Monday, March 1, 2010

2/28 Seeker's shared items in Google Reader

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Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid
February 28, 2010 at 9:36 PM

What are you doing? How about now? Has anything changed since you started reading this blog post? Every story has a who, what, where, when, and why - ...
 

Who Put the "Ass" in "Asperger's"?: Critical Eye: Details
February 28, 2010 at 9:26 PM

How a form of autism inspired not sympathy but the insult of the moment.
 

Demand for Stem Cells Growing Fast, Many Turning to the Allure of Medical Tourism
February 28, 2010 at 7:48 PM

collage for medical tourism

Medical tourism is a billion dollar industry and it's started to expand into marketing stem cell therapies.

You can't keep a good thing down. When the US restricted stem cell research in the early part of the century that research didn't die, it emigrated. All over the world, scientists continued to explore the efficacies of embryonic and adult stem cells with astonishing results. Now, as the public becomes increasingly aware of these "miracle" treatments, the demand for stem cell therapies has increased far beyond what institutionalized Western medicine seems able to immediately provide. The result is both exhilarating and terrifying: more and more patients from the US and Europe are traveling abroad to seek stem cell treatments. This is just a tiny fraction of the ever increasing flood of medical tourism that has struck the West. Companies like Atlanta based Global Surgery Providers (GSP) are marketing directly to patients, facilitating travel for medical procedures including stem cell transplants. While! governments, doctors, and patients are still struggling to understand the dangers and advantages of medical tourism, it continues to grow. One thing is for certain, no matter what any one institution may try to do to control the use of stem cells, the demand for this technology is too strong to be stopped.

While many researchers are working overtime to get stem cell therapies safely to market, the public perception in the US is that this technology is stalled. It doesn't help that big name studies, like the first US embryonic test by Geron, have run into bureaucratic roadblocks even after the political ones were pulled away. When the US allows stem cell treatments for animals, but not humans, this is seen as backwards, not as a necessary result of the stringent review applied to new medicine. It takes time for any new product to pass FDA approval, but patients want stem cells now.

And why wouldn't they – have you seen some of the amazing things that stem cells can do? First there's the eye-popping pictures of new organs grown in labs. We've even seen a new windpipe created and implanted in just weeks thanks to a technique that used a patient's own stem cells. Add to that the promising results seen with diabetes and blindness…well, if I was in need of suc! h a treatment, I would be demanding access to stem cells, too.

Which is where medical tourism comes in. Why wait years for the resolution of clinical trials and bureaucratic red tape when you can jump on a plane and get treated in a manner of weeks? Atlanta's GSP is just one of many medical travel agencies that has picked up on the stem cell trend. They offer consultations (via phone only at this time) that could help you find a stem cell therapy center somewhere across the world. Similar agencies cater to the UK, Canada, and many different locations in Europe.

When you see a company offering to take you to a foreign country for a miraculous new medical procedure, it can all seem new and untested. Parts of it are. Yet the medical tourism industry has been growing strong for years now. Once the province of cosmetic surgeries and dental procedures, medical tourism now includes those looking for hip/joint replacement, heart surgery, even organ transplant. Some 750,000 Americans were thought to have traveled outside the US for medical treatment in 2007. A survey published by Deloitte in 2009 found that 3% of those 3000 18 to 75 year old Americans polled had used some form of medical tourism and that 27% would consider it (see page 13 of the results). A significant 40% would pursue medical travel if they could save 50% or more on costs.

Cost and availability top the list of reasons why people seek healthcare travel. In the US, a heart valve operation might run you $200k, but the same procedure in India could be done for $10k, including travel and accommodations. In countries with socialized medicine, waiting for months on necessary (but not "critical") surgery pushes many to seek help outside their borders.

It's no wonder that different agencies have arisen to promote medical tourism and address the concerns of its detractors. The most well known of these is the Joint Commission International which seeks to certify hospitals and other medical facilities around the world. A JCI certificate is often seen as a guarantee that a facility will live up to Western medical standards. Other organizations, like the Medical Tourism Association, offer their own certification while serving as a business networking opportunity for those institutions that want to grow the industry.

Yet if medical tourism is increasingly seen as legitimate, "foreign" stem cell therapies are still stigmatized by the established medical profession. The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has called for greater transparency and open evaluation of stem cell therapies. They worry about clinics directly marketing to patients and using anecdotal evidence to support their medical claims. Even those medical travel agencies (like GSP) that are venturing into stem cell treatments are quick to advise patients that many treatments are untested, and that not all therapies will work for all people.

