functions in patients with advanced cancer." That improvement was achieved in a mere two weeks merits special attention. (3)

Was it on the news? Did you hear about how high doses of vitamin E help cancer patients' immune systems in only two weeks? Why not? Might the answer possibly have anything to do with money? One cannot watch television or read a magazine or newspaper without it being obvious that drug company cash is one of the media's very largest sources of revenue. Given where their advertising income comes from, it is hardly a big surprise that media reporting on vitamins is biased. Well-publicized vitamin scares feed the pharmaceutical industry. Successful reports of safe, inexpensive vitamin therapy do not.

One commentator has observed that pharmaceutical and other "corporations marshal huge public relations efforts on behalf of their agendas. In the United States the 170,000 public relations employees whose job it is to manipulate news, public opinion and public policy in the interests of their clients outnumber news reporters by 40,000." (4) Another commentator wrote that "Janine Jackson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a news media watchdog group, told the American Free Press that 60 percent of journalists surveyed by FAIR admitted that advertisers 'try to change stories (and) there is an overwhelming influence of corporations and advertisers' on broadcast and print news reporting." (5)

Drug companies don't have any drug that can reduce lung cancer risk by 61%. If they did, you would have heard all about it in their advertisements. And it would be all over the news. Positive drug studies get the headlines. Positive vitamin studies rarely do. This is an enormous public health problem with enormous consequences. A cynic might say that press and television coverage of a vitamin study tends to be inversely proportionate to the study's clinical usefulness. Truly valuable research does not scare people; it helps people get well. It would be difficult to identify anything more helpful than actively reporting the story when a vitamin is shown to reduce lung cancer by 61%.

The good news about how important high quantities of vitamin E are in combating cancer is not arising out of nowhere. A US National Library of Medicine MEDLINE search will bring up over 3,000 studies on the subject, some dating back to 1946. By the early 1950s, research clearly supported the use of vitamin E against cancer. (6) Before 1960, vitamin E was shown to reduce the side effects of radiation cancer treatment. (7) In reviewing vitamin E research, one notes that the high-dose studies got the best results.

Vitamin E is not the sure cure for cancer. It is not certain prevention, either. Stopping cigarette smoking is essential. But vitamin E is part of the solution, and we need more of it. An independent panel of physicians and researchers (8) has recently called for increasing the daily recommended intake for vitamin E to 200 IU. The present US RDA/DRI is a mere 15-20 IU/day.

It is time to raise it. A lot.

Cancer cured for good??By Bill Sardi and Timothy Hubbell October 2008

vergie4u — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:47:10 GMT

It works 100% of the time to eradicate cancer completely, and cancer does not recur even years later. That is how researchers describe the most convincing cancer cure ever announced.

The weekly injection of just 100 billionths of a gram of a harmless glyco-protein (a naturally-produced molecule with a sugar component and a protein component) activates the human immune system and cures cancer for good, according to human studies among breast cancer and colon cancer patients, producing complete remissions lasting 4 and 7 years respectively. This glyco-protein cure is totally without side effect but currently goes unused by cancer doctors.

Normal Gc protein (also called Vitamin-D binding protein) , an abundant glyco-protein found in human blood serum, becomes the molecular switch to activate macrophages when it is converted to its active form, called Gc macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF). Gc protein is normally activated by conversion to Gc-MAF with the help of the B and T cells (bone marrow-made and thymus gland-made white blood cells). But, as researchers explain it themselves, cancer cells secrete an enzyme known as alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase (also called Nagalase) that completely blocks conversion of Gc protein to Gc-MAF, preventing tumor-cell killing by the macrophages. This is the way cancer cells escape detection and destruction, by disengaging the human immune system. This also leaves cancer patients prone to infections and many then succumb to pneumonia or other infections.

The once-weekly injection of minute amounts of Gc-MAF, just 100 nanograms (billionths of a gram), activates macrophages and allows the immune system to pursue cancer cells with vigor, sufficient to produce total long-term cures in humans.

Nobuto Yamamoto, director of the Division of Cancer Immunology and Molecular Biology, Socrates Institute for Therapeutic Immunology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says this is “probably the most potent macrophage activating factor ever discovered.”

