Viruses Can Kill Cancer?

From Technology Review.

Biomedicine Engineered Viruses Selectively Kill Cancer Cells: The experimental therapy could ultimately serve as a seek-and-destroy treatment for metastatic cancer.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011 By Alla Katsnelson.

A single injection of a virus that has been genetically engineered to kill cancer cells can reliably infect tumors and leave healthy tissue unharmed, according to an early stage trial of 23 patients with metastatic cancers. The findings help lay the groundwork for a new type of cancer medicine using cancer-killing viruses.

Researchers injected different doses of the virus into patients with different types of metastatic cancers. After eight to 10 days, they biopsied tumor tissue from each patient and found that the virus was replicating itself in the tumors of seven of the eight patients who had received the highest dose, with no serious side effects. Several weeks after the injection, tumors in about half of the patients seemed to stop growing, and shrunk in one patient. The study is published today in the journal Nature.

While the study is not the first to test a cancer-killing viral therapy, it is the first to thoroughly document the behavior of the virus in patients’ biopsy tissue. The results confirm that viruses can be used to selectively target these cells.

One reason tumors can grow unchecked is that they suppress the immune system. However, this also makes tumor cells more susceptible to viruses, which replicate inside the infected cell until it bursts. Physicians have known for more than a century that viral infection slows tumor growth, and in recent years they’ve used molecular biology techniques to reëngineer more effective cancer-killing viruses.

Most such viruses now in trials are injected directly into the tumor. But what researchers really need is a therapy that could be injected into the bloodstream and seek out metastasized cancer cells throughout the body, says David Kirn, chief executive officer at Jennerex, the San Francisco-based biotech company that funded the study.

Read entire story at TECHNOLOGY REVIEW.

Help Horn of Africa

Don’t wait. Please act now!

From The Hunger Site

They’re calling it “The Children’s Famine.” More than 12 million people are at risk of starvation in the Horn of Africa, including at least 1.25 million children who are “in urgent need of life saving interventions,” according to OCHA. Hundreds of thousands of additional children are severely malnourished.

This humanitarian crisis is caused by an unprecedented drought in the region, where families traditionally rely on livestock and farming for food. Food prices have spiked, crops and livestock are failing, and rivers are at their lowest levels in recent memory.

Displaced families desperate for food and water are spilling across borders and overwhelming refugee camps. “In many of the poorest communities,” reports UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, “people are either too poor or too weak to be able to try to walk for help.”

Mercy Corps has worked in the region for years, and is on the ground actively providing help in the places where it is most needed. Tens of thousands in Ethiopia have received emergency food and clean water distributions. In Somalia, cash-for-work programs are helping drought-affected families fill vital needs including food, water, and other essentials. Mercy Corps hopes not only to help people survive in the face of the current crisis, but to make these communities strong enough to thrive once it has passed.

You can help. Every penny of your donation provides emergency aid that is desperately needed in the Horn of Africa during this time of crisis.

Report from the Field
Mercy Corps
August 2011

Mercy Corps is actively engaged in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. They report that their drought response in the region includes:

SOMALIA
· Our work in Somalia will help more than 260,000 drought-affected people fill vital needs like water, food, and other essentials.
· We work directly with communities to ensure that aid gets to the people who need it. We run programs in Puntland, Somaliland, and the Central region.
· Emergency operations build on our work to provide education to Somali children, improve governance, and build more peaceful communities.

KENYA
· Our team in northeastern Kenya has started programs in over twenty villages in bone-dry Wajir County.
· We are helping 120,000 people gain life-saving access to water. Where there is no water, we’re trucking in hundreds of thousands of liters. Where there are water systems, we’re bringing in emergency fuel to keep water pumps running.
· We have found there is food on the market in northeastern Kenya, but people don’t have money to buy it. Vouchers, a likely next phase of work, provide food and boost local markets.

ETHIOPIA
· We plan to mount an emergency response in the Oromia and Somali regions of Ethiopia, where there is an urgent need for food and water, especially for women, children, and the elderly.
· We also plan to provide cash for work, and initiate destocking, where Mercy Corps buys cattle to provide herders with much-needed income and the community with meat.
· We’ve been helping more than 625,000 Ethiopians gain access to food, water, income, nutrition and health education, and better farming resources and information.

