RUTHFULLY YOURS

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Liver cancer treatment gets on the fast track. The FDA has granted fast track designation to the CF102 treatment from Israel’s Can-Fite BioPharma for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. A CF102 trial is about to start on 78 patients with Child-Pugh Class B cirrhosis, who failed the only FDA approved treatment on the market – Nexavar.
http://biotuesdays.com/2015/09/17/can-fite-gets-fda-fast-track-for-liver-cancer-drug/

A smarter bed. Israel’s EarlySense is launching its “smart bed” solution myEarlySense. The “under the mattress” sensors record data on how you are sleeping, such as tossing, turning, waking, sleeping, breathing and heart rates. It can also turn on heaters and make the coffee.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/smart-bed-lets-you-sleep-better-and-makes-coffee-too/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZPRv6BAeJs

South Africa buys Israeli virus testing system. Israel’s Ilex Medical has won a tender issued by the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) for its Panther blood testing systems to detect and identify viruses.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-ilex-medical-wins-huge-south-african-tender-1001068697

IBM and Teva team up to find chronic treatments. IBM Israel has granted Israel’s Teva access to its Watson supercomputing Health Cloud program. Teva plans to use the global technology platform to design treatments for millions of people who suffer from chronic conditions like asthma, migraine, and pain.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-ibm-partnership-to-seek-big-data-health-solutions-1001068493

Opening up a new strategy for HIV. Technion scientists have discovered that when the HIV virus encounters resistance, it looks for detours. It then mutates and replicates itself, like a Trojan horse, exploiting redundancy in the DNA of host cells. http://www.technion.ac.il/en/2015/08/new-strategy-for-hiv/

Detecting cancer using nanopores. Further to a previous (15 Mar 2015) newsletter, scientists from Israel’s Technion are the only team working for European research consortium BeyondSeq on early diagnosis of cancer. They are using tiny silicon “nanopore” scanners to detect molecular DNA biomarkers in cancer cells.
http://pard.technion.ac.il/2015/09/09/researchers-use-nanopore-scanners-to-find-early-signs-of-cancer/
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/193312_en.html

Genetic test for BRONJ. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Micromedic Technologies, has identified several new genetic markers for predicting BRONJ (necrosis of the jawbone). BRONJ is a side effect of intravenous treatments in cancer and osteoporosis patients.
http://www.bio-light.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BRONJ-PR-clean-updated.pdf
http://biotuesdays.com/2015/08/31/biolight-unit-identifies-bronj-genetic-markers/

Microneedles deliver vital vaccines. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s NanoPass Technologies is supplying its MicronJet600 microneedle system to US-based Immune Design who will use the system to deliver vaccines to cancer immunotherapy patients.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nanopass-technologies-to-supply-micronjet600-device-to-immune-design-for-use-in-zvex-based-oncology-immunotherapy-products-525620521.html

Israel ranks 6th in Healthy Life Expectancy. (TY Atid-EDI) The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks Israel 6th in the world, with the average Israeli living without a terminal illness to age 71.5. Israeli men have the world’s fourth longest total life expectancy of 80.2 years. For women, Israel is ranked tenth with a total life expectancy of 84 years. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696329,00.html

IBM Haifa’s diagnostic apps. More about the app developed by IBM Haifa to diagnose ADHD sufferers (see Sep 6 2015 newsletter). It won top prize at the Brain Inspired Technology for Education (BITE) Hackathon at Israel’s Technion Institute. Also describes IBM Haifa’s dementia early-detection app (Aug 9 2015 newsletter).
http://www.israel21c.org/diagnostic-apps-for-adhd-dementia/

SENATORS UP FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2016

DEMOCRATS

Michael Bennet (Colorado)
Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut)
Barbara Boxer (California) retiring in 2016
Patrick Leahy (Vermont)
Barbara Mikulski (Maryland) retiring in 2016
Patty Murray (Washington)
Harry Reid (Nevada) retiring in 2016
Brian Schatz (Hawaii)
Charles Schumer (New York)…..Voted against the Iran Nuke Deal, but against an amendment that would have required Iran to recognize Israel and release Americans held in Iran before getting sanctions relief from the United States.
Ron Wyden (Oregon)

We’re Turning Japanese Now

It’s an article of American faith that Japan is an incredibly strange place. The world has been mapped and GPS’ed to death ruining much of the thrill of discovery. There probably aren’t any hidden cities with remnants of lost civilizations lurking in the deserts of Africa or the jungles of South America. That just leaves the land of the rising sun as the X on the map, the strange place that suggests that the world that we know all too well, might still be odder than we can imagine.

But Japan isn’t really all that strange. We are.

