Health Science 20 – Critical Thinking Articles
Table of Contents:
Your Body Can Kill Cancer. It Just Needs Better Instructions................................................ 3
Researchers have been programming peoples' immune systems to recognize and destory cancer. .......... 3
Can We Live Forever? (VIDEO) ......................................................................................................... 4
Cadell Last - Huffington Post Posted: 11/19/2013 9:20 pm............................................................. 4
Transhumanism is the idea that we can (and should) use scientific knowledge to fundamentally
transform the human form in order to improve human intellectual and physical abilities. ..................... 4
Mystery of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) may have finally been solved ......... 6
How Having Three Parents Leads To Disease-Free Kids ........................................................ 7
A newly approved procedure lets scientists gather DNA from three people, then use it for in vitro
fertilization. ............................................................................................................................................... 7
STEM CELLS FREE SASKATCHEWAN MAN FROM CROHN'S ..................................................... 9
An App A Day: How personal trackers will change health care. ......................................... 11
Knocking out Malaria......................................................................................................................... 12
The first vaccine for one of the world’s most deadly diseases is on the way .......................................... 12
Is Your Pee The Right Color? [Infographic] ................................................................................ 14
How Studying Mummies Could Cure Modern Diseases ......................................................... 15
New Hope For Regrowing Severed Limbs, Just Like Lizards' Tails .................................... 17
Pretty good superpower to have, if you ask me. .................................................................................... 17
FYI: Why Doesn't Plan B Work For Heavier Women? ............................................................. 18
Even a double dose of the morning-after contraception isn't likely to work. ......................................... 18
Scientists Recreate The Sense Of Touch With Direct-To-Brain Electrical Signals ....... 20
These findings could help researchers make prosthetic arms that have a lifelike sense of touch. ......... 20
Bionic Hand Gives Amputee Real-Time Sensation .................................................................. 22
How Neuroscience Will Fight Five Age-Old Afflictions .......................................................... 24
The FDA Has Approved The First Artificial Pancreas............................................................. 28
An easier way for diabetics to control their insulin intake ...................................................................... 29
A Pill That Tells When It's Taken................................................................................................... 29
Can We Reengineer Ourselves to Cope With the Effects of Climate Change? ................. 30
Maybe. Although some of the ideas aren't pretty .................................................................................. 31
Can Artificial Meat Save The World? ............................................................................................ 32
Traditional chicken, beef, and pork production devours resources and creates waste. Meat-free meat
might be the solution. ............................................................................................................................. 33
Could This Liquid Replace Food? ................................................................................................... 41
Soylent, a milky beverage filled with nutrients, lets drinkers go without real food. Meet the inventor
behind the stuff........................................................................................................................................... 41
SELECTED INGREDIENTS* ........................................................................................................................ 42
How I Survived A Week Without Food ......................................................................................... 43
I consumed nothing but Soylent, a food-replacing beverage, for a week. Here's what happened to me
(and my poop). ............................................................................................................................................ 43
Your Body Can Kill Cancer. It Just Needs Better Instructions.
Researchers have been programming peoples' immune systems to recognize and destory cancer.
By
Veronique Greenwood Popular Science Magazine Feb 2014 Issue
Part of what makes cancers so insidious is that they’re not invaders: They’re our own cells
turned against us. That means the body usually doesn’t see them as a threat. But over the last
few years, teams at several different research institutions have been programming peoples’
immune systems to recognize and destroy cancer. So far, clinical trials of about a hundred
terminal leukemia patients have shown some lasting effects. A single treatment has kept two of
them cancer-free for three years and counting—after everything they tried had failed. Applying
the technique to more cancers requires finding new targets to attack, says Michel Sadelain, an
immunologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who pioneered the approach.
Exploratory clinical trials, including for lung and prostate cancers, are getting under way.
1) Capture T cells (the immune system‘s attack force) from the blood of a patient with B-cell
leukemia.
2) Genetically engineer the T cells to train their sights on the CD19 molecule, which sits on the
surface of B cells and the cancer cells that arose from them.
3) Inject the patient with the modified T cells, which may then destroy all cells with CD19—
both cancerous and not.
4) Bolster the patient’s immune system with treatments of antibodies, since B cells normally
make antibodies needed to fight infection.
Can We Live Forever? (VIDEO)
Cadell Last - Huffington Post Posted: 11/19/2013 9:20 pm
Transhumanism is the idea that we can (and should) use scientific knowledge to
fundamentally transform the human form in order to improve human intellectual and
physical abilities.
These ideas are usually connected with discussion about radical life extension, or
even dreams of some form of immortality. I've previously discussed how even
companies like Google are getting involved in the transhumanist desire for radical
life extension. The cultural pressure for longer life seems to be growing quickly.
But can we actually live forever (or at least radically longer)? The answer to that
question is (sadly) unknown, but I wanted to make a video that contextualized our
seemingly innate drive to seek immortality or eternal youth. Even before the
emergence of modern science, humans fantasized about eternity:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cadell-last/can-we-live-forever_b_4293224.html
Hope me turning into a robot wasn't too scary! Of course, I want to emphasize
that like our dreams of immortal life in pre-modern times, scientific dreams of
immortality are far more diverse than I was able to convey in this video. Also, the
idea of a technological singularity is very diverse. The one depicted above is
definitely "Kurzweilian" in nature. However, as artificial intelligence expert Ben
Goertzel has discussed in various publications, the singularity could happen in
many different ways. This just means that a complete merger between humans
and our machines is not the only way that superhuman intelligence could emerge.
Theories range from Hugo de Garis' idea of an "Artilect War" to Francis
Heylighen's idea of a "Global Brain" (which I have discussed before). And to make
matters even more complicated, even different singularity scenarios are not
mutually exclusive. I personally take the stance that our understanding of
singularity will gradually be improved and refined as we get temporally closer to
the emergence of superhuman intelligence, but as of now all we can do is
propose untestable hypotheses. Either way, the idea is fascinating to
contemplate.
Getting away from different singularities for a moment, I also want to emphasize
that although some of the research discussed in the video may seem like science
fiction, most of it is occurring in labs across the world right now. Research related
to stem cell replacement organs and brain-interface technology is already moving
forward at quite a rapid pace. This trend should continue as more people and
companies with deep pockets invest in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. If
you're interested in learning more about this research, I'd definitely recommend
checking out George Church's interview discussing "brain healthspan extension,"
or Ed Boyden and Theodore Berger discussing brain-interfacing technology and
nanotechnology.
From an anthropological perspective I can't help but marvel at our persistent
desire for eternity. The phenomenon specifically makes me wonder if the
yearning for eternity is in some way connected to the fact that we are the only
species aware of our own finite existence. Philosopher Stephen Cave recently
presented an idea similar to this at TEDx.
From Cave's perspective, the notion that science could cure aging and death is
just one more "elixir" story, no different from the stories believed by ancient
alchemists or medieval conquistadors. I know the neuroscientist Sam Harris has
even gone so far as to call the singularity "science-enabled religion." From my
perspective I feel like the possibility of radical life extension is definitely within
our species' capabilities. Science has already proven that it can dramatically
improve our health and longevity with surprising rapidity within just centuries.
Admittedly, science bringing the world population collectively closer to its evolved
aging average is much different from science bringing the world population into a
post-aging society. However, I maintain that whether or not we achieve radical
life extension is dependent on how we decide to allocate our own resources and
attention. A world with radical life extension would of course be profoundly
different from the one we live in today. Almost every aspect of our existence is
directly or indirectly based around the assumption that aging and death is an
inevitable consequence of being alive. How would humans behave in a world
where that wasn't the case? When confronted with this question, I tend to recall
a talk by Stephen Wolfram, in which is said:
In the end, one way or another, effective human immortality will undoubtedly be
achieved. And it will be the single largest discontinuity in human history. But I
wonder what's on the other side?
What do you think?
1) Do you think this is possible or do you think this is fantasy? Do you think it’s possible in our
lifetime?
2) Would you want to live forever?
3) Can you think of any disadvantages if our society suddenly could live forever?
4) Would you be worried about robots taking over if we developed “superhuman intelligence”?
