Tag Archives: berlin

BIG NEWS: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection in ‘Berlin patient’, say doctors

Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection. The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection. The case was first reported at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, and Berlin doctors subsequently published a detailed case history in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2009. They have now published a follow-up report in the journal Blood, arguing that based on the results of extensive tests, “It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient.” The case history The 'Berlin patient' is an HIV-positive man who developed acute myeloid leukaemia, received successful treatment and subsequently experienced a relapse in 2007 that required a transplant of stem cells. Doctors chose stem cells from an individual who had an unusual genetic profile: a mutation inherited from both parents that resulted in CD4 cells that lacked the CCR5 receptor. This mutation, called CCR5 delta 32 homozygosity, is present in less than 1% of Caucasians in northern and western Europe, and is associated with a reduced risk of becoming infected with HIV. This is because all new infecting viruses need to use the CCR5 receptor on CD4 cells when infecting an immune system cell of the CD4 type. Later in the course of HIV infection another type of virus emerges that can use the CXCR4 receptor instead. Before the stem cell transplant the patient received chemotherapy treatment that destroyed most immune cells and total body irradiation, and also received immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the stem cells. Antiretroviral therapy was halted on the day of the transplant, and the patient had to receive a second stem cell transplant 13 days after the first one, due to a further relapse of leukaemia. The patient continued to receive immunosuppressive treatment to prevent rejection for 38 months, and at 5, 24 and 29 months post-transplant colon biopsies were taken to investigate possible graft-versus-host disease in the intestine. At each investigation additional samples were taken to check for signs of HIV infection in the abundant immune cells of the gut wall. During the 38 month follow-up period the donor CD4 cells repopulated the mucosal immune system of the gut, to such an extent that the frequency of CD4 cells was almost twice as high as in HIV-negative healthy controls, and this phenomenon was also seen in a control group of ten HIV-negative individuals who received stem cell transfers. The repopulation of CD4 cells was accompanied by the complete disappearance of host CD4 cells, and after two years the patient had the CD4 count of a healthy adult of the same age. One of the challenges for any approach to curing HIV infection is long-lived immune system cells, which need to be cleared before a patient can be cured. In the case of the Berlin patient CCR5-bearing macrophages could not be detected after 38 months, suggesting that chemotherapy had destroyed these longer-lived cells, and that they had also been replaced by donor cells… (More in the link) added by: rhetoricallyineffective

Lady Gaga Wax Figures: Revealed!

Madame Tassaud has outdone herself here. Not one, not two, but eight wax replicas of the great Lady Gaga and her over-the-top styles have been unveiled! Gaga’s going global with her likenesses in NY City, Las Vegas, London, Hollywood, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hong Kong and Shanghai, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. With figures so strikingly similar to the singer and her iconic outfits that they’re hard to tell apart from real Lady Gaga photos , the Madame gets props from THG. Take a look at them below and see which you like best …

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Lady Gaga Wax Figures: Revealed!

