Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

A new and extensive interview I did at New Atlas, including ideas about my #libertarian California Governor run. Libertarianism has many good ideas, but two core concepts are the non-aggression principle (NAP) and protection of private property rights—both of which I believe can be philosophically applied to the human body (and the body’s inevitable transhuman destiny of overcoming disease and decay with science and technology):

Zoltan Istvan is a transhumanist, journalist, politician, writer and libertarian. He is also running for Governor of California for the Libertarian Party on a platform pushing science and technology to the forefront of political discourse. In recent years, the movement of transhumanism has moved from a niche collection of philosophical ideals and anarcho-punk gestures into a mainstream political movement. Istvan has become the popular face of this movement after running for president in 2016 on a dedicated transhumanist platform.

We caught up with Istvan to chat about how transhumanist ideals can translate into politics, how technology is going to change us as humans and the dangers in not keeping up with new innovations, such as genetic editing.

New Atlas: How does transhumanism intersect with politics?

Istvan: For me you can never make any headway in the universe, or on planet Earth, if you don’t involve politics because so much money for innovation or research and development comes from the government and so many laws about what you can do. Genetic editing, chip implants, can you get a brain implant that makes you smarter than other people? These things are often directed by the government determining whether it’s illegal or not. You can either be thrown in jail or not thrown in jail – so you must have a political footprint, you must have attorneys on the ground, you must have that kind of legal position that can explain things in terms that a government will understand.

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Don’t be the CIO that sees their own this market as most Healthcare CIO’s will not allowed to stay given they are now a brand liability not to mention all those lawsuits that are coming from lawyers of the patients.

Electronic health record databases proving to be some of the most lucrative stolen data sets in cybercrime underground.

Medical insurance identification, medical profiles, and even complete electronic health record (EHR) databases have attracted the eyes of enterprising black hats, who increasingly see EHR-related documents as some of the hottest commodities peddled in the criminal underground. A new report today shows that complete EHR databases can fetch as much as $500,000 on the Deep Web, and attackers are also making their money off of smaller caches of farmed medical identities, medical insurance ID card information, and personal medical profiles.

The data comes by way of a report from Trend Micro’s TrendLabs Forward-Looking Threat Research (FTR) Team, which took a comprehensive look at how attackers are taking advantage of healthcare organizations’ weaknesses to devastating effect. Cybercriminals always have their eyes open for new profitable revenue streams, and the poor security around increasingly data-rich EHR systems pose a huge opportunity for the bad guys.

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Why not as we will see we will indeed require cell circuited technology for QBS to be full effective/ enhanced.

The TV commercial is nearly 20 years old but I remember it vividly: a couple is driving down a street when they suddenly realize the music on their tape deck is in sync with the repetitive activity on the street. From the guy casually dribbling a basketball to people walking along the sidewalk to the delivery people passing packages out of their truck, everything and everyone is moving rhythmically to the beat.

The ending tag line was, “Sometimes things just come together,” which is quite true. Many of our basic daily activities like breathing and walking just come together as a result of repetitive movement. It’s easy to take them for granted but those rhythmic patterns ultimately rely on very intricate, interconnected signals between nerve cells, also called neurons, in the brain and spinal cord.

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Researchers at the University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands have developed a DNA computer that can respond to the presence of specific antibodies and make calculations, with the potential for intelligent drug delivery in the future. DNA computing involves using DNA molecules and other molecular biological components as molecular circuitry, instead of traditional silicon-based circuitry in computer devices. The DNA sequence dictates which other DNA molecules a DNA strand can interact with, allowing researchers to program DNA circuitry.

Scientists have been trying to use DNA computing as a method to detect biomarkers of disease in the body. Using this technique, a DNA computer could make calculations and perform a specific function, such as release a drug or activate an enzyme, in response to biological stimuli such as disease biomarkers.

So far, the inputs of DNA computers have been other DNA or RNA molecules, which has limited their usefulness as diagnostic or therapeutic systems. However, in this study, published in Nature Communications, scientists have developed a DNA computer that can respond to multiple antibody inputs and perform calculations to formulate an appropriate response. Antibodies are biomarkers in a variety of diseases, meaning that the new system has significant potential as an intelligent drug delivery system. The system translates the presence of an antibody into a DNA strand, that can then interact with other DNA strands in the molecular circuitry in calculating the appropriate response.

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Restorative neuroscience, the study to identify means to replace damaged neurons and recover permanently lost mental or physical abilities, is a rapidly advancing scientific field considering our progressively aging society. Redirecting immature neurons that reside in specific brain areas towards the sites of brain damage is an appealing strategy for the therapy of acute brain injury or stroke. A collaborative effort between the Center for Brain Research of Medical University of Vienna and the National Brain Research Program of Hungary/Semmelweis University in Budapest revealed that some mature neurons are able to reconfigure their local microenvironment such that it becomes conducive for adult-born immature neurons to extensively migrate. Thus, a molecular principle emerges that can allow researchers to best mobilize resident cellular reserves in the adult brain and guide immature neurons to the sites of brain damage.

The adult brain has limited capacity of self-repair.

In the aging Western society, acute brain damage and chronic neurodegenerative conditions (e.g. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases) are amongst the most debilitating diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people world-wide. Nerve cells are particularly sensitive to microenvironmental insults and their loss clearly manifests as neurological deficit. Since the innate ability of the adult human brain to regenerate is very poor and confined to its few specialized regions, a key question in present-day neurobiology is how to establish efficient strategies that can replace lost neurons, guide competent cells to the sites of injury and facilitate their functional integration to regain lost functionality. “Cell replacement therapy” thus offers frontline opportunities to design potent therapeutic interventions.

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If you’ve ever wondered how a vaccine given decades ago can still protect against infection, you have your plasma cells to thank. Plasma cells are long-lived B cells that reside in the bone marrow and churn out antibodies against previously encountered vaccines or pathogens.

While are vital components of the immune system, they can also be a contributor to disease, as is the case in autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and in certain cancers, such as multiple myeloma.

Now, a group led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, has come to a better understanding of how these cells are maintained. Using a specialized type of microscope that captures the movement and interaction of cells in , the scientists observed that, in the , immune cells called regulatory T cells closely interact with plasma cells and support them. When the T cells aren’t there, plasma cells vanish.

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We celebrate her birthday and life but what fun is there to living so long when aging takes its toll? Science is aiming to do better, find out how here!

Today, February 21, is the birthday of Jeanne Louise Calment – the oldest verified human being ever, who managed to live an amazing 122 years and 164 days!

Jeanne was an independent and positive person, and she managed to live all alone until aged 110. After a fire in her apartment she moved into a nursing home, but even there she was still able to take care of herself. However, shortly before her 115th birthday she fell down a stairway and never fully recovered her ability to walk.

Surprisingly, when Jeanne was 118 years old, cognitive tests revealed she scored within the normal range, without signs of dementia. However, by that time she was physically frail and required a wheelchair.

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Rare breeds of chickens could soon come from entirely different types of hens. The University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute with help from US biotechnology company Recombinetics used gene editing techniques to create surrogate hens that grow up to produce eggs with all the genetic information of different breeds.

We’ve seen gene editing and transfer techniques used to create better yeast, bigger trees and even glowing pigs, among numerous other examples, but this is believed to be the first gene-edited bird to come out of Europe.

The team used a gene editing tool called TALEN (for transcription activator-like effector nucleases), which is similar to the more widely publicized CRISPR/Cas9, to delete part of a chicken gene called DDX4 that is related to fertility. Hens with this modification did not produce eggs but were healthy in all other ways.

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