Mystery of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) may have finally been solved
January 30, 2014
by Dr. Steve Salvatore
Medical Expert
NEW YORK (PIX11) – There’s finally a possible explanation for SIDS, or Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome.
Babies that die unexpectedly have underlying brain-stem abnormalities that are not
normal before death, according to new research published in the December issue of
Pediatrics.
The brain stem affects breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and temperature during
sleep. Experts say these abnormalities prevent sleeping babies from waking up when they
rebreathe too much carbon dioxide, when they don’t get enough oxygen or become
overheated.
Even infants who were sleeping face down or next to an adult had these underlying brainstem abnormalities.
What this means is that parents can finally let go of some of the guilt that they did
something wrong. And doctors can now try to identify tests for healthy babies to see who’s
at risk, and develop appropriate treatments.
In the meantime, safe sleep practices like a firm mattress could make a difference — no
padding, stuffed animals or pillows. And putting your baby to sleep on his or her back can
help. Also, don’t overheat your child, and don’t put covers over the head.
http://pix11.com/2014/01/30/mystery-of-sudden-infant-death-syndrome-sids-mayhave-finally-been-solved/#ixzz2sa7CSzgp
1) Does this raise any questions for you?
2) Do you know how you slept as a child (back, side, stomach)? Any idea why it is now
recommended that babies sleep on their back?
How Having Three Parents Leads To Disease-Free Kids
A newly approved procedure lets scientists gather DNA from three people, then use it for in
vitro fertilization.
Outcomes: HS20 – MKS1: Justify ethical decision
making processes based on an individual’s health.
HS20 – HB1: body systems and normal body functioning
By Virginia Hughes Posted 09.30.2013 at 4:52 pm
This summer, government health officials in the United Kingdom made headlines
by announcing that they will let scientists create babies with DNA from three
different people. The procedure is a type of in vitro fertilization (IVF) that would
allow women with mitochondrial diseases to have healthy babies. If approved by
British Parliament, the method, known as mitochondrial replacement, would lead
to a historic event: the first genetically modified humans who could pass down
those genetic tweaks to their children.
Some bioethicists and media commentators have voiced concerns about the
technique's safety because so far it's only been tested on human cells in the
laboratory. More broadly, they fear it's a step toward designer babies and
eugenics.
It's worth noting that IVF itself, which merges sperm and egg cells in a lab, also set
off debate when it debuted 35 years ago. The procedure carries some small
medical risks, such as a slightly increased chance of premature and low-weight
babies, and creates many embryos that never get used. But let's not forget its
enormous upside: It has allowed millions of couples to have children who couldn't
otherwise. Mitochondrial replacement isn't any scarier—or any less impressive.
Mitochondrial disease affects only about 1 in 5,000 people. The method will be
performed at a few select clinics in the U.K. and will be carefully monitored. If it
proves to be safe, then thousands of women will have the option to bear healthy
biological children without giving them their disease. And if it's not safe, it will
most likely be banned.
The method would lead to the first genetically modified humans who could
pass down those tweaks to their children.
The most counterintuitive thing about mitochondrial replacement is that the
babies it produces won't look any different from babies with only two genetic
parents. Here's why. The genome that you might already be familiar with is the
one in the nucleus of each cell that gets half of its DNA from mom and half from
dad. However, everyone also has another genome, the mitochondrial genome,
and that's what the new reproductive technique involves. Mitochondria are tiny
power plants inside each cell that help turn the food you eat into a usable source
of energy. Each has its own DNA, with about 37 genes that help the
mitochondrion function properly. Unlike nuclear genes, mitochondrial ones don't
affect a person's appearance or personality traits or most of what we associate
with heredity. They are also inherited entirely from mom.
If someone's mitochondrial DNA has a lot of mutations, that person could end up
with a host of problems, including muscular dystrophy, heart disease, and
seizures. The mutations can even be fatal. So the new IVF method simply replaces
mom's unhealthy mitochondria with healthy ones. Scientists take an egg from a
female donor and remove the nuclear DNA, leaving behind her mitochondria.
They then add nuclear DNA from the parents: the mother (who has mitochondrial
disease) and the father.
Yes, the resulting baby will be the product of three individuals' genes, but, more
important, it won't have a devastating disease. Although all reproductive
technologies have the potential to create biological problems, they're far more
likely to prevent them. Let's not let our fears get in the way of medical progress.
This article originally appeared in the October 2013 issue of Popular Science.
STEM CELLS FREE SASKATCHEWAN MAN FROM CROHN'S
Posted by Joe Sornberger on Wednesday, 05 February 2014 in News
http://www.stemcellfoundation.ca/en/blog/entry/stem-cells-free-saskatchewan-man-from-crohn-s
Rob McConnell’s Crohn’s disease struck about 13 years ago, when he was 20. The Elrose,
Saskatchewan farm manager believes the stress of his father’s death had a lot to do with the
onset of the debilitating disease -- and how hard it hit him.
The six-footer’s weight dropped to 95 pounds, the result of his decreased appetite, abdominal
pain and chronic diarrhea that sent him to the toilet at least a dozen times a day. He
underwent more operations than he can remember to remove diseased pieces of his intestines,
and when he wasn’t in hospital he “was on enough steroids and pain killers to kill a small
horse.”
Crohn’s disease and a related condition called ulcerative colitis occur when the body’s immune
system reacts to genetic and/or environmental triggers by attacking the digestive tract. The
two conditions are commonly referred to as Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD. Canada has
one of the highest incidences of IBD in the world, with one in about 150 -- about 230,000
Canadians -- affected. (For a lively and informative overview of IBD, check out this video at
the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada site.)
Rob tried every drug and treatment available to combat his Crohn’s. They would work for a
while. Some, especially the steroids, came with severe side-effects (moon-shaped face, hair
loss, sore joints and brittle bones). But the Crohn’s kept coming back.
“I was going downhill quickly,” says Rob. “I was at the hospital all the time and my
girlfriend Teneille would go home and go online looking for other options, especially
information about stem cell transplants. She found a blog by Billy Tytaneck.”
In 2008, Billy Tytaneck was able to avoid radical surgery to remove much of his bowel when Dr.
Harry Atkins of the Ottawa General Hospital performed a stem cell bone marrow transplant to
rebuild his immune system. Dr. Atkins has been featured in this space for his success in treating
patients with Multiple Sclerosis, as well as Stiff Person Syndrome and neuromyelitis optica.
Teneille wrote to Dr. Atkins, who asked her to send along Rob’s medical records. “About a week
later he responded and told me: ‘You know what? I think you might be a candidate.’ It was late
February 2012 when I went to Ottawa for my consultation and right away I had a great
connection with Dr. Atkins, who sat me down and went through the whole procedure.”
Three months later, Rob was back in Ottawa for his “Autologous Peripheral Stem Cell
Transplant” using stem cells that were extracted from his blood, then purified and fortified.
After undergoing extreme chemotherapy to annihilate his diseased immune system, Rob was
given back the robust stem cells to rebuild a new immune system.
He sailed through the treatment that others have found excruciating. “I took the chemo
relatively well. There was some nausea and I had other things that bothered me, but I didn’t get
the whole super illness.”
After staying in Ottawa for follow-up treatments and infection monitoring, Rob went back to
Saskatchewan in the fall where, a year-and-a-half later, the Crohn’s is in remission and he feels
fine. No more frequent trips to the bathroom. No more cramps. No more weight loss: he’s up to
161 pounds now, his heaviest ever. He no longer takes any medication.
While it is still too early to say whether Rob’s Crohn’s is cured -- the condition is known to wax
and wane -- so far so good. “I eat very well,” says Rob. “Things that used to bother me don’t
bother me anymore. There have been no attacks. I used to have a pain twice an hour or more.
It has been a long while since I had one.”
And his quality of life has vastly improved. “It is just amazing. I started another business.
Teneille and I got married at the end of June. I’m doing so much more and feeling so much
better. I really don’t think I would be on this side of the grass if I didn’t get that treatment.”
- See more at: http://www.stemcellfoundation.ca/en/blog/entry/stem-cells-free-saskatchewanman-from-crohn-s#sthash.lDTHRdli.dpuf
1) What is Crohn’s Disease?