Depressed post-industrial economy, low birth rate, social disintegration and a society obsessed with pop culture and useless tech toys? A country that has embraced pacifism to the extent that it can hardly defend its own borders? A nation where materialism has strangled spirituality leaving no sense of purpose?

We are Japan. And so is Europe. Or rather Japan is the place we all reach eventually.

Japan is strange because it aggressively hurled itself into a postmodern void without knowing what was on the other side. It did this with the same dedication that its soldiers once marched into machine gun fire.

Japan had been in a race with the West, as it had been ever since Commodore Perry showed up with a fleet to open up a closed nation. It wasn’t unique in that regard. A lot of countries tried to do the same thing. Most found that they couldn’t keep up with either our technology or our decline. Japan shot past us in both areas. It beat us technologically. And then it outpaced our decline.

Dear Reader (including Rand Paul, who has no place in this “news”letter because he’s so low in the polls),

I’m writing this sentence (who can say where I’ll be in an hour) at the Brooklyn Diner off Times Square (the pastrami frittata is fantastic!). I’m about a block away from the set of Good Morning America, where hundreds of decent, normal Americans are willingly turning themselves into meat props for a three-hour spectacle, two hours and forty-five minutes of which is dedicated to something someone named Kanyé said about someone else; the troubling rise in Pilates injuries; J-Lo’s ass; and breaking news of a puppy making friends with a stuffed toy — from someone’s Facebook page somewhere out in America. I don’t actually know that’s what’s on today’s show, but I’m pretty confident it’s not that far off either.

I don’t mean to single out Good Morning America — The Today Show is equally vapid. It’s just that Good Morning America is fresh in my mind because I happened to watch an hour or so of it earlier this week while waiting for my car at the shop. I would have blown my brains out, but the show depleted my IQ so rapidly I couldn’t manage even the most rudimentary tasks. I got so dumb, Debbie Wasserman Schultz could have beaten me at checkers. But I did learn how Victoria Beckham struggles to have it all as a working mom. I don’t know how she does it. She’s a trooper.

And then there was the long segment on Suzy Favor Hamilton, the courageous former Olympic runner who married her college sweetheart, won a bunch of medals, started a family and a business, and then, “after one night with a Vegas call girl,” decided to become a hooker herself.

Defying all common sense, President Obama remains desperate to rush a $150 billion bailout to al-Qaeda’s allies. Specifically, Obama’s nuclear “deal” would unfreeze Iranian assets and deliver them to the Ayatollah Khamenei and Tehran’s terror regime. Obama is, at best, holistically oblivious or metaphysically negligent about financing Islamo-butchers who cooperate closely with al-Qaeda.

Just as FDR and Stalin collaborated to defeat Hitler, al-Qaeda’s radical Sunnis and Iran’s militant Shiites have buried the scimitar and now conspire against their common enemy: America. As the 9/11 Commission concluded, “There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.”

According to former Defense Intelligence Agency chief General Michael Flynn, the reams of records captured during the Navy SEALs’ May 2011 raid that liquidated Osama bin Laden include “letters about Iran’s role, influence and acknowledgment of enabling al Qaeda operatives to pass through Iran as long as al Qaeda did its dirty work against the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

My Hoover Institution colleague Kori Schake wrote about last Wednesday’s GOP debate that, when it comes to foreign policy, the contenders still have a lot to learn. The same is true about vaccines and vaccination policy.

Donald Trump claimed that pediatric vaccines have caused an alarming increase in autism, and that the pediatric vaccination schedule should be attenuated — that is, spread out with smaller doses over a longer time period. Trump is wrong on both counts, which is not surprising for someone who has no expertise in this area and tends to shoot from the hip on all manner of subjects; but the unwillingness (or inability) of the two physicians among the candidates — ophthalmologist Rand Paul and pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson — to set the record straight was appalling.

This contretemps follows similar recent missteps about vaccination by Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, and Rand Paul (again), all of whom have suggested that parents should have the right to withhold vaccines from their kids. That makes sense only if you think parents should be permitted to let toddlers play with double-edged razor blades and cigarette lighters.

The most important facts relevant to the debate’s misapprehensions are these:

• There is no evidence that vaccination is in any way related to autism, more accurately called “autism spectrum disorder,” or ASD. Although it has been known that ASD runs in families, the underlying genetic determinants have been elusive, but a 2010 study published in the journal Nature offers some new insights. Drawing on data from 60 research institutions in twelve countries, the researchers analyzed the genes of 996 children with ASD and 1,287 children without the condition. They found that each affected person carried his or her own individual assortment of mutations. This contrasts with the situation in sickle-cell anemia, for example, where the disease is caused by a unique mutation — a change in one specific nucleotide of DNA, which in turn causes a single amino-acid change in a gene that codes for the protein of hemoglobin. (Genes are made up of DNA, which is a template that, after an intermediate step, directs the ordering of building blocks — amino acids — into proteins.)

