A little old lady answered a knock on the door one day, to be confronted by a well-dressed young man carrying a vacuum cleaner.
‘Good  morning,’ said the young man.

‘If I could take a couple minutes of your time, I would like to demonstrate the very latest in high-powered vacuum cleaners…
”Go away!” said the old lady.

”I’m broke and haven’t got any money!” and she proceeded to close the door.
Quick as a flash, the young man wedged his foot in the door and pushed  it wide open…

”Don’t be too hasty!” he said. ”Not until you have at least seen my demonstration.”
And with that, he emptied a bucket of horse manure onto her hallway carpet.

“Now if this vacuum cleaner does not remove all traces of this horse manure from your carpet, Madam”

“I will personally eat the remainder.”

The old lady stepped back and said,

“well let me get you a fork, ’cause they cut off my electricity this morning.”

I did when I was younger, possibly sometimes now.

This is a good funny video.

Enjoy

It was quite disturbing to read a Reuters news article, re testing of pharmaceuticals in developing or transitioning nations, such as Uganda and India.

Among the 174 trials the researchers examined, drugs against infectious diseases were most likely to be tested in the developing world, closely followed by heart, allergy and arthritis medications

“We are now using vulnerable people in vulnerable countries as drug laboratories,” Dr. Marcia Angell, who was not involved in the new research “It is all about dollars and cents.”

“Whether in children or adults, no clinical trials should be done in undeveloped countries unless they are trials to test a drug for a disease that only occurs there,” said Angell, who teaches social medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“The trend that we describe brings up some scientific and ethical problems,” said Dr. Sara K. Pasquali, a pediatrician at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, whose findings appear in the journal Pediatrics.

Pasquali said drug makers needed to be held to a higher standard. For instance, she said, they could be required to describe how appropriate a drug would be for the country in which it is to be tested.

In addition, transparency could be increased by publishing all trials in medical journals — something that happened less than half the time for the trials done under the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision.

I find this disturbing that all trials are not published.

Why aren’t they published?

What were the benefits or consequences to the children & or adults whom participated in these trials?

What follow up have these children or adults whom participated in these trials received?

Publishing results of all trials in medical journals should be compulsory.

Publishing the risk factors in medical journals for all trials prior to testing should be compulsory.

Dr. Sara K. Pasquali  ”Oftentimes, access to a study may be the only access to medical care a family has,” she said of trial participants in developing countries. Once the testing is done, however, it’s unclear if effective drugs will be marketed in the country in question, and whether they will be affordable.

More than a third of the published trials performed under 1997 legislation called the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision were carried out at least partly in developing or transitioning nations, such as Uganda and India, researchers found.

The idea behind the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision is to incentivize development of drugs for children in the U.S.

Because many diseases are rare in childhood, clinical trials usually target adults only, and their results don’t automatically extend to kids. The pediatric provision grants companies an extra six months of patent life if they test their drugs in kids as well.

So far, those patent extensions have netted drug makers an estimated $14 billion dollars, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association, there is no difference in the way trials are conducted in the U.S. and abroad.

“All of our companies follow our principles on conducting clinical trials,” said Mark Grayson, a spokesman for the association. “No matter where we are we follow our principles.”

Those principles include getting informed consent from the research participants (or in the case of children, their parents), ethical approval by an independent board, and training local investigators.

But the meaning of something like “informed consent” might not be clear in a different cultural context. One study from 2008, for instance, tested how much women in Ghana understood about the clinical trial they were part of.

The women were taking either vitamin A or a dummy pill, yet more than 90 percent actually believed they were getting an active and beneficial medication.

M. Nabeel Ghayur, a pharmacologist who worked in drug development in Pakistan before joining McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, said conditions are similar in India and Pakistan.

“People actually have blind trust in their doctor in South Asia. They have no idea what drug development is, they have no idea what clinical trials are,” he told Reuters Health.

He said there was little red tape in those countries, and that people would rarely ask about drug side effects and legal issues.

“Recruiting people is easy, getting informed consent is easy, getting approval is easy, paying the patients and paying the doctors is easy,” Ghayur said. “The physicians and investigators have absolutely no idea about the seriousness of the situation.”

Source of information – Reuters Health, Article by Frederik Joelving Mon Aug 23, 2010

A couple go for a meal at a Chinese restaurant and order the ‘Chicken Surprise.

The waitress  brings the meal, served in a lidded  pot.

Just as the wife is about to serve herself, the lid of the pot rises

Slightly And she briefly sees two beady little eyes looking around, before the Lid slams back down.

‘Good grief, did you see that?’ she asks her husband. He hasn’t, so she asks him to look in the pot.

He reaches for it and again the lid rises,

And he sees two little eyes looking around before it slams down.

Rather perturbed, he calls the waitress over, explains what is happening, and demands an explanation.

‘Please sir,’ says the waitress,, ‘what you order?’

The husband replies, ‘Chicken Surprise.’

‘Ah! So sorry,’ says the waitress , ‘I bring you Peeking Duck’

The teacher gave the class a bowl full of lifesavers and

Asked the children to identify the flavors by their color:

and they did

Red…………………Cherry
Yellow………………Lemon
Green……………….Lime
Orange ……………Orange
Finally the teacher gave them all HONEY lifesavers.

None of the children could identify the taste.
The teacher said, ‘I will give you all a clue. It’s what your
Mother may sometimes call your father.’
One little girl looked up in horror, spit her lifesaver out and yelled,
‘Oh my God!          They’re arse-holes!
The teacher had to leave the room.