2) What are Stem Cells?
3) Do you know of any other treatments that are currently using Stem Cells?
An App A Day: How personal trackers will change health care.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/app-day Paul Lachine
MD2 – Evaluate the application of diagnostic tools, when each is
best implemented and the interpretation of these results.
In the privacy of their own bathrooms, people can find out
whether they're pregnant or have HIV. They can even swab for
DNA to unravel their ancestry. Yet it's difficult to answer
simpler questions, like "Do I have the flu?" That's because the
most advanced diagnostic device in most medicine cabinets is a
thermometer. Regularly measuring and understanding anything
more complex than body temperature, such as respiratory rates
and heart rhythms, is a physician's job. So patients often go to
the doctor when they don't need to or don't go when they
should. By providing doctors with better data and patients with better decision-making tools,
personal health monitors and diagnostics could break that cycle.
In the last few years, medical-device manufacturers have begun using miniaturized sensors and
mobile phones to gather clinical information. The AliveCor and iBGStar iPhone attachments, for
example, monitor heart rhythm and blood glucose, respectively. The Tinké converts heart and
respiratory rates into a stress rating. And devices that gather a broader range of metrics are on
the way. The Scanadu Scout, a pocket-sized Bluetooth-enabled dongle that will be available
later this year, uses several kinds of sensors, including infrared, to measure blood flow, blood
oxygen, electrical heart activity, temperature, and heart rate. (The company is competing for
the Tricorder X PRIZE, a competition to create the first no-contact mobile diagnostic tool.)
Patients go to the doctor when they don't need to or don't go when they should.
The sheer volume of data produced by a network of devices like the Scanadu could be a boon
for public-health workers. A person who tracks one health metric every hour will generate
nearly four times the amount of data in the Library of Congress in his lifetime. Spread over
several metrics and many people, the data could provide a snapshot of national or local health
at any given time. Epidemiologists could use that information to spot early indicators of disease
and issue alerts before the infection has a chance to spread.
For individuals, personal data could be paired with software-based diagnostic tools. Patients
with hypertension, for example, would be alerted to pressure spikes, which could enable them
to better manage their condition with diet and exercise. Scanadu is developing apps that can
analyze smartphone images of user-collected blood or urine samples and detect respiratory
infections. The company plans to refine its software to synthesize a data sample, diagnose
common ailments, and let patients know when they're sick enough to need a doctor. For the
first time, emergencies will be emergencies, and colds will be colds—and doctors won't be the
only people who can see the difference.
Knocking out Malaria
The first vaccine for one of the world’s most deadly diseases is on the way
http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-07/new-trial-uses-mosquitos-spread-malariaimmunity
Synopsis: A vaccine with a 53 percent success rate doesn’t normally call for a celebration. But when
that means protecting one in every two African children from a disease that kills a kid every 30
seconds, those odds start looking better. “The impact is tremendous,” says Joe Cohen, inventor of
the first malaria vaccine. “We could save hundreds of thousands of kids every year.”
MKS2 – Justify ethical decision making processes based on an individual’s health
A vaccine with a 53 percent success rate doesn't normally
call for a celebration. But when that means protecting one
in every two African children from a disease that kills a kid
every 30 seconds, those odds start looking better. "The
impact is tremendous," says Joe Cohen, inventor of the first
malaria vaccine. "We could save hundreds of thousands of
kids every year."
This spring (2010), pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline will enroll 16,000 infants and toddlers,
the groups most at risk, in what could be the largest malaria-vaccine trial to date in Africa, setting
up labs in 11 hospitals in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Malawi and four other countries. The test follows on
the success of recent small-scale studies in Kenya and Tanzania that reduced infection by 65
percent in infants. "We're going to make sure the vaccine works everywhere in sub-Saharan Africa,"
says Cohen, vice president of R&D for Vaccines for Emerging Diseases and HIV at GSK. If this final
clinical trial replicates the results of previous studies, the company hopes to submit the vaccine for
regulatory approval in 2011, with the ultimate goal of including it in the World Health
Organization's free infant-immunization program, which covers measles, tuberculosis and other
diseases.
Until now, malaria, contracted when a female Anopheles mosquito carrying the Plasmodium parasite
bites a human, has proved impossible to eliminate in tropical and subtropical developing nations,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. There, parasites and mosquitoes have grown resistant to
antimalarial drugs and insecticides, and 90 million children don't have access to mosquito-proof
bed nets. "These preventative methods are good," Cohen says, "but an effective vaccine is essential
for controlling malaria."
The half-century-long road to a vaccine has been hampered by the parasite's complex life cycle,
shifting genetic makeup and unique ability to evade the immune system. After an infected mosquito
bites a person, the parasite heads to the liver, invades red blood cells, and multiplies until the cells
burst. If the invasion persists, it can shut down a child's nervous system in hours. Many die of liver
and kidney failures. Survivors suffer from anemia and brain damage.
Cohen's formula could finally bring relief. The vaccine, called RTS,S and originally developed for the
U.S. military, targets a protein specific to the parasite's surface. A one-time exposure to this protein
helps a child's immune system prepare an army of antibodies that will detect the parasite and order
immune cells to kill it—or at least inhibit its ability to multiply—the instant it hits the blood.
Even reducing the toll the disease exacts on global health and economies would be a success.
Malaria kills one million people annually, most of them children younger than five, and sickens
another 500 million. The disease accounts for 40 percent of public-health costs in sub-Saharan
Africa, and the severe flu-like symptoms keep adults out of the workforce. WHO estimates that, had
malaria been eradicated from sub-Saharan Africa 35 years ago, the region's gross domestic product
would be $100 billion richer.
Putting RTS,S into practice will cost about $500 million, according to Christian Loucq, director of
the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In
preparation for the large-scale trials, GSK and PATH have upgraded several pediatric wards in
hospitals, equipping each with microscopes for testing blood samples and satellite networks to
quickly share data. Meanwhile, a Harvard University research group will monitor the vaccine to
make sure it works on all substrains of the parasite.
While several scientists continue to work on stopping malaria before it bites—either by killing
mosquitoes before they transmit the parasite or destroying their breeding grounds—Loucq says
RTS,S offers the best chance of reaching the United Nations's Millennium Development Goal to stop
the disease's upward trend by 2015. "Vaccines for infectious diseases like polio and tuberculosis
changed the picture entirely," he says. "A 53 percent efficacy rate for a first-time vaccine puts us on
the way to victory”
1) Have you heard anything about this vaccine since the article was released?
2) Why do you think it has taken so long for RTS,S vaccine to make it into the mainstream (if it even
does)?
3) The World Health Organization says this about the vaccine:
Based on currently available data the vaccine will be evaluated as an addition to, not a
replacement for, existing preventive, diagnostic and treatment measures for Malaria.
Why do you think this is? Will a vaccine ever be created for Malaria?
Is Your Pee The Right Color? [Infographic]
A helpful guide to urine appearance
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/your-pee-right-color-infographic
NM2 – Apply an understanding of biochemical processes to make healthy
lifestyle choices
By Kelsey D. Atherton
Posted 12.03.2013 at 1:04 pm
Several times a day, human bodies release a stream of data about internal
health. Unfortunately, the data comes analog, and so isn't immediately
accessible as useful information. Now an infographic from the Cleveland
Clinic offers a helpful breakdown of urine colors, from healthy "pale straw"
to icky "brown ale." This guide is good for a fast check, but as the Cleveland
Clinic recommends, if you think your pee looks weird, it's probably best to
go find an actual doctor.
The Color Of Pee Cleveland Clinic
How Studying Mummies Could Cure Modern Diseases
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-09/mummy-medicine
HB2 – Examine a variety of pathologies and how they affect the body
By comparing diseases from then and now, researchers can learn how they spread. Maybe
they can learn how to stop them, too.
