RUTHFULLY YOURS

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Stopping the spread of breast cancer. In laboratory tests, researchers at Tel Aviv University and MIT have used gene therapy to prevent metastasis – the spread of breast cancer to other parts of the body. 80% of women with metastatic cancer die from the disease within five years of being diagnosed.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Are-Israeli-researchers-a-step-closer-to-halting-the-spread-of-breast-cancer-468144

A cure for motion sickness. MotionCure from Israel’s Sidis Labs can provide relief from motion sickness within minutes. MotionCure’s combination of a neck collar and a travel pillow transmits customized pulses to the median nerve at the back of neck. These counter negative signals from the brain that upset the stomach.
http://www.israel21c.org/a-device-that-pulses-away-motion-sickness/ http://www.sidislabs.com/motioncure

Treatment for Sickle Cell Disease. (TY Atid-EDI) The first patient with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) has received a transplant of CordIn from Israeli biotech Gamida Cell. CordIn is an alternative for patients awaiting a suitable match for bone marrow transplants. Trials of CordIn are planned for patients with aplastic anemia.
http://www.gamida-cell.com/press_item.asp?ID=67&t=Gamida-Cell-Announces-First-Patient-with-Sickle-Cell-Disease-Transplanted-in-Phase-1/2-Study-of-CordIn%E2%84%A2-as-the-Sole-Graft-Source-

Patent for ocular neuro-protectant treatment. Quark is a US company with its R&D in Israel. The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Quark a key patent for its ocular neuro-protectant QPI-1007, covering the treatment of patients suffering from non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).
http://quarkpharma.com/?p=12340

Boost for colon X-ray capsule. Israel’s Check-cap, developer of the world’s first ingestible colon X-ray capsule, has announced three key news items. It is partnering with GE Healthcare to develop high-volume manufacturing. It also received $1.2 million from the Israeli government and $5.9 million from private sources.
http://ir.check-cap.com/2016-08-04-Check-Cap-Announces-Agreement-with-GE-Healthcare-for-X-Ray-Capsule-Manufacturing-Collaboration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDt36TW9d8Q
http://ir.check-cap.com/2016-08-02-Check-Cap-Awarded-1-25-Million-Grant-for-2016-From-Israels-Office-of-the-Chief-Scientist http://ir.check-cap.com/2016-08-08-Check-Cap-Ltd-Announces-5-9-Million-Financing

More treatments from Teva. Israel’s Teva has launched in the US the generic equivalent to Gleevec (imatinib mesylate) for the treatment of leukemia and other cancer-related diseases. Also, Europe has approved Teva’s CINQAERO (reslizumab) – the first intravenous anti-IL-5 biologic therapy for severe eosinophilic asthma.
http://www.tevapharm.com/news/teva_announces_launch_of_generic_gleevec_tablets_in_the_united_states_08_16.aspx
http://www.tevapharm.com/news/european_commission_grants_marketing_authorization_for_teva_s_cinqaero_reslizumab_08_16.aspx

Europe funds Israeli blood test for viruses and bacteria. The UN has prioritized fighting antibiotic resistance. Meanwhile, the European Commission has granted 2.3 million Euros to Israeli biotech MeMed to help develop its fast blood test that distinguishes between bacterial and viral infections – and thus significantly reduces the unnecessary use of antibiotics. (See Aug 2015 newsletter)
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israeli-product-that-pinpoints-viruses-bacteria-gets-European-grant-467771 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31941538

Device to seal burst arteries. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s InSeal Medical has received CE Mark approval for its InClosure VCD (Vascular Closure Device), designed to close large bore arterial punctures. These could be emergencies such as abdominal aortic aneurysms or in procedures such as heart valve replacements.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/inseal-medical-ltd-announces-ce-mark-approval-for-the-inclosure-large-bore-vascular-closure-device-589461411.html

Corneal edema treatment approved for the US. (TY Atid-EDI) The US FDA has approved the Hyper-CL contact lens for the treatment of corneal edema developed by Israel’s EyeYon Medical. The product is already approved for marketing in Europe. About two million people develop corneal edema annually.
http://www.eye-yon.com/press-eyeyon-medical-announces-receiving-fda-510-k-clearance/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rknqew9dhxk (See also previous newsletters)