Report from the Field
Joy Portella, Mercy Corps Communications Director
July 2011

The central element of this story is water; everyone is obsessed with finding it. I saw this in the eyes of the herder who’d been walking with his family — including his 10-year-old daughter — for 17 days to find water. I met a young woman with a baby who’d trudged eight hours to collect dirty water at a borehole, and was steeling herself for the grueling return trip. I witnessed a man climb a tree and ever so gently hold down a lone green branch so that his parched, starving camel could gain some strength.

…too often [our] great generosity is triggered by a sudden event that garners significant news coverage: the Haiti earthquake or Japan tsunami. When disasters happen slowly — like a drought and famine — they’re less visible and get less of a response, but that doesn’t make them any less severe.

…the people who are living the drought are simply busy struggling to survive. In the Horn of Africa, that struggle has become increasingly severe. The call for aid has rarely been as urgent.

Don’t wait. Act now! The Hunger Site

Turkey & Religious Minorities

This is a very important and courageous development.

Turkish Government to Return Seized Property to Religious Minorities
By SEBNEM ARSU. Published: August 28, 2011. New York Times.

ANKARA, Turkey — The Turkish government said it would return hundreds of properties that were confiscated from religious minorities by the state or other parties over the years since 1936, and would pay compensation for properties that were seized and later sold.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the announcement on Sunday to representatives of more than 150 Christian and Jewish trusts gathered at a dinner he hosted in Istanbul to break the day’s Ramadan fast. The government decree to return the properties, bypassing nationalist opposition in Parliament, was issued late Saturday.

The European Union, which Turkey has applied to join, has pressed the country to ease or eliminate laws and policies that discriminate against non-Muslim religious groups, including restrictions on land ownership. Many of the properties, including schools, hospitals, orphanages and cemeteries, were seized after 1936 when trusts were called to list their assets, and in 1974 a separate ruling banned the groups from purchasing any new real estate.

Disputes over the groups’ properties have tied up Turkish and European courts for decades, and the European Court for Human Rights has ordered Turkey to pay compensation in several cases related to religious minority rights in recent years.

“Like everyone else, we also do know about the injustices that different religious groups have been subjected to because of their differences,” Mr. Erdogan said at the dinner, according to the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency. “Times that a citizen of ours would be oppressed due to his religion, ethnic origin or different way of life are over.”

Read complete article at NEW YORK TIMES

Greatest Game on Earth

The English Premier League (EPL) started again last weekend and I must admit that it always hooks me. The MLS (Major League Soccer) is good (with my favorite team being the Seattle Sounders) and the WPS (Women’s Professional Soccer), but I always watch the EPL more than any other.

My favorite club team in the world is Barcelona, but most of their games are not televised in this area. National teams to which I’m drawn are the US (both the men and women), Ghana, Ireland, Mexico, Japan (men and women), Spain and Turkey.

Most fans claim that you have to have only 1 favorite team and stick with them through thick and thin to be considered a real fan. I beg to differ. I’m an avid fan of many. In the EPL, my favorite teams are Liverpool, Everton, Wigan and the Wolves. Two of those teams are from the same town and huge rivals (Liverpool and Everton). I enjoy watching Manchester United play, but always want them to lose.

If you’re a futbol fan, there is always a league, country and/or tournament to watch throughout the year, but right now, it is the EPL that will get most of my attention.

Donate Daily

Did you know you can donate to eight different organizations daily and not have to personally pay a cent?

The site is called Click to Give and includes the following sites (below). Every time you click, different companies donate 5 cents. It may not sound like much, but it adds up if you do all of them every day – about $145.00 per year. In seven years, that’s over a thousand dollars.

The Hunger Site

The Breast Cancer Site

The Animal Rescue Site

The Veteran’s Site

The Autism Site

The Child Health Site

The Literacy Site

The Rainforest Site

All in one place at Click To Give.

Syrian Attacks

AP Newsire – 8/25/11

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. demanded Thursday that Bashar Assad’s government in Syria stop brutalizing peaceful opponents and in particular criticized its “targeted, brutal attack” on the country’s most popular cartoonist.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had especially harsh words for the Assad regime regarding cartoonist Ali Ferzat, who is also a longtime human rights advocate, in a statement issued after the department had closed for the day.

