This looks good..

Seven Days in Utopia

Opening September 2nd.

Happy Independence Day

The words of Calvin Coolidge ring as true today as they did in 1926 on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.

It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few. They undertook the balance these interests against each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one might encroach upon the other. These are our guaranties of liberty. As a result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever-broadening and deepening of the humanities of life...

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped."


Read the whole thing here. Its significantly longer and much better than a tweet.

Faster please...longer lasting factor

Not a cure, but we'll take it in the meantime.

...thanks to collaborative work involving the laboratory of Neil Simister,an associate professor of molecular biology at Brandeis, and doctors at Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, hemophilia patients may soon have access to long-acting clotting medications that free them from the hassles of frequent infusions and from worries that an internal bleed has gone unnoticed.

Simister’s laboratory, as well as labs at the University of Texas and Ohio State University, independently and simultaneously discovered that the receptor FcRn protects antibodies from breaking down in the body. Building on that basic discovery has enabled the formulation of new hemophilia drugs.

***

...estimates that they are probably less than 12 months away from getting definitive Phase III results for both hemophilia A and B programs. The next step would be filing for FDA approval.

Original article here.

Let your Zinc-Fingers do the walking...or clotting

More reports about the success of the gene therapy treatment in mice using zinc-finger proteins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/us/27therapy.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/231326/living_mouse_receives_the_first_genome_therapy_cures_hemophilia.html

http://www.hhmi.org/news/high20110626.html

http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/zing-finger-based-approach-rectifies-clotting-times-in-mice-with-hemophilia-b/81245353/

Paging Chris Christie...

Proposed Tax on Blood Clotting Factor in New Jersey

ANNAPOLIS, Md., June 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- PPTA opposes New Jersey Assembly Bill 2003 passed by the New Jersey Assembly Appropriations Committee on June 13 that imposes a new tax on therapies used to treat bleeding disorders like hemophilia.

The bill creates The Bleeding Disorders Treatment Fund by taxing the manufacturers of blood clotting factor in the form of a 6 percent rebate. PPTA opposes any policy that would impose a tax on the sale of lifesaving therapies. PPTA calls on the pharmaceutical industry at large to keep a close watch on this bill, which is a slippery slope towards taxing other medicines.

Not your dad's old country club golfers

As Rory McIlroy tear up Congressional this music video of the 'Golf Boys'(Bubba Watson, Hunter Mahon, Rickie Fowler and Ben Crane) is just plain funny.

Hurry!

Bioscience Company shows success in animal trials for Factor IX Gene Therapy Treatment

-Sangamo scientist Michael Holmes presented data from a study in mice which showed encouraging results in a specific type of hemophilia. In this case, the disease comes from a deficiency of a protein know as Factor IX. Scientists gave a single injection of one of Sangamo's zinc-finger compounds and found that mice who got the injection were able to produce Factor IX on their own in high enough levels to achieve normal blood clotting...

Original article from Xconomy.com