Using Virtual Reality to prevents falls. Tel Aviv University researchers have proved that exercise using Virtual Reality (VR) systems can halve the number of incidents of falls in the elderly. Falls in adults aged 65 and over account for about 2% of all healthcare expenditures in high-income countries,
http://www.timesofisrael.com/virtual-reality-can-help-prevent-falls-in-elderly-israeli-team-finds/
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31325-3/abstract

Pain relief machines for women in labor. Yad Sarah, the voluntary organization that lends out medical equipment and offers many other services to the ill, lonely and elderly, has bought hundreds of TENS machines. These provide pain relief for women in labor and will be lent to expectant mothers from Yad Sarah branches.
http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Health-Scan-TENS-for-free-467997

The Memorandum of Understanding that President Barack Obama concluded last week with Israel regarding US military aid to Israel for the next decade is classic Obama.

Since he entered office nearly eight years ago, Obama’s foreign policy has always sought to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, his policies are geared toward fundamentally transforming the US’s global posture. On the other, they work to weaken if not entirely neutralize his congressional opponents at home.

The second goal is no mean task. After all, the US Constitution empowers Congress with the foreign policy powers aimed at checking and balancing the president’s.

For instance, to ensure that no president could adopt foreign policies that harm US national interests or undercut the will of the people, the Constitution required that all treaties be approved by two-thirds of the Senate before they can take effect.

Were it not for Obama’s double tracked foreign policy, that constitutional provision should have blocked Obama’s radical and dangerous nuclear deal with Iran. Understanding that he lacked not merely the support of two-thirds of the Senate but of even a bare majority of senators for his deal, Obama decided to sideline the Senate.

To this end, Obama speciously claimed that the deal was not significant enough to be considered a treaty. The Iran deal of course is a more radical course change than the US’s approval of the UN Charter and the NATO Treaty. The nuclear deal radically changes not only the US’s policy toward Iran and toward every nation, friend and foe, in the Middle East. As former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz argued during the nuclear negotiations, it upends 70 years of US nuclear policy, undermining the foundations of the US’s nonproliferation policies.

Precisely because he has a colder view of international affairs than Obama, Netanyahu’s leadership has made Israel stronger than ever.

Peter Baker notices something important in his dispatch this morning: at this year’s UNGA, the Israel/Palestine issue is no longer the center of attention. From The New York Times:

They took the stage, one after the other, two aging actors in a long-running drama that has begun to lose its audience. As the Israeli and Palestinian leaders recited their lines in the grand hall of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, many in the orchestra seats recognized the script.

“Heinous crimes,” charged Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. “Historic catastrophe.”

“Fanaticism,” countered Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. “Inhumanity.”

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu have been at this for so long that between them they have addressed the world body 19 times, every year cajoling, lecturing, warning and guilt-tripping the international community into seeing their side of the bloody struggle between their two peoples. Their speeches are filled with grievance and bristling with resentment, as they summon the ghosts of history from hundreds and even thousands of years ago to make their case.

While each year finds some new twist, often nuanced, sometimes incendiary, the argument has been running long enough that the world has begun to move on. Where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once dominated the annual meeting of the United Nations, this year it has become a side show as Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas compete for attention against seemingly more urgent crises like the civil war in Syria and the threat from the Islamic State.

Baker (and presumably many of his readers) don’t go on to the next, obvious question: What does this tell us about the relative success or failure of the leaders involved? The piece presents both Netanyahu and Abbas as irrelevant. They used to command the world stage, but now nobody is interested in their interminable quarrel.
What the piece doesn’t say is that this situation is exactly what Israel wants, and is a terrible defeat for the Palestinians. Abbas is the one whose strategy depends on keeping the Palestinian issue front and center in world politics; Bibi wants the issue to fade quietly away. What we saw at the UN this week is that however much Abbas and the Palestinians’ many sympathizers might protest, events are moving in Bibi’s direction.There is perhaps only one thing harder for the American mind to process than the fact that President Obama has been a terrible foreign policy president, and that is that Bibi Netanyahu is an extraordinarily successful Israeli Prime Minister. In Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, Israel’s diplomacy is moving from strength to strength. Virtually every Arab and Middle Eastern leader thinks that Bibi is smarter and stronger than President Obama, and as American prestige across the Middle East has waned under Obama, Israel’s prestige — even among people who hate it — has grown. Bibi’s reset with Russia, unlike Obama’s, actually worked. His pivot to Asia has been more successful than Obama’s. He has had far more success building bridges to Sunni Muslims than President Obama, and both Russia and Iran take Bibi and his red lines much more seriously than they take Obama’s expostulations and pious hopes.The reason that Bibi has been more successful than Obama is that Bibi understands how the world works better than Obama does. Bibi believes that in the harsh world of international politics, power wisely used matters more than good intentions eloquently phrased. Obama sought to build bridges to Sunni Muslims by making eloquent speeches in Cairo and Istanbul while ignoring the power political realities that Sunni states cared most about — like the rise of Iran and the Sunni cause in Syria. Bibi read the Sunnis more clearly than Obama did; the value of Israeli power to a Sunni world worried about Iran has led to something close to a revolution in Israel’s regional position. Again, Obama thought that reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood (including its Palestinian affiliate, Hamas) would help American diplomacy and Middle Eastern democracy.