“The regime’s thugs focused their attention on Ferzat’s hands, beating them furiously and breaking one of them — a clear message that he should stop drawing,” the statement said.

The statement came a week after President Barack Obama demanded explicitly that Assad resign because he had lost legitimacy as a ruler. That demand was in conjunction with similar moves by major U.S. allies such as Britain, France, Germany and the European Union.

In her statement, Nuland said: “Many other moderate activists who oppose violence have been jailed for speaking out against the regime, including Walid al-Buni, Nawaf Basheer, Georges Sabra, Mohammed Ghaliyoun and Abdullah al-Khalil. Some have been held incommunicado for months.

“While making empty promises about dialogue with the Syrian people, the Assad regime continues to carry out brutal attacks against peaceful Syrians trying to exercise their universal right to free expression,” Nuland continued. “We demand that the Assad regime immediately stop its campaign of terror through torture, illegal imprisonment and murder.”

Mixed Emotions

It’s the middle of the week and there have already been so many things happening inside and out. Mixed emotions are coming and going like a change in weather every minute.

Some friends of ours have been trying to adopt a brother and sister, who have been with them for 2 years now, and social services has made it a nightmare experience. The children are feeling safe, loved and thriving and our friends are wonderful parents. Instead of supporting them in the adoption process, a couple of people in social services have fought them all along the way. It’s no wonder there are so many children in foster homes. Social Services, instead of being supportive, is confrontational and always changing.

Then, there is the slaughter in Syria, the revolution in Libya and starvation in Somalia and Eastern Africa, which is all pulling me one way and then the other.

In the midst of all these turmoils was a wonderful time with our daughter, grandson and son-in-love camping and canoeing in the San Juan Islands off Puget Sound. Beautiful places, great company and time to relax.

When I pay attention to my mind, heart and body, there are always a zillion things going on, though I am only aware of one or two at a time. So, I guess the external circumstances, situations and events are similar, only on a national and international scale.

Now, how I choose to respond (or not) to all of these emotions and events is up to me, right? Or, at least the part of me that is aware of itself. Here I go…

Take Action On Syria

The UN Security Council has urged Syria’s president to make good on his stated commitment to reform. But what has the Council actually done to stop the widespread abuses being committed in Syria?

Certainly not all it could do.

If the Council was serious about stopping the widespread abuses, then it would demand accountability for the Syrian government’s brutal crimes.

If the Council was serious about stopping the widespread abuses, then it would impose strict measures against Syria, including an arms embargo and freezing the assets of President al-Assad.

What are they waiting for? Urge South Africa, India and Brazil to speak up now to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Most certainly, if the Council was serious about stopping the widespread abuses, then it would refer the worsening situation to the International Criminal Court. This would be the strongest signal possible that individual perpetrators will face justice and deter future violations.

Some members of the Security Council are getting the message and have begun calling for concrete action. But petty political bickering within the Council has swayed increasingly influential members — South Africa, India and Brazil — to the side of inaction.

Until the Council takes firm action, the people of Syria remain at the mercy of a government that shows no signs of stopping its 5 month-long crackdown on human rights.

Right now, Amnesty is building a powerful case against Syria. The evidence of grave human rights abuses is mounting.

Here is where pressure from supporters like you makes all the difference.

In the coming weeks we’ll be unveiling some new data that we’re confident will cause a stir. This evidence will certainly get people talking, but we need you to help get them moving!

Every message of support counts. Tell the governments of South Africa, India and Brazil that it’s time to get serious about Syria.

In Solidarity,

Christoph Koettl
Campaigner, Crisis Prevention and Response
Amnesty International USA

Anti-Shariah Movement

The Anti-Shariah Movemenet and Jewish Law by Jacob Bender. From Aslan Media.

The front-page article in The New York Times on July 31, 2011, by reporter Andrea Elliott, described some of the personalities involved in the nation-wide campaign against what they call “the danger of Islamic law.”

One of these personalities is David Yerushalmi, a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, who the article describes as exercising “a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah.” Joining forces with right-wing think-tanks, Yerushalmi has “written privately financed reports, filed lawsuits…and drafted the legislation” that aims to cast Shariah as the gravest contemporary threat to American freedom. A Web site of Yerushalmi’s organization goes so far as to propose a sentence of 20 years for anyone found guilty of observing Islamic law.