Ancient Remains. This mummy was
once Amenhotep III, King Tut's
grandfather. Getty Images/Kenneth
Garrett
Earlier this year, scientists published a study of whole-body CT scans of 137 mummies:
ancient Egyptians and Peruvians, ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and
Unangan hunter-gatherers of the Aleutian Islands. They reported signs of atherosclerosis—
a dangerous artery hardening that can lead to heart attacks or stroke—in 34 percent of
them. What struck the research team, led by Randall Thompson of Saint Luke's Mid
America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, was that it afflicted mummies from every
group. Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, also sees
the condition in about 30 to 50 percent of the adult specimens he studies. The breadth of
these findings suggests that atherosclerosis today may have less to do with modern
excesses such as overeating and more with underlying genetic factors that seem present in
a certain percentage of humans living almost anywhere in the world. Someday, identifying
those genes could lead to new drugs for heart disease.
They're now finding signs of everything from prostate cancer to malaria in mummies
across the globe.
Ancient mummies can provide a wealth of information about the health of early
civilizations, which may help us better treat diseases today. But because mummies are both
rare and delicate, researchers have been limited in what they could do to them—and
therefore what they could learn from them. Recent improvements of two medical tools—
DNA sequencing, which can reveal microbial infections, and CT scanning—are letting
paleopathologists diagnose mummies' causes of death in detail. They're now finding signs
of everything from prostate cancer to malaria in mummies across the globe. By comparing
the ancient forms of those diseases with their contemporary equivalents, researchers can
learn how those diseases evolved, what makes them so harmful, and—possibly—how to
stop them.
In the case of tuberculosis (TB), which kills upwards of 1.4 million people a year,
researchers are using DNA sequencing and CT scans in mummies to understand what
conditions TB thrives in and how to treat it. Work from Haagen Klaus, a biological
anthropologist at George Mason University, suggests that, contrary to what some experts
think, Europeans might have brought a particularly deadly form of TB to the Americas. His
preliminary DNA data hints that Peruvian remains dating back to the 10th century—before
Spanish explorers arrived—might have been infected with a more benign strain of the TB
bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or a different species altogether, Mycobacterium
kansasii. And many studies have shown that the bodies of Central Americans from before
and after European contact rarely, if ever, show signs of TB symptoms. Klaus subscribes to
the hypothesis that this may be because M. tuberculosis thrives in the presence of iron, and
these people ate a low-iron diet with little meat. If true, this insight could point to new
drugs that would inhibit M. tuberculosis from taking up iron.
Hold Still. Researchers use magnetic
resonance imaging to see inside
mummies, such as this one from
ancient Peru.
Siemens Press Picture (left)
Other scientists are using DNA sequencing to investigate Chagas disease, an illness caused
by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which can cause fatal heart failure or swelling of
digestive system organs. The parasite infects roughly 10 million people, mostly in Latin
America, and appears to be spreading. Some think that different strains of the parasite
affect different organs. So in 2008, when Ana Carolina Vicente and Ana Jansen of the
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro reported their discovery of T. cruzi in the
enlarged colon of a 560-year-old mummified body from Brazil, they might have come upon
an important clue. Previously, they found T. cruzi in a sample of bone remains from 4,500
to 7,000 years ago. Comparing the DNA of different samples of the parasite could reveal
more about its evolution and spread, and perhaps influence treatment someday.
Paleopathologists are also taking advantage of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which
detects signals from water. Dry mummies haven't been perfect for this technique, but
recent improvements in MRI might make for better images of soft tissues, such as tongues.
Plus, unlike the radiation from CT scanning, MRI has no possible risk of damaging DNA
evidence.
This article originally appeared in the October 2013 issue of Popular Science.
New Hope For Regrowing Severed Limbs, Just Like Lizards'
Tails
Pretty good superpower to have, if you ask me.
HB2 – Examine a variety of pathologies and how they affect the body
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-06/you-can-now-regrow-severed-fingertip-just-lizardstail?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=4&con=new-hope-for-regrowing-severed-limbs-just-like-lizards-tails
By Dan Nosowitz
Posted 06.13.2013 at 2:15 pm
Some lizards and amphibians have the ability to regrow severed tails or limbs--in fact, the bluetailed skink abandons its tail intentionally to distract predators. But humans, despite our amazing
advancements in the field of spying on each other, are typically thought to lack this superpower-like
ability. But in fact, we're more like blue-tailed skinks than you'd think!
Back in 2010, a woman named Deepa Kulkarni lost the tip of her finger to an altercation with a
slammed door. She was able to grow it back with the use of a powder made of ground-up pig
bladder (seriously) called MatriStem which, according to ACell, the company that makes it,
"incorporates into the surrounding tissue during the healing process and leaves new tissue where
scar tissue formation is normally expected." Basically, MatriStem works as a sort of scaffolding--it
attracts stem cells from, they think, the bone marrow, which comes out and builds tissue on top of
the MatriStem powder rather than merely scarring over. It worked for Kulkarni, but it was
theorized that it only worked because she retained a bit of the nail on her partially-severed finger.
Dr. Mayumi Ito, a stem cell biologist and dermatologist at NYU's Langone Medical Center, recently
published a paper in which he and his team examined exactly how this works, and confirmed the
theory about the fingernail. Turns out the human fingernail includes a group of stem cells that
promote cell growth--not just the rest of a fingernail, but tissue and even bone. Ito named this
family of stem cells "Wnts," pronounced "wints," and found that in mice, these cells produce
chemicals that regrew bone and flesh.
So what if, in the absence of natural Wnts, you used genetic engineering to force tissue to produce
these proteins? Would the natural effect--regrown tissue and bone--follow?
Amazingly, yes. When they forced the production of Wnts in mice, the team managed to regrow
bone and tissue without any of the natural stem cells being present at all. This has huge
implications for the treatment of amputations--the experiment was only performed on mice, but if
the technique holds true for humans, this could be the beginning of the end for lost limbs.
FYI: Why Doesn't Plan B Work For Heavier Women?
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/fyi-why-doesnt-plan-b-work-heavierwomen?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=3&con=fyi-why-doesnt-plan-b-work-for-heavier-women
HB1 – Organize body systems and organs anatomically to identify normal body functioning.
Even a double dose of the morning-after contraception isn't likely to work.
By Francie Diep Posted 11.27.2013 at 1:30 pm
Front and Back of a Tablet of Plan B One-Step, an Emergency Contraceptive
Pillbox, U.S. National Library of Medicine
If you're a lady—or even if you're not—you might have heard already. Mother Jones reported on
Monday that a European manufacturer of a pill identical to Plan B One-Step, the U.S.' bestknown "morning-after pill," is warning patients that its product doesn't work well for women who
weigh more than 165 pounds. And it doesn't work at all for women over 176 pounds. The average
American woman weighs 166 pounds. (Mother Jones also published a story today clarifying that the
strongest evidence ties emergency contraceptive's effectiveness directly to weight, not to body
mass index or BMI, which is a measure of weight in proportion to height. Here, we'll consider
weight and BMI interchangeable, although they aren't exactly so.)
Interestingly, researchers suspect it's not just a matter of getting heavier women to take more of
the Plan B chemical, called levonorgestrel. There have been no studies to check whether more
levonorgestrel would work for heavier women, but, in general, the contraceptive scientists Popular
Science spoke with thought that that is unlikely to solve the problem. (If you'd like to try anyway,
levonorgestrel is safe to take in a double dose.) With levonorgestrel, what you put in isn't directly
related to what you get out. In other words, when you take a double dose of levonorgestrel, the
amount of the chemical that shows up in your bloodstream doesn't double. That's true no matter
what you weigh.
This phenomenon is called non-linear pharmacokinetics, and it's pretty common in drugs. "It is a
nightmare for pharma companies as such phenomenon will make their drugs less appealing to
clinical practice," Ganesh Cherala, a pharmaceutical scientist at the Oregon Health & Science
University, wrote in an email. "They usually weed out drugs with high potential for non-linear
pharmacokinetics." Levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives made their way to doctor's
offices anyway because the original studies on contraceptives of all kinds were usually done in
normal BMI women.
Cherala works with obstetrician-gynecologist Alison Edelman, who has published numerous
studies on the effectiveness of contraceptives in women of different weights. In addition to
levonorgestrel's non-linear pharmokinetics, Edelman and her collaborators are trying to figure out
whether heavier women's bodies treat levonorgestrel differently. So far, they've determined that in
obese women, levonorgestrel leaves the bloodstream at a different rate than in normal-weight
women.