Ultra Elitist Environmental Group: Halt Economic Growth, Institute Rationing

Ultra elitist environmental group The Royal Society has published a series of papers to coincide with the latest round of UN climate talks, in which influential scientists suggest that politicians should force the population of the developed world to adhere to a system of rationing in order to stave off rising global temperatures. The papers suggest that 1930s and 40s style crisis rationing should be implemented by Western governments in order to reduce carbon emissions. Such a move would see “limits on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.” the London Telegraph Reports. “The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” one Royal Society affiliated professor states. Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, added that in his view, economic growth in the developed world should be completely halted within the next two decades if the planet is to avoid mass upheaval in the form of rising sea levels, floods, droughts and mass migration. “I am not saying we have to go back to living in caves,” he said. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by ok then.” Ironically, Anderson’s point here reveals a fundamental flaw in the theory of anthropogenic warming, namely that CO2 emissions have increased, yet temperature rise is slowing. By all accounts, the warming trend observed predominantly throughout the 1980s and 90s stopped just over a decade ago. Even the Royal Society itself was forced to admit this fact in a recently published guide, titled ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’ which was altered following multiple complaints from 43 of the Royal Society’s own members that “knowledgeable people” were seeing through brazenly alarmist climate change rhetoric. The Met office concurs that global warming has been slowing for some time, and the admission was also recently noted by Professor Phil Jones, the figure at the head of the Climategate scandal. It is hardly surprising to see the Royal Society still pushing a de-industrialization agenda, however, given it’s history and cadre of members and patrons. The Royal Society, a 350 year old establishment outfit, has traditionally been the most vocal proponent for the hypothesis of AGW. It was the former president of The Royal Society, Lord May, who made the infamous statement “The debate on climate change is over.” When he was head of the Society, May told government advisors: “On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots.” The Royal Society has thrown its full weight behind the global warming movement, lending its absolute support for legislation aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 80%, a process that will devastate the global economy and drastically reduce living standards everywhere. It has been even more vehement than national governments in its advocacy of the man-made cause of global warming, calling for such drastic CO2 cuts to be made in the short term, not even by the usual target date of 2050. Not surprising then that The Royal Society was also intimately tied to efforts to Whitewash the Climategate emails scandal. The society has also conducted extensive research into geoengineering the planet, and continually lobbies the government to divert funding into it. A recently published lengthy UK Government report drew heavily upon the Society’s research and concluded that a global body such as the UN should be appointed to exclusively regulate world wide geoengineering of the planet in order to stave off man made global warming. This information becomes even more disturbing when you consider the mindset of those who make up the membership of the Society. It is riddled with renowned eco-fascists, open eugenicists and depopulation fanatics. One notable member is James Lovelock, an eco-fascist who advocates ending democracy and instituting an authoritative elite to oversee global climate management and a radical stemming of the human population in order to combat climate change. He is also a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a notorious UK-based public policy group that campaigns for a gradual decline in the global human population, which it refers to as “primates” or “animals”, to what it sees as a “sustainable” level. Lovelock is also an ardent advocate of geoengineering. In 2007 Lovelock proposed laying vast swathes of pipes under the world’s oceans in order to pump water from the bottom of the seas – rich in nutrients, but mostly dead – to the top. The idea being that the action would encourage algae to breed, absorb more carbon and release more dimethyl sulphide into the atmosphere, a chemical known to seed sunlight reflecting clouds. Such methods are also covered in the Commons report. Another member is Jonathon Porritt, former chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, one of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, who has stated that Britain’s population must be cut in half from around 60 million to 30 million if it is to build a sustainable society. Porritt, also a member of the Optimum Population Trust, a connection that caused raised eyebrows when it was announced that Porritt was to be a part of a forthcoming Royal Society“Objective” Global Population Study. Also on the Royal Society’s working group for their global population study is another of their patrons, and another OPT member, BBC darling wildlife broadcaster and film-maker Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough has called for a one child policy like that of Communist China to be implemented in Britain. The proposal is one of the OPT’s main initiatives. Again, how is this man’s influence going to result in an “objective” study on population? Another member of that working group is Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, also a fellow of the OPT. Professor Malcolm Potts, another member of the working group was the first male doctor at the Marie Stopes Abortion Clinic in London, he also advised on the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act. Marie Stopes was a prominent campaigner for the implementation of eugenicspolicies. In Radiant Motherhood (1920) she called for the “sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood [to] be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory.” That group, according to her, included non-whites and the poor. Stopes, an anti-Semite Nazi sympathizer, campaigned for selective breeding to achieve racial purity, a passion she shared with Adolf Hitler in adoring letters and poems that she sent the leader of the Third Reich. Stopes also attended the Nazi congress on population science in Berlin in 1935, while calling for the “compulsory sterilization of the diseased, drunkards, or simply those of bad character.” Stopes acted on her appalling theories by concentrating her abortion clinics in poor areas so as to reduce the birth rate of the lower classes. Stopes left most of her estate to the Eugenics Society, an organization that shared her passion for racial purity and still exists today under the new name The Galton Institute. The society has included members such as Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of the evolutionist), Julian Huxley and Margaret Sanger. Read More: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/ultra-elitist-environmental… added by: GLOBALPOLITICAL

‘Empty’ Spaces are Full of Life in Berlin — For Now

The Tentstation campground is just five minutes from central Berlin’s main Hauptbahnhof train station. Photo via IgoUgo . In the crowded heart of Istanbul lies a secret garden. Actually, there are probably at least a few, but the one I had the pleasure of having a barbecue in recently sits behind a friend’s apartment, a neglected, overg… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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‘Empty’ Spaces are Full of Life in Berlin — For Now

Five for Five: Top Five Journalistic Obamagasms Exposed by NewsBusters | Round 4 of T-shirt Winners