‘Why on earth would Republicans do that?” That is a question I’ve been asked at least a dozen times since illustrating that the GOP has played a cynical game in connection with President Obama’s Iran deal.

“Follow the money” is a common answer to questions about political motivation. It may not explain everything in this case, but it is certainly relevant.

This spring, Republican leadership colluded with the White House and congressional Democrats to enact a law — the Corker-Cardin Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act — that guaranteed Obama would be authorized to lift sanctions against Iran (the main objective of the terrorist regime in Tehran). The rigged law authorized Obama to lift sanctions as long as Republicans could not pass a resolution of disapproval. As Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, and other GOP leaders well knew, there was no way they would ever be able to enact a disapproval resolution over Obama’s veto. But the process choreographed by Corker-Cardin meant they would be able to complain about the deal and vote to disapprove it — thereby creating the impression that they were staunchly against the lifting of sanctions that they had already authorized.

Why on earth would Republicans do that? Well, their incentive to obscure the earlier approval vote with the theater of a futile disapproval process is clear: The Iran deal is intensely unpopular among the GOP’s base supporters, just as it is unpopular across the country. Incumbents who hope to be reelected want to be perceived as staunch opponents of the things their constituents abhor. But why isn’t this perception the reality — why wouldn’t GOP congressional leaders actually be staunch opponents? Why wouldn’t they zealously use their every power to stop the deal?

There is a complaint against Obama foreign policy that goes “all our allies have been alienated, and are scared by the lack of American leadership and our indifference to their security, and all Obama does is cozy up to our enemies.” Jeb Bush has asked audiences, “Name a country where we have a better relationship now than we did seven years ago,” and audiences answer back “Iran!”

In pursing this policy of cooperating with our enemies rather than our friends, Obama is now going to include the horrific issue of Syria. A central pillar of American foreign policy for over 50 years has been to keep the Russians out of the Middle East. Now we appear to be welcoming their return as a military power there. The Obama reaction has been first to have Secretary of State John Kerry telephone Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to express concern, then to have Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter call his own Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, and next to have military-to-military talks with Russia.

This is amazing. It undermines a half-century of policy and broadcasts weakness and irresolution to both enemies (Iran, China) and friends (Israel, Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf states). But it certainly isn’t surprising: Weakness and irresolution have in fact been the heart of U.S. policy in Syria in the Obama years. When the (mostly Sunni) people of Syria rose up peacefully against the Alawite, Iran-and-Hezbollah backed Assad regime in 2011 and Assad began to kill his own population, Obama did nothing. As the deaths mounted and his own advisers — Clinton, Panetta, Petraeus, Dempsey — advised action to build a non-jihadi rebel force, he did nothing. When Assad did not react to Obama’s chemical-weapons red line, Obama backed down, not Assad. And so the deaths and the refugees have mounted into a humanitarian catastrophe that was avoidable.

He was told that his daughter refused to change her religion, so she was buried from the neck down, and then stoned to death. — Nigeria.

Nearly 300 Christian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last year were being beaten, forced to convert to Islam, and indoctrinated into believing that their mission is to “slit the throats of Christians and to carry out suicide attacks.” — Nigeria.

Christians kidnapped and held for ransom continue to be slaughtered even after their ransom is paid. — Pakistan.

“In most instances the victims are minors, young adolescent girls. They suffer sexual violence, forced prostitution, domestic abuse and even sold to human traffickers.” — Sardar Mushtaq Gill, human rights lawyer, Pakistan.

“If the West wants to do something about the present crisis, the most effective thing would be to support local governments, which need sufficient armies and forces to maintain security and defend respective populations against attacks.” — Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of Antioch.

Not only is the Islamic State (IS) persecuting Christians but so are the U.S.-supported “rebel” forces in Syria, which the Obama administration assures are “moderate.” According to a recent National Public Radio (NPR) report, “With backing from U.S. allies, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, this [U.S. supported] rebel coalition fights both the Syrian regime and the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. But the coalition has extremists in its own ranks who have mistreated Christians and forced them out of their homes”—just as IS has done.

Fiorina referenced this support during the Sep. 16th GOP debate….you can read the ad at https://carlyforamerica.com/blog/icymi-former-hp-board-member-tom-perkins-the-truth-about-carly/…rsk

A “super PAC” supporting Carly Fiorina is defending her record as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in a full-page ad in The New York Times that promotes her strength as a leader of the technology company.Tom Perkins, the founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a member of the board that ultimately ousted Ms. Fiorina in 2005, described the Republican presidential candidate as a visionary executive who helped to revive the company during hard times.

“Not only did she save the company from the dire straits it was in, she laid the foundation for HP’s future growth,” Mr. Perkins wrote, pointing to an increase in revenues and patents during her time there.