InkLess World

A new Web site aims to help researchers, doctors and patients obtain reliable information on high-quality clinical trials, it said in a statement.

Some trial research is never published, meaning doctors can lack information about treatment options, according to the UN.

Another problem is the selective reporting of clinical trial findings, which can end up being misleading, WHO officials say.

“WHO believes that the registration of clinical trials is a scientific, ethical and moral responsibility.”

Initially, data from 50,000 clinical trials provided by three registers — in Britain, Australia/New Zealand and the United States — have been put on the WHO site, which is www.who.int/trialsearch.

Registers submitting data must ensure they meet a minimum quality standard and that all trials are registered before any participants are recruited. Data will not be accepted directly from drug companies.

“The Clinical Trial Search Portal is a collaborative international initiative led by WHO that facilitates the identification of all clinical trials, regardless of whether or not they have been published,” said Tim Evans, assistant WHO director-general for information evidence and research.

Since Merck & Co Inc’s 2004 recall of painkiller Vioxx after a clinical trial found it increased the rate of heart attacks among long-term users, concerns have grown about side effects of some prescription medicines.

In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel began requiring a black box warning on prescriptions for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), a type of antidepressant, based on reports that fluoxetine (Prozac) increased suicidal thoughts in children and adolescents.

Such cases have led to growing pressure for greater transparency.

“You can go to one place (online) and search all registers at once and identify clinical trial research underway around the world,” Davina Ghersi of WHO’s department of research policy and cooperation said.

The network of registers, which are required to disclose their ownership, governance structure and for-profit status, will be expanded to make it more comprehensive.

Humans like any other animal need to dominate their environment, and exploit its resources to a natural balance state, so it becomes sustainable. However, since we pay more attention to survival we over exploit resources depleting future natural reserves. In the long run there are too many of us over using the little is left (in the case of only 3% of the old growth forest in California, ro name one example of natural explotation to the level of extinction), and so the conflicts starts to kill each other so the balance again with nature is reached.

Researchers reported on Thursday in a study that offers scientists many potential routes to finding treatments for the fatal brain disease.

Tests on fruit flies show that the mutated Huntington’s protein that underlies the disease interacts with 200 other proteins, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Genetics.

Many of these interactions damage brain cells and make us highly aggressive and violent.

The National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said researchers can experiment with the proteins and the genes responsible for their production.

A medicine ether preventive or curative, can be designed to target these genes, and make humans be more peace and lover seekers.

For example, an estimated 30,000 people have Huntington’s disease in the United States alone and it occurs worldwide in about 1 in every 10,000 people. In general we have  noted that 1/4 of humans develop these brain diseases, not to mention depression, dementia and Alzheimer. To think that it is caused by a single copy of a mutated gene and people who inherit it always develop the disease.

There is no cure or effective treatment for Huntington, which can start off with confusion and personality changes, but sufferers later lose the ability to move, think and communicate. They often die from choking, heart failure or infection.

They used high-tech screening of genes and proteins to identify the 200 that interact with the mutated Huntington’s gene.

There is new hope to treat the brain and how it can be cured of these conditions that are so destructive for this planet.

The report said the development of new biofuel industries could provide clean energy services to millions of people who currently lack them, while generating income and creating jobs in poorer areas of the world.

The report called for the creation of an international bioenergy certification scheme, including greenhouse gas certification, to ensure that products meet environmental standards “all the way from the fields to the fuel tanks.”

“But the rapid growth in first-generation liquid biofuels production will raise agricultural commodity prices and could have negative economic and social effects, particularly on the poor who spend a large share of income on food,” it said.

UN-Energy, which was created to promote consistency on energy developments throughout the United Nations system, said biofuel production had already appeared to have driven up the price of maize in 2006 and 2007.

“The availability of adequate food supplies could be threatened by biofuel production to the extent that land, water and other productive resources are diverted away from food production,” UN-Energy said.

But equally “modern bioenergy could make energy services more widely and cheaply available in remote rural areas, supporting productivity growth in agriculture or other sectors with positive implications for food availability and access.”

‘DISORGANIZED, MISINFORMED’

Biofuels — energy squeezed from all kinds of living matter, such as sugar, corn or rapeseed oil — burn cleaner and are fast gaining popularity around the world amid high oil prices and a battle against global warming.

Global production of biofuels has doubled in the past five years and was likely to double again in the next four years, UN-Energy said.

In March, the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the European Commission, announced the creation of the International Biofuels Forum, which aims to increase global production and use of biofuels.

Brazil is the top producer of ethanol from sugar cane, while the United States holds the same position for corn and together they make up 70 percent of the global market.

Gustavo Best, senior energy coordinator at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, told a news conference that the recommendations were needed because the industry “is so fast and so disorganized … and so misinformed.”

Among the recommendations by UN-Energy was that crops that require high fossil energy inputs — such as conventional fertilizers — and valuable farm land should be avoided.