Editor’s Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post. Click here to enter the contest . It’s time once again for “Five for Five,” this time around we unveil the top five Journalistic Obamagasms Exposed by NewsBusters. We know what you’re thinking: “Only five?!” Since they’re all so equally good, or bad, as the case may be, I’ll leave it to you folks to rank them in the comments section. They are: Chris Matthews’s restless leg syndrome [“Matthews: Obama Speech Caused ‘Thrill Going Up My Leg'” from February 13, 2008]  The birds of the air declaring the glory of Barack [“ABC: ‘National Pride’ Made Cold Feel Warmer as Seagulls ‘Awed’ by Obama’s Inaugural” from January 20, 2009] Evan Thomas (sort of) deifying Obama [“Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: Obama Is ‘Sort of God'” from June 5, 2009] Chris Matthews explaining his mission in life [“Matthews: My Job Is to Make Obama Presidency a Success” from November 6, 2008] Time magazine wishing everyone a Merry Obamamas [“Time Mag: Obama a ‘Prince’ Like Jesus Born of ‘Imagination, History and Hope'” from November 11, 2008] And now, as promised, the fourth round of winners in our 5th anniversary T-shirt giveaway . If you’re names not listed below, there’s still a chance to win. Click here to register . Congratulations to: Harriett G. of Anderson, Ind. Michael B. of Everglades City, Fla. Kimberly D. of Los Alamos, Calif. April E. of Youngstown, Ohio Michael E. of Shelbyville, Ind. Loran C. of San Francisco, Calif. Paul L. of Peaks Island, Maine Laurel A. of Aurora, Colo. Joseph Y. of Springfield, Ky. Chester S. of La Grande, Ore. Matt T. of Los Angeles, Calif. Debbie S. of Joliet, Ill. Helene S. of Elgin, Tex. Paul H. of West Chester, Pa. Nick L. of Concord, N.C. Steven J. of Naples, Fla. Eileen B. of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. John F. of Herndon, Va. Kenneth E. of Wichita, Kan. Keith R. of Kalispell, Mont. H.R. H. of Berlin, Md. Max A. of Lenoir, N.C. Fredrick G. of San Diego, Calif. Savanah M. of Roswell, Ga. Margaret B. of Kenner, La.

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Five for Five: Top Five Journalistic Obamagasms Exposed by NewsBusters | Round 4 of T-shirt Winners

Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson kissing picture

For her birthday (which is actually Saturday), Jessica Simpso got a sparkler-bedecked cake. When they weren#39;t locking lips, she and Eric Johnson, also 30, danced, goofed in silly wigs and posed for pictures. Now that#39;s amore! It was a sizzling 30th birthday celebration Friday night for Jessica Simpson, who kissed and snuggled with her new beau, former pro football player Eric Johnson, at a party on Italy#39;s Isle of Capri. Since they started dating in May, this was their latest PDA-fil

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Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson kissing picture

Europe poised to commit suicide, admit Turkey into EU

Turkey would immediately become the largest state in the EU. Rapidly Islamizing Ankara would be calling the shots for people in Berlin, London, Paris, and Rome. 70 million Muslims or more, including an untold number of active Islamic jihadists, would be able to enter Europe easily and travel around it freely. European Death Watch Alert: “Belgian EU presidency would support enlargement,” from the Telegraph, June 28 : Belgium will support the enlargement of the European Union to include Croatia, Iceland and Turkey during its forthcoming presidency of the bloc. Olivier Chastel, the Belgian secretary of state for EU affairs, in a joint news conference with Spanish counterpart Diego Lopez Garrido, raised the possibility of the opening of a new chapter in negotiations with Turkey in the coming months after Spain, which currently holds the EU presidency, backed Ankara's bid despite resistance from France and Germany. Belgium takes over the six-month rotating EU presidency from Spain on July 1. The EU began membership talks with Turkey in 2005 but the process has made slow progress. Only 12 of the 35 policy chapters, which all EU candidate countries must successfully negotiate prior to membership, are open…. added by: crystalman

Pink’s Tour Bus on Fire!

This is definitely not what Pink meant when she sang “Get the Party Started.” On the way to Munich from Berlin during the European leg of her circus-themed Funhouse Summer…

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Pink’s Tour Bus on Fire!

Relinquishment Can Be Fun! Redefining the Pursuit of Happiness to Create a Greener World

Eating like this every day wouldn’t be very good for the environment — and it wouldn’t be much of a treat either. Photo by Jennifer Hattam. Before I moved to Istanbul, I always thought of eating seasonally as a great idea in theory, but kind of a chore in practice. How were you supposed to remember if it was OK to eat asparagus in October or oranges in April? What if you really, really wanted to cook

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Relinquishment Can Be Fun! Redefining the Pursuit of Happiness to Create a Greener World

Russian Man Single-Handedly Builds Underground Subway System

Everybody is into rail these days; it is the greenest way to get around next to a bike. Leonid Mulyanchik has been into it for years since before the Berlin Wall fell, since before the first Macintosh, building “his own private underground Metro railway system.” English-Russia says that he has been doing it with his pension, that it is all legal and approved and that he is still at it. Gizmodo c… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Russian Man Single-Handedly Builds Underground Subway System