A MACROPHAGE OVERCOMES AND EATS A CANCER CELL.
FROM THE UPJOHN COMPANY, THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

Once a sufficient number of activated macrophages are produced, another Gc-MAF injection is not needed for a week because macrophages have a half-life of about six days. After 16-22 weekly doses of Gc-MAF the amount of Nagalase enzyme fell to levels found in healthy people, which serves as evidence tumors have been completely eliminated. The treatment was fool-proof - - - it worked in 100% of 16 breast cancer patients and there were no recurrent tumors over a period of 4 years, says a report in the January 15 issue of the International Journal of Cancer. [International Journal Cancer.2008 January15; 122(2):461-7]

In another startling follow-up report by Dr. Yamamoto and colleagues, published in the upcoming July issue of Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy, Gc-MAF therapy totally abolished tumors in 8 colon cancer patients who had already undergone surgery but still exhibited circulating cancer cells (metastases). After 32-50 weekly injections, ”all colorectal cancer patients exhibited healthy control levels of the serum Nagalase activity, indicating eradication of metastatic tumor cells,”said researchers, an effect that lasted 7 years with no indication of cancer recurrence either by enzyme activity or CT scans, said researchers. [Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy Volume 57, Number 7 / July 2008] Published in an early online edition of this journal, this confirming report has received no attention by the new media so far, despite its striking importance.

Gc-MAF treatment for cancer has been agonizingly slow to develop. Dr. Yamamoto first described this immuno-therapy in 1993. [The Journal of Immunology, 1993 151 (5); 2794-2802]

In a similar animal experiment published in 2003, researchers in Germany, Japan and the United States collaborated to successfully demonstrate that after they had injected macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF) into tumor-bearing mice, it totally eradicated tumors. [Neoplasia 2003 January; 5(1): 32–40]

In 1997 Dr. Yamamoto injected GcMAF protein into tumor-bearing mice, with the same startling results. A single enzyme injection doubled the survival of these mice and just four enzyme injections increased survival by 6-fold. [Cancer Research 1997 Jun 1; 57(11):2187-92]

In 1996 Dr. Yamamoto reported that all 52 cancer patients he had studied carried elevated blood plasma levels of the immune inactivating alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase enzyme (Nagalase), whereas healthy humans had very low levels of this enzyme. [Cancer Research 1996 Jun 15; 56(12):2827-31]

In the early 1990s, Dr. Yamamoto first described how the human immune system is disengaged by enzymes secreted from cancer cells, even filing a patent on the proposed therapy. [US Patent 5326749, July 1994; Cancer Research 1996 June 15; 56: 2827-31]

Activated Gc protein has been used in humans at much higher doses without side effect. This Gc macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF) has been shown to be effective against a variety of cancers including breast, prostate, stomach, liver, lung, uterus, ovary, brain, skin, head/neck cancer, and leukemia.

Although GcMAF is also called Vitamin-D binding protein, the activation of macrophages does not require Vitamin D.

It cannot be said the Gc-MAF cancer cure has gone unheralded. Reuters News covered this developing story in January. But the news story still did not receive top billing nor did it fully elucidate the importance of the discovery, actually made years ago, that the human body is capable of abolishing cancer once its immune system is properly activated.

GcMAF is a naturally made molecule and is not patentable, though its manufacturing process is patent protected. There is no evidence of any current effort to commercialize this therapy or put it into practice. Should such an effective treatment for cancer come into common practice, the income stream from health-insurance plans for every oncology office and cancer center in the world Would likely be reduced to the point of financial insolvency and hundreds of thousands of jobs would be eliminated.

The National Cancer Institute estimates cancer care in the U.S. costs ~$72 billion annually (2004). Furthermore, about $55 billion of cancer drugs are used annually, none which have not significantly improved survival rates throughout the history of their use. If a typical cancer patient had to undergo 30 GcMAF injections at a cost of $150 per injection, that would cost ~$4500, not counting doctor’s office visits and follow-up testing. For comparison, gene-targeted cancer drugs range from $13,000 to $100,000 in cost per year and produce only marginal improvements in survival (weeks to months). [Targeted Oncology 2007 April, 2 (2); 113-19]

Up to this point, the National Cancer Institute is totally silent on this discovery and there is no evidence the cancer care industry plans to quickly mobilize to use this otherwise harmless treatment.

- - -

Based in Southern California, Bill Sardi is a notedand well-known author, lecturer, speaker, and health researcher, with numerous books and articles to his credit. He can be reached at BSardi@aol.com. Timothy Hubbell, a biochemist from Cincinnati, first called attention to this discovery and provided consultation on the biochemistry.