Articles with the keyword: 
European clinical trial rules under fire
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 3 days (www.nature.com)
The European Clinical Trials Directive has been in place for five years. Lead scientists are claiming that the law, which was put in place to improve trials and "harmonize" (read: standardize) trial procedures, is costing lives by slowing down vital research and driving the most promising scientists out of the E.U.
The law lays down what its makers seem to have believed to be the best procedures for ethical matters, such as obtaining informed consent and dealing with dangerous drug reactions. 
DSM-IV gets reexamined. Expect a DSM-V in a few years.
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 2 months (www.nytimes.com)
Psychologists are revising the DSM-IV. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been altered a few times since its first edition came out in 1952 (hence the "IV") to reflect better information and changing ideas about what makes a healthy mind. For example, earlier versions of the DSM listed homosexuality as a disease. The DSM-IV does not
In the brain, justice is served from many parts
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 3 months (www.sciencenews.org)
Making decisions about crime and punishment is, it turns out, as complicated as a legal brief. For the first time, scientists have peered into the brains of people who are deciding whether a crime deserves punishment and how severe the penalty should be.
Those decisions involve parts of the brain associated with rational thought, but emotion-processing regions weigh in too, a team of law and neuroscience researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., show in a new study in the Dec. 11 Neuron
Genetic engineering makes pig organs ready for humans at last?
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 3 months (www.newscientist.com)
In the not too distant future, a person in need of a heart transplant could be offered a pig's organ. That's the hope of a group that met in China last week to agree global guidelines for the first clinical trials of "xenotransplants."
There have been some serious problems that scientists have had to overcome. For example, porcine endogenous retroviruses, or PERVs, are one major concern. These are chunks of viral DNA incorporated into the pig genome. There are fears that these viruses could reawaken if they are transported into an unfamiliar body
Many drug trials never see publication
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 3 months (www.sciencenews.org)
Patients asking their doctors if a new drug is right for them would do well to also ask for supporting evidence. Conclusions about drug safety and effectiveness in reports submitted to the FDA are sometimes changed to favor the drug in the medical literature, a new analysis finds. And a quarter of submitted drug trials were never published at all
Computer game "Spore" has Darwin doing stupid creature befriending dance in his grave!
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.sciencemag.org)
The makers of the computer game "Spore" promise a real evolutionary experience: Start out the game as a microbe just trying to survive and travel all the way through the history of evolution into a species capable of a modern, civilized society! Depending on the choices the player makes early on in the game, the later species can have a seemingly limitless range of fascinating, monstrous forms
NIH Suspends Grant to Emory University
jerry submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has suspended a $9 million grant for a depression study led by psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff at Emory University in Atlanta. The punishment, imposed in August but only made public today, is apparently the most severe reaction by NIH so far to a Senate investigation of NIH-funded researchers who may have failed to report all of their income from drug companies.
Recipients of NIH grants are required to report income from industry consulting activities
Testicles could provide "ethical" stem cells
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.newscientist.com)
This article provides more information about last week's announcement that researchers have found a form of adult stem cells that appear to be as versatile as embryonic cells ...in men's testicles.
A team out of the University of Tubingen in Germany managed to convert spermatagonial cells into skin, gut structures, cartilage, bone, muscle, and neurons, quite an accomplishment. Some of their colleagues are enthusiastic. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts (U.S
Study shows cost savings behind bariatric surgery
jerry submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (money.cnn.com)
Insurance companies do usually cover the costs of bariatric surgery, they would start now: A new study shows that, among morbidly obese patients, having a stomach stapling or an intestinal modification causes them to shed insurance claims as well as pounds.
The study looked at the insurance claims of 7200 morbidly obese patients, half of whom had had the surgery and half of whom had not
When the past catches up with the present
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)
Oversight committees face tough decisions after an analysis questions whether certain cell lines meet standards of informed consent. If not, then the number of stem cell lines that U.S. scientists may study with federal funding may drop from twenty-one to sixteen.
Induced stem cell lines may soon be available from Harvard
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
A few weeks ago, we talked about how researchers had been able to take a cell from an ALS patient and develop a working, research-quality pluripotent cell line. Well the next step has been taken.
I've been saying that induced pluripotent stem cells might become the preferred research model (over embryonic stem cells), but only if they became easier to obtain than embryonic stem cells. It looks as though that might happen soon. The Harvard Stem Cell Institute is dedicating an iPS core lab
Consent issues restrict stem-cell use and research
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)
Some researchers in Stanford University are told that around one-quarter of the human embryonic stem-cell lines eligible for U.S. government funding are now off-limits because of ethical concerns. The university is concerned that some of the women who donated the embyros that were used to generate the line might not have been fully informed of how they would be used.
The consent forms that the women signed were retrieved and it was found that none of them met Standford's guidelines exactly and some of them were way off the mark
Drugmakers Fund Journalism Group
kavin submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (blogs.wsj.com)
Doctors and medical associations have taken plenty of lumps for relying on drug companies to sponsor continuing medical education courses. Critics say the sessions are often biased in favor of a particular medicine or drugs over alternative treatments for disease.
Now add journalists to the groups that are getting professional education subsidized by Big Pharma.
At the Unity convention in Chicago-–a gathering of thousands of minority journalists-–the diabetes drug maker Novo Nordisk sponsored a lunch yesterday called, “The Diabetes Explosion: A Call to Action for Journalists of Color
Stem cell meeting 2008: complications for induced pluripotent stem cells
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)
This year's meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, included a jam-packed session on the standards and methodologies of creating induced pluripotent stem cells. But although excitement around advances in reprogramming somatic cells shows no signs of abating, new ideas regarding the field are surfacing.
One announcement in particular may have consequences for induced pluripotent stem cells: It seems that ever reprogrammed cells can retain some echoes of their differentiated states, which researchers have nicknamed "cellular memory
Nature takes a look at in-vitro fertilization's past, present and future
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)
This article is a comprehensive look at the past and future of artificial babymaking. It covers IVF, the possible use of iPS to make gametes. It covers ethics, public relations, and economics...
The part that I like best? IVF has "gone as far as it can" with regards to what it can do, so the next focus is on making it cheaper. The article discusses the woman in a developing country who, on top of her own wishes for a family, faces discrimination for her infertility
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