As an American Jew, I was immediately interested in Yerushalmi’s involvement in the campaign against Shariah. A documentary filmmaker by training and profession, I have spent the last several years directing Out of Cordoba, a film about the two greatest thinkers to emerge from medieval Muslim Spain, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) the Muslim, and his Jewish counterpart, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimun (Moses Maimonides). These two geniuses, both born in the Andalucian city of Cordoba, were philosophers committed to balancing the ancient Greek rationalism of Aristotle with the revealed truths they found in the Qur’an and in the Torah, as well as serving as court physicians to their local rulers in Spain and in Egypt, respectively.

Averroes and Maimonides were also judges of Shariah and Halakhah (Jewish religious law), believing that religious law was the foundation of God’s will on earth, and the basis of just and rational societies, guiding not only religious practices and beliefs of an observant Muslim or a Jew, but also the numerous day-to-day aspects of their lives.

What is striking about Maimonides — generally considered to have had the most influence of any individual on the Jewish religion over the last millennium — is the profound influence of Muslim thinkers upon his thought. Ironically, Yerushalmi seems totally ignorant of this Islamic influence upon his own religious traditions. In Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, his great code of Halakhah, as well as in the Guide for the Perplexed, his philosophical masterpiece, Maimonides cites numerous Muslim writers, including Ibn Sina (980-1037), Al-Farabi (872-951), and Ibn Hazm (994-1064). Late in his life, while serving as the court physician to Saladin in Egypt, we find Maimonides reading the numerous commentaries on the works of Aristotle written by Averroes. Maimonides lived all his life in the Muslim lands of Spain, Morocco, and Egypt, and was steaped in the latest intellectual trends of his day.

Except for the Mishneh Torah, all of Maimonides’ books, responsa, and correspondence were written in Arabic. That over three-quarters of the world’s Jews once lived in the dar-al-Islam (Muslim lands), and that Arabic was once also the language of Jewish people, are historical facts of little use to the Ashkenazic-centric worldview of people like Yerushalmi, ignorant as they are of the heritage of those Jewish communities beyond the confines of Eastern and Central Europe, known to scholars and lay-persons alike as Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. It is important to note that Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed was often banned in many of the yeshivot (rabbinical schools) of Eastern Europe, for its espousal of the pagan Aristotle.

We should not be surprised at all that Yerushalmi, a practicing attorney, has no academic training in Islamic jurisprudence, nor in Jewish history, and that among his legal clients is Pamela Geller, another star of the bigoted Islamophobic circus that also includes Robert Spencer, Rev. Franklin Graham, and Daniel Pipes. (Full disclosure: A Web site associated with the anti-Shariah movement, http://www.SheikYerMami.com, accused me of being a long-time agent of Saudi Arabia because part of the funding for my film Out of Cordoba was provided by the Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation, together with the governments of the United States and Spain. Saudi Prince Alwaleed’s foundation has also made generous donations to such dangerous and subversive institutions as Harvard University and the Jesuit Georgetown University, as well as to the Louvre Museum in Paris.)

What should be abundantly clear from all of this is that the anti-Shariah movement has no interest in either history or facts. On the former, any honest reading of the history of Western Civilization will acknowledge the vast influence of Muslim thinkers across a wide range of human disciples, be it in philosophy, theology, architecture, grammar, poetics, mathematics, medicine, or astronomy. And regarding the current debate over Shariah, the simple fact is that this a red herring if there ever was one, for there is no vast Muslim conspiracy to advance the “Shariahization” of the United States that anyone can truly identify.

Read entire article at: Aslan Media

Jacob Bender is the director of the award-winning documentary Out of Cordoba. He can be reached at jacob@outofcordoba.com.

Muslims Help Stop Riots

Excerpt from story by Robert Lambert on 12 Aug 2011 in AlJazeera.

Muslims tackle looters and bigots

British Muslims’ reaction to the riots should dispel any continued demonisation in the media.