‘The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” said De Gaulle, or his predecessor Georges Clemenceau, or New York publisher Elbert Hubbard, or one of several other less famous people with a good turn of phrase, according to the scrupulously careful online Quote Investigator. Be that as it may, it’s looking increasingly likely that the (political) graveyard will soon be welcoming an “indispensable” woman, recently sanctified as such on the cover of The Economist, namely German chancellor Angela Merkel. Her Christian Democrat party fell to third place in Berlin’s local elections last week and may not stay long in the city’s governing coalition. Two thirds of German voters now want her gone. And the names of successors are being freely canvassed.

This decline and the associated rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany party are being blamed on Merkel’s unqualified invitation to Syrian refugees to come to Germany last year. More than 1 million migrants have done so in the intervening twelve months — many of them neither Syrian nor refugees — and they have led to a large rise in violent and “hate” crimes, some committed by them, some by those protesting their arrival. These things are frightening not only the voters, but also nervous members of Merkel’s own parliamentary party devoted to their own careers before hers. For them, the writing is on the Berlin Wall.

Even those drafting her advance obituaries, however, seem to regard her tenure as chancellor as having been an overall success marked by prudence and achievement. She is generally still seen as “a safe pair of hands” — and indeed the best election poster for the CDU last time was a simple picture of a pair of hands. You can make that case — I’ll do so in a moment as a kind of exercise — but only on grounds that would alarm her admirers and threaten her reputation. By any respectable criterion, she is a klutz on a heroic scale.

Consider the following examples:

Merkel’s energy policy was based upon a combination of nuclear power and “renewables” in order to close down power stations dependent on fossil fuels, and help Germany lead the European Union and the world toward a carbon-free future. She had been a strong defender of nuclear energy against SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s attempts to phase it out. Within a few weeks of the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima, though, she panicked, reversed herself, and closed down Germany’s entire nuclear program. Her Energiewende since then has led to a massive increase in power bills for consumers and industry, the movement abroad of German companies heavily reliant on energy, and, more recently, a phasing out of the phasing out of coal-fired power stations. Merkel and the nuclear companies are still haggling over how much the German government will pay for the estimated €23 billion cost of shutting down their plants. Meanwhile, no one believes that Germany and Europe will meet their official goal of reducing carbon emissions 80-95 percent from their 1990 levels by the year 2050.
The refugee crisis is all too plainly a vast mistake, as Merkel herself has admitted. But some of its side-effects have produced other crises almost as severe. Example one: though Merkel welcomed “Syrian refugees” without consulting even her colleagues in the German government, she immediately demanded that other European states within the then-borderless Schengen Zone should accept them as well. That demand was resisted (and still is) by other governments, and there’s been a long-running “existential” (Jean-Claude Juncker’s word, not mine) crisis in the EU ever since. Example two: Merkel reduced the flow of Middle Eastern migrants into the EU through a deal with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyik Erdogan to control the border. But the price was high: the EU’s silence over Erdogan’s arbitrary arrest of thousands of soldiers, police, lawyers, and journalists, and visa-free entry into the EU for 80 million Turks, which could mean another migrant crisis down the road. There’s no guarantee that Erdogan — who’s skilled at selling the same horse twice — won’t ask for additional concessions from a desperate Merkel and EU, either.
Whether Brexit is a good idea for Britain —