Levonorgestrel may also enter the bloodstream at a different rate in obese women. Patients take
the morning-after pill by swallowing it, which means it passes through the liver before it reaches
the bloodstream. This happens to everybody, no matter her weight, but overweight and obese
women's livers also happen to create more drug-metabolizing enzymes than normal-weight
women's livers, Cherala says. That means more levonorgestrel may be chewed up in an obese
women's liver before it ever makes it to her bloodstream, which would carry it to her reproductive
organs, where it does its work.
So heavier women have a lot of things working against them when they try to use levonorgestrel as
an emergency contraceptive. That doesn't mean they're totally out of luck. They may get copper
intrauterine devices fitted as an emergency contraceptive. IUDs aren't affected by weight, Edelman
says. They may also use an emergency contraceptive called ulipristal acetate, brand name Ella. The
same study that found levonorgestrel doesn't work well for women over 165 pounds also found
that ulipristal is not as affected by weight, although it, too, seems to lose its efficacy in women over
194 pounds (88 kilograms) or with BMIs over 35. Bonus: Copper IUDs and ulipristal are actually
slightly more effective as emergency contraceptives than levonorgestrel at any given weight.
Nothing is quite as convenient in the U.S. as levonorgestrel, however. It's the only emergency
contraceptive available over-the-counter to anybody of any age. IUDs must be professionally fitted,
and ulipristal requires a prescription for patients of all ages.
Scientists Recreate The Sense Of Touch With Direct-To-Brain
Electrical Signals
These findings could help researchers make prosthetic arms that have a lifelike sense of
touch.
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/scientists-recreate-sense-touch-direct-brain-electricalsignals?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=4&con=scientists-recreate-the-sense-of-touch-with-directtobrainelectrical-signals
HB1 Organize body systems and organs anatomically to identify normal body functioning
By Francie Diep Posted 10.14.2013 at 3:00 pm
An Experimental Prosthetic Arm from 2011
We've seen some very cool prosthetic arms recently, including ones people are able to control—just
as they control biological arms—with their thoughts. So what's one of the next great frontiers for
prosthetics? Letting people experience touches through them, too.
The human sense of touch does a lot more than let people enjoy fresh sheets or soft kitties. It's also
crucial for helping people judge how hard to hold stuff they want to pick up, or whether they've got
a good grip on something slippery. In a feature published earlier this year, Nature News talked with
one prosthetic arm user, Igor Spetic, who accidentally broke dishes and bruised fruit he tried to
hold with his device. If he had a prosthesis that had a sense of touch, he told Nature News, "I'd
probably lay everything on the countertop and just start grabbing stuff. I'd be so excited."
Now one research group is reporting a major step toward a touchy-feely prosthetic. A team of
researchers from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University performed a series of
experiments that showed they could send electrical signals directly to the brains of rhesus
macaques and that the macaques were able to interpret the signals as touches on different parts of
their hands. Another series of experiments showed rhesus macaques could interpret different
direct-to-brain signals as touches of varying pressure. A third explored whether direct-to-brain
signals work quickly enough to be able to accurately tell macaques when a prosthetic is touching
something and when it stops the touch. (The signals seem to move too slowly to be totally accurate,
but the researchers thought of some workarounds, which they discussed in a paper they published
today in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences.)
The macaques were quickly able to interpret electrical brain stimulation as analogues to physical
touches.
The team will surely work to incorporate those findings into a device. For one thing, some of the
researchers' experiments actually involved a prosthetic finger that sent signals to the research
monkeys' brains. For another, Johns Hopkins University is working on a prototype that's the most
sophisticated touch-enabled prosthesis in the world, with more than 100 sensors, Nature News
reports.
There was one especially cool thing the Chicago-Johns Hopkins team demonstrated. While it's
impossible to know exactly what the monkeys feel when they get electrical buzzes to their brains,
one series of experiments showed the animals were quickly able to interpret electrical brain
stimulation as analogues to physical touches.
First, the researchers taught rhesus macaques to look either left or right after feeling two presses
into their hands—say, pressure on the index finger, and then pressure on the pinky finger. After
running several trials to make sure the monkeys learned the press-look game as well as they could,
the researchers stimulated parts of the monkeys' brains they'd learned corresponded with different
parts of the monkeys' hands. The two macaques in whom the researchers tested this looked in the
correct direction 81 percent and 72 percent of the time, the very first time researchers sent
electrical signals to their brains.
This research could help scientists develop touch-enabled prosthetics that send signals that are
intuitive for people to interpret, the researchers wrote in their paper.
It'll be years yet before technology like this will show up in prosthetics for people, however. It is
invasive, requiring wiring to the brain, so researchers will have to do a lot to show it's safe and
durable. (Nobody wants to have to undergo frequent brain implants for tune-ups or software
updates.) It's also not clear yet whether electrical signals sent to the brain are able to reproduce
touches as specific as human or monkey skin is able to feel. The electric signals could be lower
resolution than true touches.
Bionic Hand Gives Amputee Real-Time Sensation
February 6, 2014 | by Lisa Winter “Science is Awesome”
photo credit: LifeHand 2 / Patrizia Tocci
Each year in the United States 150,000 people will have a limb amputated. It can be
particularly devastating to lose a hand, due to the incredible amount of sensory information
received from them. Bionic prosthetics are a hot area of research right now as these devices seek to
replicate the function of the hand as much as possible. A new prototype arm prosthetic is not only
able to help hold things but is actually able to transmit sensory data to the user in real time. The
creation of the device was a large international collaboration led by Silvestro Micera and the results
were published in Science Translational Medicine.
Dennis Aabo Sørenson from Denmark lost the lower portion of his left arm nine years ago during an
accident involving fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Now 36 years old, Sørenson gained a renewed
sense of touch in a clinical trial, thanks to a new bionic prosthetic. At the onset of a trial, doctors
were initially worried that his nerves would not work since they had been out of use for nearly a
decade. Fortunately, preliminary testing showed that they were still functional and sensitive.
The prosthetic device, called LifeHand 2, builds off of the first generation LifeHand device which
was the first thought-controlled bionic prosthetic to have rudimentary touch feedback and
was successfully tested in 2009. This next-generation device is covered in sensors that interpret
information based on the movement of the artificial tendons. The sensors are connected to four
electrodes that actually tap in to Sørenson’s nervous system at the base of his natural arm. Complex
computer algorithms were developed to translate the rough electrical signals into a more refined
impulses that could be processed by the human brain without overloading it with sensory input.
Surgery was performed in January 2013 in Rome as a host of neurologists and surgeons oversaw
the implantation of the electrodes. Over the course of nearly three weeks, tests were performed on
the electrodes to ensure that they were functioning and communicating with Sørenson’s brain
properly. This also allowed the team to discover what changes, if any, would occur once scar tissue
began to form around the implants. There was no change in function as the scarring set in, much to
the delight of the researchers.
For the next week, Sørenson was connected to the hand for extensive testing. The greatest success
came when he was blindfolded with headphones in and was asked to identify objects just through
touch. He described the sensory feedback as “incredible” and was able to identify the shape and
hardness of the item -- something he had not been able to do in many years.
Unfortunately, due to regulations for clinical trials, Sørenson was only able to have the electrodes
implanted for one month. The researchers feel confident that the electrodes could have remained in
place for a number of years without adverse effects. Sørenson’s normal prosthetic reacts to muscle
movement in his upper arm and can grip objects. However, it does not have sensory feedback which
makes pressure control difficult at times. Amputees endure a large amount of psychological trauma
at the loss of limb, function, and sensory input, and the research team realizes he will have to go
through that loss all over again after the brief resurgence of a sense of touch. However, he reports
that he was happy to help in the technological advance not just for his sake, but for all amputees
who will benefit as a result of the study.
Due to the nature of the LifeHand 2 bionic prosthetic, it will still be a number of years before it will
be approved for commercial use. In the meantime, researchers will continue to advance the
technology, making smaller versions of the sensors that are more finely tuned and adding greater
dexterity in the fingers.