There is a lively debate taking place in the UK media between left and right wing commentators as to the causes of the English riots, in which hundreds of shops and businesses have been looted. However, both sides agree that the looting has been inexcusable. I hope both sides will also agree with me that Muslims have played an important role in helping to tackle the looting and preserve public safety. This would be an especially important acknowledgment if it came from those Islamophobic commentators who consistently denigrate Muslims.

“When accused of terrorism we are Muslims, when killed by looters, we become Asian”, a Muslim student explained to me. He was commenting on the media reportingof the death of three young Muslims in Birmingham on Tuesday night. Like many other Muslims, they were bravely defending shops and communities as rioters went on a violent rampage of looting.

In recent days Muslim Londoners, Muslims from Birmingham, and Muslims in towns and cities around England have been at the forefront of protecting small businesses and vulnerable communities from looting. Having worked closely with Muslim Londoners, first as a police officer and more recently as a researcher, for the last ten years this commendable bravery comes as no surprise to me. But their example of outstanding civic duty in support of neighbors is worth highlighting – especially when sections of the UK media are so quick to print negative headlines about Muslims on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Pro-active response

On Monday evening when London suffered its worst looting in living memory I watched as a well marshaled team of volunteers wearing green fluorescent security vests marked ‘East London Mosque’ took to the streets of Tower Hamlets to help protect shops and communities from gangs of looters. This was the most visible manifestation of their pro-active response to fast moving and well co-ordinated teams of looters. Less visible was the superb work of Muslim youth workers from Islamic Forum Europe who used the same communication tools as the looters to outwit and pre-empt them on the streets.

While senior Westminster politicians started to pack and rush back to London from foreign holidays I watched Lutfur Rahman, the Muslim mayor of Tower Hamlets, offering calm leadership and support in the street as gangs of looters were intercepted and prevented from stealing goods in his presence.

Most important to emphasize is the extent to which everyone in Tower Hamlets was a beneficiary of streetwise, smart Muslims acting swiftly to protect shops, businesses and communities against looters. It is often wrongly alleged that Muslims lack any sense of civic duty towards non-Muslims and especially towards the LGBT Community. I wish peddlers of that negative anti-Muslim message had been present to see how all citizens in Tower Hamlets were beneficiaries of Muslim civic spirit and bravery on Monday night.

I am not sure if the Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan was robbed of his bike by looters in Tower Hamlets or in another part of London as he cycled home from Hackney to Greenwich on Monday night, but even his incessant negative reporting of Muslims associated with the East London Mosque would not have excluded him from their neighbourly support had they been in the immediate vicinity to help him.

Gilligan reports that police were unable to offer him any advice other than to go home when he finally received an answer to his 999 call as a victim of a violent street robbery. London policing on Monday night was stretched as never before and Gilligan was one amongst hundreds of victims who had to fend for themselves as looters ran amok around the capital city. In these unique circumstances the street skills of Muslim youth workers, who are routinely helping police to tackle violent gang crime and anti-social behaviour in Tower Hamlets, Walthamstow, Brixton and in other deprived neighbourhoods, were a key ingredient in filling the vacuum created by insufficient police numbers.

I first saw East London Mosque and Islamic Forum Europe street skills in action in 2005 when they robustly dispatched extremists from Al Muhajiroun who were in Whitechapel attempting to recruit youngsters into their hate filled group. I saw the same skills in action in the same year when volunteers from the Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Welfare House ousted violent supporters of Abu Hamza from the Finsbury Park Mosque. More recently, Muslim bravery has been seen in Brixton when extremists spouting the latest manifestation of Al Muhajroun hatred were sent packing out of town. In all these instances, and so many more, the brave Muslims involved have received no praise for their outstanding bravery and good citizenship, and instead faced a never ending barrage of denigration from journalists such as Gilligan, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright…. sorry I won’t go on, it’s a long list!

Sadly, many of the brave Muslims helping to keep their cities safe have not only grown used to denigration from media pundits but also faced cuts in government funding for their youth outreach work with violent gangs. This is not as a result of widespread economic cuts caused by the recession, but because the government adopts the media view that they are ‘extremist’. Street in Brixton is a case in point. Yesterday Dr Abdul Haqq Baker director of Street was forced to close a Street youth centre in Brixton as his reduced team of youth of workers struggled to keep pace with the task of tackling gang violence and its role in rioting and looting.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT: ALJAZEERA