Category Archives: Gene therapy

Editor's Note: Carl Zimmer, author of this month's article, "100 Trillion Connections," has just brought out a much-acclaimed e-book, Brain Cuttings: 15 Journeys Through the Mind (Scott & Nix), that compiles a series of his writings on neuroscience. In this chapter, adapted from an article that was first published in Playboy , Zimmer takes the reader on a tour of the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City. His ability to contrast the fantastical predictions of speakers at the conference with the sometimes more skeptical assessments from other scientists makes his account a fascinating read.  

Let's say you transfer your mind into a computer--not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your brain and then wirelessly outsourcing your faculties. Someone reroutes your vision through cameras. Someone stores your memories on a net of microprocessors. Step by step your metamorphosis continues until at last the transfer is complete. As engineers get to work boosting the performance of your electronic mind so you can now think as a god, a nurse heaves your fleshy brain into a bag of medical waste. As you--for now let's just call it "you"--start a new chapter of existence exclusively within a machine, an existence that will last as long as there are server farms and hard-disk space and the solar power to run them, are "you" still actually you?

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To celebrate the ends of years, decades and other milestones, science publications often churn out "Whither science?" predictions. Just last week, The New York Times Science Times section celebrated its, um, 32nd birthday with a special issue on "What's next in science". What I found fascinating was the issue's overall tone of caution rather than the traditional boosterish enthusiasm.

Gina Kolata recalled a job interview 25 years ago with U.S. News and World Report, an editor of which asked her, "What will be important medical news next year?" Kolata replied that "next year gene therapy will be shown to work." Gene therapy, of course, has been a big bust. Kolata goes on to say that the best answer to "Whither science?" is to expect the unexpected. (Fortunately for her, Kolata didn't get the job with what a mean friend of mine liked to call "U.S. Snooze and World Distort," the print version of which just died after years of terminal illness.)

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Everyone knows about cancer. According to the World Health Organization eight million people died of one of the many forms of cancer 2007 and this number is expected to grow to more than 12 million by 2030. However, unlike many other significant diseases, cancer is not confined to a continent or socioeconomic cohort. Also unlike other entrants on the WHO’s top 10 there is no vaccine or wonder drug. This insidious disease requires surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy all of which wreak havoc on the patient during and often long after treatment. But recently novel research looking at using certain bacteria as a therapy is gaining traction that may result in new treatment options that are cheap, easy to produce, noninvasive and if the current research is any indication capable of complete remission in some cases.

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SAN DIEGO-- On day two of TEDMED , running between Oct. 27 and 30, three themes stood out: the difference between children and adults for therapies; the connection between animals, people and disease; and how genetics will shape health care.

Frances Jensen of Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston explained the dramatic differences between developing and adult brains. With faster synapses, teens learn faster than adults, for instance. But as a consequence, they also "get addicted faster, longer and stronger than adults do," she said. Because teens have more synaptic material to affect, they suffer greater brain damage from alcohol than in adults. Differences in developing brain mean should have "no more hand-me-down drugs" for youths, added Jensen.

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The psychologist Rollo May once described depression as “the inability to construct a future”. [More]

Everyone knows about cancer. According to the World Health Organization eight million people died of one of the many forms of cancer 2007 and this number is expected to grow to more than 12 million by 2030. However, unlike many other significant diseases, cancer is not confined to a continent or socioeconomic cohort. Also unlike other entrants on the WHO’s top 10 there is no vaccine or wonder drug. This insidious disease requires surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy all of which wreak havoc on the patient during and often long after treatment. But recently novel research looking at using certain bacteria as a therapy is gaining traction that may result in new treatment options that are cheap, easy to produce, noninvasive and if the current research is any indication capable of complete remission in some cases.

[More]

SAN DIEGO-- On day two of TEDMED , running between Oct. 27 and 30, three themes stood out: the difference between children and adults for therapies; the connection between animals, people and disease; and how genetics will shape health care.

Frances Jensen of Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston explained the dramatic differences between developing and adult brains. With faster synapses, teens learn faster than adults, for instance. But as a consequence, they also "get addicted faster, longer and stronger than adults do," she said. Because teens have more synaptic material to affect, they suffer greater brain damage from alcohol than in adults. Differences in developing brain mean should have "no more hand-me-down drugs" for youths, added Jensen.

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The psychologist Rollo May once described depression as “the inability to construct a future”. [More]

Despite the enormous efforts of clinicians and researchers, our limited insight into psychiatric disease (the worldwide-leading cause of years of life lost to death or disability) hinders the search for cures and contributes to stigmatization. Clearly, we need new answers in psychiatry. But as philosopher of science Karl Popper might have said, before we can find the answers, we need the power to ask new questions. In other words, we need new technology. [More]

Every day as a practicing psychiatrist, I confront my field’s limitations. Despite the noble efforts of clinicians and researchers, our limited insight into the roots of psychiatric disease hinders the search for cures and contributes to the stigmatization of this enormous problem, the leading cause worldwide of years lost to death or disability. Clearly, we need new answers in psychiatry. But as philosopher of science Karl Popper might have said, before we can find the answers, we need the power to ask new questions. In other words, we need new technology.

Developing appropriate techniques is difficult, however, because the mammalian brain is beyond compare in its complexity. It is an intricate system in which tens of billions of intertwined neurons--with multitudinous distinct characteristics and wiring patterns--exchange precisely timed, millisecond-scale electrical signals and a rich diversity of biochemical messengers. Because of that complexity, neuroscientists lack a deep grasp of what the brain is really doing--of how specific activity patterns within specific brain cells ultimately give rise to thoughts, memories, sensations and feelings. By extension, we also do not know how the brain’s physical failures produce distinct psychiatric disorders such as depression or schizophrenia. The ruling paradigm of psychiatric disorders--casting them in terms of chemical imbalances and altered levels of neurotransmitters--does not do justice to the brain’s high-speed electrical neural circuitry. Psychiatric treatments are thus essentially serendipitous: helpful for many but rarely illuminating.

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