Inspirational and good news.
A safer and relatively inexpensive drug has been used to reduce breast cancer in women, a drug that was originally meant to treat osteoporosis. The drug is raloxifene and according to the study reduced breast cancer in women by 50 percent!
“That’s a success rate as good as the rate for the cancer drug tamoxifen.
But patients taking raloxifene had fewer of the serious illnesses linked to tamoxifen, including cancer of the uterus and blood clots.”
The Washington Post is reporting on a group of 12 volunteers has just started on the first human trial of an HIV vaccine. The trial is being conducted at four American universities.
The vaccine is administered in stages over the course of about 2 months. The recipient is exposed to fragments of HIV DNA, followed by a modified poxvirus which is meant to boost the immune system.
In this first stage trial, researchers will be checking to see if the vaccine is safe to be administered at low doses. If the trial is successful, it will move onto a larger trial, and eventually the researchers will test to see if the vaccine actually prevents AIDS from developing.
In animal trials involving rhesus macaques, the vaccine protected 22 of 23 animals.
A rocket scientists has found a way to use algae in smokestacks to clean the smoke, and what’s more the byproduct of the algae is biodiesel! This means that corporate profit lovers can clean the air and make money off of it.
The algae consumes 60% of CO2 emissions from the test stacks and the smoke contained 86% less nitrous oxide!
The BBC is reporting that a new skin patch can help people with Parkinson’s better manage their symptoms.
“For clinicians and people with Parkinson’s, this is a new and simple way of delivering a dopamine agonist.
“It has the potential to overcome many of the problems associated with oral administration and may well prove to be one of the most effective methods of delivering a steady and continuous dose.”
A new vaccine has been developed which is proven to destroy the main virus which causes cervical cancer. The vaccine will likely be given to boys and girls at puberty, and is shown to be 100% effective in killing the four papillomavirus types responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers! The disease kills roughly around 500,000 women a year worldwide. Within the next two generations it is likely to be as rare as smallpox.