The problem with venturing outside the (painfully) slow review process that plagues the West is the presence of crippling uncertainty. For every clinic in Germany that seems to have somewhat reputable results, there's some clinic shut down in Hungary for being untested and unlicensed. Patients cannot know for sure if the treatments they receive as part of stem cell medical tourism will work. Or even be safe.

I don't think that's going to stop anything. As I said in the beginning, you can't keep a good thing down. That's true even if you're uncertain about how good it really is. Stem cells therapies hold such amazing promise that they are going to be used no matter what. Years before the medical community as a whole would be comfortable with their use, stem cells have captured the hopes of patients the world over. In a sense, it doesn't matter if medical review processes are unnecessarily slow or not. It doesn't matter if stem cell therapies in different parts of the world are legitimate or not. Patients in need will seek out untested technologies as soon as the promised benefits outweigh the perceived risks. We've already passed that point. For better or for worse.

In a few years stem cell research is likely to be complete enough to produce clinically proven and nationally licensed therapies. But a few years can be a lifetime. I'm still doubtful as to whether stem cell clinics anywhere in the world really possess effective and safe treatments. Yet I know that dire situations force many to choose hope over doubt. Good luck to everyone, no matter which side of the coin you land on. And rest assured: one day recognized stem cell treatments will be available. Can't be stopped.

[image credit: Stem Cell Blog]
[video credit: MTA]

 

Italian Philip K. Dick Book Covers Are As Mind-Bending As His Tales [Book Covers]
February 28, 2010 at 5:00 PM

Artist Antonello Silverini has posted a sprawling gallery of Phillip K. Dick book covers he designed for Italian publishing house Fanucci Editore. Silverini's gorgeously fractured collages truly convey the reality-altering aspects and transhumanism present in Dick's oeuvre.

These covers - and many more - can be found at Silverini's blog.

[via Tor]


"We Can Build You"


"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?"


"Maze of Death"


"Eye in the Sky"


"Clans of the Alphane Moon"


"The Simulacra"


"Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said"

 

The Day Trader's Paradise [Featured Workspace]
February 28, 2010 at 5:00 PM

What do you get when you have space for a custom office setup, a good amount of cash, and the vision to make it all happen? Dozens of monitors and the need for your own personal power plant.

We've been watching Steve's office since he first posted the construction pictures into the Lifehacker Workspace pool. Slowly we've watched his office take shape from a spackled room with naked monitor mounts into the jaw dropping display of computing power you see above.

Steve just finished the project and posted some pictures to update us, writing:

Originally there was to be 60 monitors, a mix of 19s and 24s however it changed a bit and there is now 40 24" monitors and another 20 monitors offsite for development.

There is six computers running all the monitors, eac computer has a core i7 975, 24 gb of DDR 3 memory, two SLC SSDs in raid 0 and a large amount of nvidia NVS 420s as well as Nvidia 9800 GTs.

This office is used for intraday trading and development.

And by "intraday trading and development" he means displaying the world's largest line chart screensaver when he isn't using it to build a better bomb and issue demands of monetary compesation to world governments—or something like that we'd imagine. Check out more pictures of his awesome setup below:






You can check out more pictures of Steve's office by visiting the various photo sets he shared during construction: Office construction, Office, and New Office Done.

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.

The Day Trader's Paradise [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]


 

The monster inside my son - Autism - Salon.com
February 28, 2010 at 12:15 AM

For years I thought of his autism as beautiful and mysterious. But when he turned unspeakably violent, I had to question everything I knew.
 

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Sunday, February 28, 2010

2/27 Seeker's shared items in Google Reader

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"Internet Sex Moves" by Conor McKeon on CollegeHumor
February 27, 2010 at 1:52 PM

!splitIllustrated by Caldwell Tanner.
 

AmazingSuperPowers: Webcomic at the Speed of Light » Allergy
February 26, 2010 at 10:58 PM

Shared by Seeker
make sure to check out the hidden comic!
AmazingSuperPowers is a webcomic and creative forum by two vikings, Wes and Tony. Updated Mondays and Thursdays.
 

10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone - The Oatmeal
February 26, 2010 at 10:36 PM

 

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Saturday, February 27, 2010

2/26 Seeker's shared items in Google Reader

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The future of law school
February 26, 2010 at 6:32 AM

Do Canadian law schools adequately prepare students for the realities of the legal profession?Changes coming to the Canadian Common Law...
 

Posterous - The place to post everything. Just email us. Dead simple blog by email.
February 25, 2010 at 11:42 PM

 

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Friday, February 26, 2010

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