Check out this video of the the LifeHand 2 in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtPs8d4JbwY
- See more at: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/bionic-hand-gives-amputee-real-timesensation#sthash.sAYDwuUl.dpuf
How Neuroscience Will Fight Five Age-Old Afflictions
Rewiring the brain to battle seizures, blindness, and more
By Virginia Hughes Posted 02.18.2013 at 12:49 pm
HS 20 – HB1: Organize body systems and organs anatomically to identify normal body functioning.
HS20 – HB2: Examine a variety of pathologies and how they affect the body.
Rewiring The Brain: Seizures
a) A surgeon identifies where in the brain
seizures occur using electrodes placed on the
scalp, then inserts an electrode array directly
into that region. b) A seizure starts when
neurons become overly excited, causing a
prominent electrical signature. The array detects
this signature and emits its own electrical pulse,
which disrupts the neurons. c) The pulse also
puts a negative current on a polymer enveloping
the electrodes on the array, causing its charge to
change from positive to neutral. Negatively
charged antiseizure-drug molecules drop away
from the electrodes, further calming the nearby
neurons.
1) SEIZURES
A device delivers targeted drugs to calm overactive neurons
For years, large clinical trials have treated people with epilepsy using so-called deep-brain stimulation:
surgically implanted electrodes that can detect a seizure and stop it with an electrical jolt. The
technology leads to a 69 percent reduction in seizures after five years, according to the latest results.
Tracy Cui, a biomedical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh, hopes to improve upon that statistic.
Her group has designed an electrode that would deliver both an electrical pulse and antiseizure
medication. "We know where we want to apply the drug," Cui says, "so you would not need a lot of it."
To build the device, Cui's team immersed a metal electrode in a solution containing two key ingredients:
a molecule called a monomer and the drug CNQX. Zapping the solution with electricity causes the
monomers to link together and form a long chain called a polymer. Because the polymer is positively
charged, it attracts the negatively charged CNQX, leaving the engineers with their target product: an
electrode coated in a film that's infused with the drug.
The researchers then placed the electrodes in a petri dish with rat neurons. Another zap of electricity
disrupted the electrostatic attraction in the film, causing the polymer to release its pharmacological
payload—and nearby cells to quiet their erratic firing patterns. Cui says her team has successfully
repeated the experiment in living rats. Next, she'd like to test the electrodes in epileptic rats and then
begin the long process of regulatory approval for human use.
The body's blood-brain barrier protects the organ from everything but the smallest molecules, rendering
most drugs ineffective. As a result, this drug-delivery mechanism could treat other brain disorders, Cui
says. The electrodes can be loaded with any kind of small drug—like dopamine or painkillers—making it
useful for treating Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, or even drug addiction.
Rewiring The Brain: Dementia
a) A surgeon implants an electrode
array into the prefrontal cortex so
that it touches neurons in layer 2/3
and layer 5. b) The electrodes record
brain activity and send it to a
microprocessor that sits under the
skin at the top of the head. c) When
the microprocessor detects a specific
pattern, such as the neural signature
of the person trying to recall a
memory, it commands the array to
send electric pulses into the
surrounding area, stimulating mental
processing.
Medi-Mation
2) DEMENTIA
Electrode arrays stimulate mental processing
Dementia is one of the most well-known and frustrating brain afflictions. It damages many of the
fundamental cognitive functions that make us human: working memory, decision-making, language, and
logical reasoning. Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases all lead to dementia, and it's also
sometimes associated with multiple sclerosis, AIDS, and the normal process of aging.
Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California, hopes to help people
stave off the symptoms of dementia with a device implanted in the brain's prefrontal cortex, a region
crucial for sophisticated cognition. He and colleagues at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center tested the
device in a study involving five monkeys and a memory game.
First the team implanted an electrode array so that it could record from layers 2/3 and 5 of the
prefrontal cortex and stimulate layer 5. The neural signals that jet back and forth between these areas
relate to attention and decision-making. The team then trained the monkeys to play a computer game in
which they saw a cartoon picture—such as a truck, lion, or paint palette—and had to select the same
image from a panel of pictures 90 seconds later.
The scientists initially analyzed the electrical signals sent between the two cortical layers when the
monkeys made a correct match. In later experiments, the team caused the array to emit the same signal
just before the monkey made its decision. The animals' accuracy improved by about 10 percent. That
effect may be even more profound in an impaired brain. When the monkeys played the same game
after receiving a hit of cocaine, their performance dropped by about 20 percent. But electrical
stimulation restored their accuracy to normal levels.
Dementia involves far more complicated circuitry than these two layers of the brain. But once scientists
better understand exactly how dementia works, it may be possible to combine several implants to each
target a specific region.
Rewiring The Brain: Blindness
a) An eye diseased with retinitis
pigmentosa has damaged
photoreceptors, or rods and
cones. Doctors inject the eye with
a nonharmful virus containing the
gene channelrhodopsin-2, or
ChR2. b) The virus migrates into
the retina at the back of the eye
and inserts the gene into ganglion
cells, which relay signals from the
rods and cones to the optic nerve.
The ganglion cells begin
expressing the ChR2 protein in
their membranes. c) Incoming
light activates the ChR2 protein in
ganglion cells, stimulating them to
fire an electrical impulse. That
message travels through the optic
nerve to the brain's visual cortex,
which interprets it as a rough
image.
Medi-Mation
3) BLINDNESS
Gene therapy converts cells into photoreceptors, restoring eyesight
Millions of people lose their eyesight when disease damages the photoreceptor cells in their retinas.
These cells, called rods and cones, play a pivotal role in vision: They convert incoming light into electrical
impulses that the brain interprets as an image.
In recent years, a handful of companies have developed electrode-array implants that bypass the
damaged cells. A microprocessor translates information from a video camera into electric pulses that
stimulate the retina; as a result, blind subjects in clinical trials have been able to distinguish objects and
even read very large type. But the implanted arrays have one big drawback: They stimulate only a small
number of retinal cells—about 60 out of 100,000—which ultimately limits a person's visual resolution.
A gene therapy being developed by Michigan-based RetroSense could replace thousands of damaged
retinal cells. The company's technology targets the layer of the retina containing ganglion cells.
Normally, ganglion cells transmit the electric signal from the rods and cones to the brain. But
RetroSense inserts a gene that makes the ganglion cells sensitive to light; they take over the job of the
photoreceptors. So far, scientists have successfully tested the technology on rodents and monkeys. In
rat studies, the gene therapy allowed the animals to see well enough to detect the edge of a platform as
they neared it.
The company plans to launch the first clinical trial of the technology next year, with nine subjects
blinded by a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Unlike the surgeries to implant electrode arrays, the
procedure to inject gene therapy will take just minutes and requires only local anesthesia. "The visual
signal that comes from the ganglion cells may not be encoded in exactly the fashion that they're used
to," says Peter Francis, chief medical officer of RetroSense. "But what is likely to happen is that their
brain is going to adapt."
Rewiring The Brain: Paralysis
a) Surgeons implant electrode arrays in two
areas of the brain: the motor cortex and the
somatosensory cortex. b) As a subject thinks
about kicking the ball, his brain sends neural
commands from the motor cortex. These are
picked up by the array and transmitted to a
microprocessor mounted on the patient's skull.
c) The microprocessor wirelessly transmits these
commands to a lower-body exoskeleton, which
has its own processor. The leg moves toward the
ball. d) When the foot touches the ground,
pressure sensors on the exoskeleton's surface
generate a tactile signal. That signal is sent back
to the electrode array in the patient's sensory
cortex. With this feedback loop, the patient can
both "feel" the ground and kick the ball.
4) PARALYSIS
A brain-machine interface controls limbs while
sensing what they touch
Last year, clinical trials involving brain implants
gave great hope to people with severe spinal
cord injuries. Two paralyzed subjects imagined
picking up a cup of coffee. Electrode arrays
decoded those neural instructions in real time
and sent them to a robotic arm, which brought
the coffee to their lips.
But to move limbs with any real precision, the
brain also requires tactile feedback. Miguel
Nicolelis, a biomedical engineer at Duke
University, has now demonstrated that brainmachine interfaces can simultaneously control
motion and relay a sense of touch—at least in
virtual reality.