But it also warned that sustainable energy crops could have a negative impact if these replace primary forests, “resulting in large releases of carbon from the soil and forest biomass that negate any benefits of biofuels for decades.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The case of the Hawaiian Haha is no laughing matter to environmentalists, who say the rare plant went extinct while waiting for U.S. wildlife officials to put it on the Endangered Species list.

The Haha’s fate is a symptom of wider problems at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which oversees programs aimed at protecting threatened species, according to a report for release on Wednesday by the Center for Biological Diversity.

The report, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, said that the Bush administration has listed 57 species as protected since 2001, far fewer than the 512 species listed in the Clinton administration and less than the 234 species listed during the four-year presidency of George H.W. Bush, the current president’s father.

At least two species — the Haha of Hawaii and the Lake Sammamish Kokonee, a fish native to Washington state — went extinct while waiting for protection during this administration, the report said.

“There are a certain number of species on the candidate list right now that are close to extinction, and that ought to be listed, and what the administration has done to date is to say that they don’t have enough money and resources to list these species,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the biodiversity center.

“They’re definitely in a pattern of waiting and waiting and waiting until either the species does go extinct or the next administration comes in,” Snape said in a telephone interview.

He said the budget for listing wildlife as endangered has increased during the current administration.

‘BIOLOGICAL TRIAGE’

Hugh Vickery, a spokesman for the Interior Department, which includes the Fish & Wildlife Service, acknowledged the low number of Endangered Species listings but said this was due to a backlog of litigation against the agency, some of it launched by environmental advocacy groups including the Center for Biological Diversity.

“We have literally hundreds of species that are being considered at any particular moment,” Vickery said by telephone. “The Fish & Wildlife Service does biological triage, they deal with the most critical species first.”

The wildlife protection program has been a long-running target of environmentalists, Vickery said, and provided a report from 2000 that accused the Clinton administration of attacking endangered species.

More recently, the program came under scrutiny when an internal investigation found agency scientists complaining that a political appointee was bullying them into tailoring their findings about endangered species to fit a particular policy, generally one that opposed adding new wildlife to the protection program.

The official, Julie MacDonald, resigned in April, and Vickery declined to comment on the case.

Bryan Arroyo, the acting assistant director for endangered species at the agency, acknowledged a years-long backlog of so-called candidate species that are waiting to be considered for endangered species protection.

“Some of these species we haven’t had a chance to truly evaluate to see whether they ought to be listed or not,” Arroyo said by telephone. “There is a paucity of data.”

For example, the extinction of the Haha has not been confirmed by the agency, even though none have been observed since 2001, Arroyo said. As for the Lake Sammamish Kokonee, the agency is investigating the status of the fish, he said.

Snape said a Fish & Wildlife Service document last year said the Haha appeared extinct, while an internal document indicated the Kokonee was extinct.

CARACAS: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is deepening efforts to assert greater control over the economy by dictating changes to the operations of a large Argentine-controlled steel maker and threatening to nationalize banks controlled by financial institutions from the United States and Spain.

Markets here have reacted with distress to his latest moves. The main index of the Caracas stock exchange fell 2.7 percent Friday, while Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, also weakened by about 3 percent, to 3,950 to the U.S. dollar in unregulated trading, as rich Venezuelans rushed to take money out of the country. But th question is how much money has he saved? how sustainable is his program? How many lives are saved? How much does the environment benefits?

To reconfigure Venezuela’s economy to strengthen worker-led cooperatives and state enterprises.

To build regional financing alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to be financed largely by his government.

Chávez dressed down the foreign owners of the steel maker Siderurgica del Orinoco over the weekend, asking them to halt exports and focus on meeting domestic demand. The company, also known as Sidor, is controlled by Techint Group of Argentina. Chávez said he had summoned Paolo Rocca, the company’s chairman, to Caracas for talks.

“I’ll grab your company,” Chávez said in a taunt to Rocca on Saturday at an event celebrating the creation of a single Socialist party among his followers.

“Give it to me, and I’ll pay you what it’s worth,” the president said. “I won’t rob you.”

Chávez threatened Thursday to nationalize Sidor, and to take over the banking system unless banks agreed to offer low-cost financing to domestic industry. He made similar threats before nationalizing telephone and electricity companies.

Erratic policy shifts have led foreign direct investment to plunge in Venezuela, the only country in Latin America besides tiny Suriname to register an outflow of those investments last year, of $543 million.

Comparable economies in the region enjoyed high levels of direct foreign investment, with Argentina receiving $4.8 billion and Colombia $6.3 billion, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cushioned by high oil prices and $25 billion in reserves, Venezuela is still far from a painful crash of the type that plagued it in the wake of past oil booms, according to economists.

But problems like a widening budget deficit are growing more acute as growth slows from the torrid 10.3 percent of last year.

“There is fear that all of Chávez’s different spending projects will lead to a depletion of funds,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a former chief economist at Venezuela’s national assembly who teaches at Wesleyan University. “Chávez’s threat to the banks may reflect increasing resistance in the sector to rolling over internal debt.”