The motor is shown turning a fan at a high speed, and no wires can be seen going to the device; then the device is disassembled in front of the group.

Detail Patent Information about the motor :
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?W…

Click here to view the embedded video.

An elderly couple, Margaret and Bert, moved to Texas . Bert always wanted a pair of authentic cowboy boots, so, seeing some on sale, he bought them and wore them home.
Walking proudly, he sauntered into the kitchen and said to his wife, “Notice anything different about me?”
Margaret looked him over. “Nope.”
Frustrated, Bert stormed off into the bathroom, undressed and walked back into the kitchen completely naked except for the boots.
Again he asked Margaret, a little louder this time, “Notice anything different NOW?”
Margaret looked up and said in her best deadpan, “Bert, what’s different? It’s hanging down today, it was hanging down yesterday, it’ll be hanging down again tomorrow.”
Furious, Bert yelled,

“AND DO YOU KNOW WHY IT’S HANGING DOWN, MARGARET?”
“Nope. Not a clue”, she replied.
“IT’S HANGING DOWN, BECAUSE IT’S LOOKING AT MY NEW BOOTS!!!!”
Without missing a beat Margaret replied, “Shoulda bought a hat, Bert.. Shoulda bought a hat.”

It must be said this would be a cat’s attitude to such a situation, just laying around & relaxing.

Watch & enjoy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cancer patients, their families had their hopes raised when the results of the first human trial of Dichloroacetate DCA were released, researchers say that this result provides a new approach for treating cancer.

Tumors shrank during treatment and their conditions were stable by the time the trial ended. A second test is ongoing at the Cross Cancer Institute for 18 patients with other types of cancers

This article updates my previous article re University of Alberta Dr. Evangelos Michelakis re DCA

The following includes extracts that were reported in the Edmonton Journal.

Clinical trial was a limited study on DCA as a treatment for a aggressive kind of brain cancer, testing cancerous tumors in only five patients.

Of the five patients, three had tried many other treatment options and had life expectancies of seven months. Two were still alive after the 15-month trial.

Two of the five patients were recently diagnosed. They were expected to live 14 months, but their tumors shrank during treatment and their conditions were stable by the time the trial ended.

Results were published in Science Translational Medicine, a journal of the American Association of the Advancement of Science.

The news brought tears to Terry Babiy.

“My gut tells me this could be it,” said the radio station owner, who spent months fundraising for the drug trial in the Peace Country.

“This is the work of the people, for the people,” said Dr. Evangelos Michelakis. “Without them, we wouldn’t be sitting here thinking about step two. We would be sitting at step zero, which happens all the time.”

The drug Companies have no interest as DCA is a natural substance, they cannot obtain Patents. The possible $100 million cost of clinical trials & testing, approval costs would be lost to other entities.

It is great to see the support that is coming forward, but more money is needed to finally have DCA approved.

The money raised by individuals came from cheques of $10 to several thousand dollars sent in from people around the world. The Hecht Foundation and Canadian Institutes of Health Research supplied the rest of the $1.5 million needed.

You can contribute by donating direct to University of Alberta to help progress this very important research. Go to their web page, click on “Donations”.

Because brain tumors advance so aggressively, Health Canada approved a plan to start with high doses of the drug. But it was so high many patients experienced numbness in their fingers and lower limbs, called peripheral neuropathy. Doctors then reduced the dose to a level where no side effects were found.

The sample size wasn’t big enough to make any conclusions, except that DCA does seem to affect human tissues. Further trials are needed to prove the drug helps cancer patients, and to establish how best to use it with other treatment options.

“We can’t make any statement with regard to efficacy, but we are quite enthused,” Michelakis said.

“Keep in mind, these are people who had very big tumors’,” said Michelakis. Three of the patients had tried every other known treatment. “Their expected survival was less than seven months,” he said.

Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive forms of cancer, patients typically die within a year.

After news of DCA’s potential and the lack of funding for tests broke in 2007, many desperate patients tried to self-medicate before the drug was approved for use.

Several Internet-based companies offered the chemical for sale. On Tuesday, an Edmonton man pleaded guilty in a Phoenix, Ariz., court to selling fake DCA online.

Michelakis said the body’s ability to break down the drug for the first few months is one of the reasons why it’s important to take the drug only under supervision.

Michelakis’s patients also received standard treatments — radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. It would be difficult to self-medicate properly because symptoms of overdose from the drug are very similar to the symptoms caused by the tumor itself.

A second test is ongoing at the Cross Cancer Institute for 18 patients with other types of cancers. Doctors there have also partnered with a facility in Los Angeles that has already accepted three cancer patients for a clinical test and has plans to expand.

More long-term tests, and tests with patients in multiple hospitals in multiple jurisdictions are still needed before the drug is approved for use.

Michelakis said he hopes their success with developing a generic drug will inspire others to believe drug trials can be done without industry support and the backing of drug companies. He hopes this success will spur more research with other drugs that might attack cancer cells in a similar way.

Hope this is helpful John

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

A psychiatrist was conducting a group therapy session with four young Mothers and their small children.

You all have obsessions,’ he observed.

To the first mother, Mary, he said, ‘You are obsessed with eating.
You’ve even named your daughter Candy.’
He turned to the second Mum, Ann: ‘Your obsession is with money.
Again, it manifests itself in your child’s name, Penny.’
He turned to the third Mum, Kathy: ‘Your obsession is alcohol.
This too shows itself in your child’s name, Brandy.’

At this point, the fourth mother, Joyce, quietly got up, took her little boy by the hand and whispered,

Come on Dick, this guy has no idea what he’s talking about. Lets pick Willy up from school and go home!