For the experiment, Nicolelis's team inserted electrodes in two brain areas in monkeys: the motor cortex, which
controls movement, and the nearby somatosensory cortex, which interprets touch signals from the outside world.
Then the monkeys played a computer game in which they controlled a virtual arm—first by using a joystick and
eventually by simply imagining the movement. The arm could touch three identical-looking gray circles. But each
circle had a different virtual "texture" that sent a distinct electrical pattern to the monkeys' somatosensory cortex.
The monkeys learned to select the texture that produced a treat, proving that the implant was both sending and
receiving neural messages.
This year, a study in Brazil will test the ability of 10 to 20 patients with spinal cord injuries to control an
exoskeleton using the implant. Nicolelis, an ardent fan of Brazilian soccer, has set a strict timetable for his team: A
nonprofit consortium he created, the Walk Again Project, plans to outfit a paraplegic man with a robotic
exoskeleton and take him to the 2014 World Cup in São Paulo, where he will deliver the opening kick.
Rewiring The Brain: Deafness
a) A surgeon makes an incision
behind the patient's ear and
inserts new auditory cells,
derived from stem cells, into the
spiral ganglion at the base of the
cochlea. b) These cells grow,
forming projections that
reinforce a damaged auditory
nerve. They ultimately connect
with cells in the brain stem.
Medi-Mation
5) DEAFNESS
Stem cells repair a damaged
auditory nerve, improving
hearing
Over the past 25 years, more
than 30,000 people with
hearing loss have received an
electronic implant that
replaces the cochlea, the
snail-shaped organ in the
inner ear whose cells transform sound waves into electrical signals. The device acts as a microphone,
picking up sounds from the environment and transmitting them to the auditory nerve, which carries
them on to the brain.
But a cochlear implant won't help the 10 percent of people whose profound hearing loss is caused by
damage to the auditory nerve. Fortunately for this group, a team of British scientists has found a way to
restore that nerve using stem cells.
The researchers exposed human embryonic stem cells to growth factors, substances that cause them to
differentiate into the precursors of auditory neurons. Then they injected some 50,000 of these cells into
the cochleas of gerbils whose auditory nerves had been damaged. (Gerbils are often used as models of
deafness because their range of hearing is similar to that of people.) Three months after the transplant,
about one third of the original number of auditory neurons had been restored; some appeared to form
projections that connected to the brain stem. The animals' hearing improved, on average, by 46 percent.
It will be years before the technique is tested in humans. Once it is, researchers say, it has the potential
to help not only those with nerve damage but also people with more widespread impairment whose
auditory nerve must be repaired in order to receive a cochlear implant.
This article originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of Popular Science
The FDA Has Approved The First Artificial Pancreas
An easier way for diabetics to control their insulin intake
By Shaunacy Ferro Posted 10.01.2013 at 5:00 pm
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/fda-has-approved-first-artificialpancreas?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=6&con=the-fda-has-approved-the-first-artificial-pancreas
MiniMed® 530G with Enlite®
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its first "artificial pancreas" to automatically
control the insulin levels of diabetics. (You know, before the shutdown furloughed almost half of its
staff.)
The hormone insulin controls blood sugar levels and is normally produced in the body by the
pancreas. But in Type 1 diabetics (and sometimes Type 2), the pancreas just doesn't make insulin,
meaning diabetics' bodies can't regulate blood sugar levels. This system, designed by Minneapolisbased medical tech company Medtronic, is a wearable little gadget that stops insulin delivery
automatically when glucose levels get too low, hopefully keeping the wearer from going into a
diabetic coma.
With a traditional pump, the device can keep delivering insulin even when the your blood sugar is
too low, lowering levels even further and sometimes causing loss of consciousness. This is
especially dangerous during sleep, when you can't exactly gauge your own blood sugar. Medtronic's
MiniMed 530G system can detect up to 93 percent of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) episodes, and
will sound an alarm to wake you up if your blood sugar gets too low. If you don't respond, the
system will shut off insulin delivery for two hours, hopefully staving off dangerously low blood
sugar levels.
One caveat: Medtronic got a warning letter from the FDA only a few weeks ago related to
manufacturing processes of their Paradigm Insulin Infusion Pumps (which are used in this
system) at their facility in Northridge, Calif. The pumps had been recalled in June because they
were malfunctioning and delivering either too much or not enough insulin, and the FDA found the
company was not doing enough to verify that the failure wouldn't happen again. The company said
in the press release accompanying the product approval that it had "already addressed many of the
observations noted in the warning letter and is committed to resolving the remaining observations
as quickly as possible."
A Pill That Tells When It's Taken
S20-MKS2 Justify ethical decision making processes based on an individual’s health
MD2 – Evaluate the application of diagnostic tools, when each is best implemented and the interpretation of these results
The Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, a blend of MEMS and wireless data transfer, could
take the guesswork out of drug delivery for good.
As a doctor, George Savage had the power to save lives, but part of his job still made him feel
helpless: After patients left the hospital, he had no way of knowing if they were taking their
medications. According to the World Health Organization, patients fail to use their prescriptions
properly at least half the time.
It was a former grad-school housemate, Andrew Thompson, who brought Savage a solution.
While perusing vendors at an American Heart Association meeting in 2004, Thompson noticed a
glut of technology demonstrations on the device side, but a dearth on the drug side. "The only tech
on display was a cappuccino machine," he says. Inspired, the pair set to work with electrical
engineer Mark Zdeblick to digitize medicine. Their Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, a blend
of MEMS and wireless data transfer, could take the guesswork out of drug delivery for good.
It took the team seven years to create the centerpiece of the Feedback System, a pill that doubles
as a radio. "The biggest question was, What types of materials would the FDA allow us to use?"
Zdeblick says. "So we decided to use [ones from] a vitamin." Small amounts of copper and
magnesium conduct enough electricity (1.5 volts) to power a one-millimeter chip. When a pill
containing the chip hits the stomach, the metals interact with stomach fluid to generate a current.
The current transmits to a 2.5-inch patch on the patient's torso, which relays the signal as binary
code to his phone over Bluetooth. An app will determine the pill's serial number, manufacturer, and
ingredients, and saves that data to the cloud. Doctors will eventually be able to set up automatic
alerts when adherence problems arise.
The FDA approved a placebo-based version of the Feedback System in July, and the partners now
plan to sell it to drugmakers. Savage, who's worked in medical technology for more than 20 years,
says the best applications will be conditions where missing a few doses can have dangerous
consequences, such as schizophrenia and congestive heart failure. Several companies have already
invested in the Feedback System, including Novartis, maker of Ritalin and breast-cancer drug
Femara. The FDA will need to approve drugs with the chip on a case-by-case basis, so the first ones
probably won't be available for another two years.
But once the system is out, it will also help families better monitor loved ones. Savage says he could
have used it this summer; while traveling in Europe after his mother's knee-replacement surgery, he
worried continually about her painkillers. "That's the kind of thing that a feedback system could
hopefully address," he says. "I'd still be calling her up, but we could spend time talking about what
she's doing in the garden, rather than what she's doing with her medications."
Rebecca Boyle Popular Science December 2012 Issue
Can We Reengineer Ourselves to Cope With the Effects of
Climate Change?
Maybe. Although some of the ideas aren't pretty
HS20-MKS2 Justify ethical decision making processes based on an individual’s health
HS20-HB1 Organize body systems and organs anatomically to identify normal body functioning
By Amber Williams Posted 08.28.2012 at 5:55 pm
Popular Science
In June, NYU bioethics and philosophy professor S. Matthew Liao and colleagues proposed a
new way to deal with climate change: reengineer humans to make us less of a burden on the
planet. Their paper proposed that doctors could use in-vitro fertilization to select for embryos
with genes for short stature, making future generations physically smaller and thus less carbonintensive. Drugs could induce meat allergies, reducing consumption of carbon-intensive beef.
These approaches, Liao and his co-authors say, could encourage people to make the ecofriendly choices many seem unable to make on their own.