Both Chávez and Venezuelan banks face a dilemma as a surge in public spending widens the budget deficit this year to an estimated 4.9 percent of gross domestic product from 1.8 percent in 2006. The government can cover that shortfall by getting banks to buy its debt or by printing more money, a choice that could cause inflation to jump.

The government is already trying to reduce inflation, the highest in Latin America at 19.4 percent a year. And officials are grappling with continuing scarcity of foods subject to price controls, like beef, eggs, sugar and milk. Producers say the controls have made it hard to meet demand while labor costs are soaring.

Showing exasperation with these claims, senior officials are growing increasingly adversarial in their treatment of private industry. Elías Jaua, the agriculture minister, said last week that a “destabilization campaign” was to blame for the short supply of some food products.

Beyond such talk is a redistribution of income under Chávez, making imports like cellphones and refrigerators and services like modest plastic-surgery procedures more widely available. Monthly stipends to the poor or indirect subsidies to buy food and consumer goods, channeled through an array of social-welfare programs, have also lifted corporate income.

Profits for the banking sector climbed 33 percent in 2006, led by a jump of more than 100 percent in credit card loans and a 143 percent increase in automobile credit, according to Softline Consulting, a financial analysis firm in Caracas.

Blessed with such profits, few bankers are explicitly critical of Chávez. Some, in fact, express admiration.

“President Chávez is saying it’s the job of all of us for Venezuela to press ahead,” Francisco Aristeguieta, president of Citibank Venezuela and director of the Venezuelan Banking Association, told the government’s official news agency.

Still, economists fear that a bill is coming due for the spending spree and the nationalizations. They point to the costs of reimbursing foreign owners for seized assets and meeting their debt obligations, which could be more than $10 billion for oil projects the government is taking over from U.S. and European companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/americas/06poison.html
Many of them are children, poisoned at the hands of their unsuspecting parents.

The syrupy poison, diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part of the modern world, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze.

It is also a killer. And the deaths, if not intentional, are often no accident.

Over the years, the poison has been loaded into all varieties of medicine — cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs — a result of counterfeiters who profit by substituting the sweet-tasting solvent for a safe, more expensive syrup, usually glycerin, commonly used in drugs, food, toothpaste and other products.

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades. Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.

Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine — with devastating results. Families have reported 365 deaths from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far. With the onset of the rainy season, investigators are racing to exhume as many potential victims as possible before bodies decompose even more.

Panama’s death toll leads directly to Chinese companies that made and exported the poison as 99.5 percent pure glycerin.

Forty-six barrels of the toxic syrup arrived via a poison pipeline stretching halfway around the world. Through shipping records and interviews with government officials, The New York Times traced this pipeline from the Panamanian port of Colón, back through trading companies in Barcelona, Spain, and Beijing, to its beginning near the Yangtze Delta in a place local people call “chemical country.”

The counterfeit glycerin passed through three trading companies on three continents, yet not one of them tested the syrup to confirm what was on the label. Along the way, a certificate falsely attesting to the purity of the shipment was repeatedly altered, eliminating the name of the manufacturer and previous owner. As a result, traders bought the syrup without knowing where it came from, or who made it. With this information, the traders might have discovered — as The Times did — that the manufacturer was not certified to make pharmaceutical ingredients.

An examination of the two poisoning cases last year — in Panama and earlier in China — shows how China’s safety regulations have lagged behind its growing role as low-cost supplier to the world. It also demonstrates how a poorly policed chain of traders in country after country allows counterfeit medicine to contaminate the global market.

Last week, the United States Food and Drug Administration warned drug makers and suppliers in the United States “to be especially vigilant” in watching for diethylene glycol. The warning did not specifically mention China, and it said there was “no reason to believe” that glycerin in this country was tainted. Even so, the agency asked that all glycerin shipments be tested for diethylene glycol, and said it was “exploring how supplies of glycerin become contaminated.”

China is already being accused by United States authorities of exporting wheat gluten containing an industrial chemical, melamine, that ended up in pet food and livestock feed. The F.D.A. recently banned imports of Chinese-made wheat gluten after it was linked to pet deaths in the United States.

Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India.

In Bangladesh, investigators found poison in seven brands of fever medication in 1992, but only after countless children died. A Massachusetts laboratory detected the contamination after Dr. Michael L. Bennish, a pediatrician who works in developing countries, smuggled samples of the tainted syrup out of the country in a suitcase. Dr. Bennish, who investigated the Bangladesh epidemic and helped write a 1995 article about it for BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, said that given the amount of medication distributed, deaths “must be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”

Predictions:

1. Iraq war funding has been considerably reduced
2. EPA gains lots of importance after discovering yet more poison in food/medicines
3. Cars can reach 100MPG, Honda sold 1,000 hydrogen autos
4. Warm house effects and the warming of the planet, are responsible for 10% specie extinction, including domestics bees
5. Preventive medicine and Conteporary Alternative Medicine dominates healthy habits
6. Medicine is socialized, eliminating all health insurances
7. Education funding is increased by 10%