The ideas are, as the authors admit, "preposterous"—they are provocative thought exercises
rather than serious proposals. But they raise an interesting question: Can humans engineer
themselves to adapt to a warming world? After all, the World Health Organization estimates
that climate change has already caused more than 140,000 deaths per year since 2004 through
malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and other causes. And a 2010 report by the U.S. Interagency
Working Group on Climate Change and Health warned that as the planet warms, heat-related
deaths, respiratory problems from allergens and smog, and infectious diseases will become
increasingly common.
Extreme Makeover
Takram's artificial-organ art project includes nasal and excretory system devices to conserve
water, neck implants and a collar to radiate heat, and candies to provide hydration.
Plenty of scientists are working on advances that could make life in a hotter world more
bearable. Pope Moseley, for example, an exercise physiologist at the University of New Mexico,
studies heat-shock proteins, molecules that save cells from death by refolding damaged
proteins or marking them for destruction. Studies have shown that some species of lizards and
ants produce higher levels of heat-shock proteins and can withstand higher temperatures. The
Saharan ant Cataglyphis bombycina, for example, can forage for food even when its body
temperature exceeds 122°F. Moseley and his team have indicated that people who do just one
exercise session temporarily experience elevated levels of heat-shock proteins. Researchers at
the University of Colorado in Denver, meanwhile, have shown that feeding rats glutamine
increases their survival in potentially fatal heat; Moseley's group is using glutamine
supplements in studies to determine how the heat-shock response could be augmented in
humans.
New asthma treatments could become more useful as rising temperatures and increasing
carbon dioxide drive up smog levels and cause plants to bloom earlier and longer. Researchers
such as Jack Gauldie, an immunologist at McMaster University in Ontario, are working to
prevent asthma and other lung diseases using gene therapy. One approach is to suppress the
genes that produce cytokines, the cellular messengers that immune cells release after coming
into contact with allergens. Since 1993, Gauldie has been working to get cytokine-blocking
genes into mouse lungs. Lungs, however, are a particular challenge—the immune system tends
to attack the viruses scientists use to deliver genetic material—and Gauldie says it could take
another five to 10 years to perfect the therapy.
In a warmer, more humid, and more crowded world, people will also come into contact with
pathogens more frequently. Scientists are working on ways to respond more quickly to
pandemics. Vaccination causes the body to create antibodies against the invader, but complete
immunity takes several weeks. Even for an exotic and unfamiliar virus, a quicker and more
foolproof method could be to give people lab-produced antibodies. People would take the
antibodies for instantaneous protection if a pandemic broke out, says Antonio Lanzavecchia, an
immunologist at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Switzerland. As long as scientists
know which antibody is needed, cranking out a large supply is easy. Lanzavecchia has already
found and produced such an antibody that protects mice and ferrets against many influenza A
strains, and he is currently planning human clinical trials. He says a drug would take at least five
years to become available to the public. And like other medical advances, it could be useful
even if people keep climate change in check.
Can Artificial Meat Save The World?
Traditional chicken, beef, and pork production devours resources and creates waste. Meatfree meat might be the solution.
HS20-NM3, specifically indicator b (critique a variety of eating practices)
By Tom Foster Posted 11.18.2013 at 9:00 am Pupular Science
The Meat Lab
On an ordinary spring morning in Columbia, Missouri, Ethan Brown stands in the middle of an ordinary
kitchen tearing apart a chicken fajita strip. “Look at this,” he says. “It’s amazing!” Around him, a handful
of stout Midwestern food-factory workers lean in and nod approvingly. “I’m just so proud of it.”
The meat Brown is pulling apart looks normal enough: beige flesh that separates into long strands. It
would not be out of place in a chicken salad or Caesar wrap. Bob Prusha, a colleague of Brown’s, stands
over a stove sautéing a batch for us to eat. But the meat Brown is fiddling with and Prusha is frying is far
from ordinary. It’s actually not meat at all.
Brown is the CEO of Beyond Meat, a four-year-old company that manufactures a meat substitute made
mainly from soy and pea proteins and amaranth. Mock meat is not a new idea. Grocery stores are full of
plant-based substitutes—the Boca and Gardenburgers of the world, not to mention Asian staples like
tofu and seitan. What sets Beyond Meat apart is how startlingly meat-like its product is. The “chicken”
strips have the distinct fibrous structure of poultry, and they deliver a similar nutritional profile. Each
serving has about the same amount of protein as an equivalent portion of chicken, but with zero
cholesterol or saturated and trans fats.
To Brown, there is little difference between his product and the real thing. Factory-farmed chickens
aren’t really treated as animals, he says; they’re machines that transform vegetable inputs into chicken
breasts. Beyond Meat simply uses a more efficient production system. Where one pound of cooked
boneless chicken requires 7.5 pounds of dry feed and 30 liters of water, the same amount of Beyond
Meat requires only 1.1 pound of ingredients and two liters of water.
The ability to efficiently create meat, or something sufficiently meat-like, will become progressively
more important in coming years because humanity may be reaching a point when there’s not enough
animal protein to go around. The United Nations expects the global population to grow from the current
7.2 billion to 9.6 billion by 2050. Also, as countries such as China and India continue to develop, their
populations are adopting more Western diets. Worldwide the amount of meat eaten per person nearly
doubled from 1961 to 2007, and the UN projects it will double again by 2050.
In other words, the planet needs to rethink how it gets its meat. Brown is addressing the issue by
supplying a near-perfect meat analogue, but he is not alone in reinventing animal products. Just across
town, Modern Meadow uses 3-D printers and tissue engineering to grow meat in a lab. The company
already has a refrigerator full of lab-grown beef and pork; in fact, the company’s co-founder, Gabor
Forgacs, fried and ate a piece of engineered pork onstage at a 2011 TED talk. Another scientist, Mark
Post at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, is also using tissue engineering to produce meat in a
lab. In August, he served an entire lab-grown burger to two diners on a London stage as a curious but
skeptical crowd looked on.
Chicken-Free Strips
It took more than two decades to create a vegetable-based meat analogue with a consistency and
texture similar to chicken; Whole Foods began selling the packaged Beyond Meat product in spring.
Courtesy Beyond Meat
Revolutions tend to appear revolutionary only from a distance, and as Brown walks me to the
production floor, I’m struck by how similar the Beyond Meat factory looks to any other. Nondescript
metal machinery churns away. Ingredients sit in plastic bulk-foods bins. We put on hairnets and white
coats and walk over to a small blue conveyor belt, where Brown’s chicken strips emerge from the
machinery cooked and in oddly rectilinear form. They are not yet seasoned, he says, but they are ready
to eat. At the end of the conveyor belt, the still-steaming strips fall unceremoniously into a steel bucket,
where they land with a dull thud.
Staring at the bucketful of precooked strips, it’s hard to imagine a future in which meat is, by necessity,
not meat. Or in which meat is grown in a manufacturing facility instead of a field or feedlot. But that
future is fast approaching, and here in the heart of Big Ag country, both Beyond Meat and Modern
Meadow are confronting it head on.
Each year, Americans eat more than 200 pounds of meat per person, and mid-Missouri is as good a
place as any to see what it takes to satisfy that appetite. Columbia sits dead center in the state, so
approaching on I-70 from either direction means driving about two hours past huge tracts of farmland—
soy, corn, and wheat fields and herds of grazing cattle. Giant truck stops glow on the horizon, and milelong trains tug boxcars loaded with grain to places as far away as Mexico and California.
“Beyond Meat” Factory
It’s rich country that for nearly 150 years has fed the nation and the world. Yet most of the crops grown
around Columbia will never land on dining-room tables but rather in giant feedlot troughs. That’s not
unusual. About 80 percent of the world’s farmland is used to support the meat and poultry industries,
and much of that goes to growing animal feed. An efficient use of resources this is not. For example, a
single pound of cooked beef, a family meal’s worth of hamburgers, requires 298 square feet of land, 27
pounds of feed, and 211 gallons of water.
Supplying meat not only devours resources but also creates waste. That same pound of hamburger
requires more than 4,000 Btus of fossil-fuel energy to get to the dinner table; something has to power
the tractors, feedlots, slaughterhouses, and trucks. That process, along with the methane the cows belch
throughout their lives, contributes as much as 51 percent of all greenhouse gas produced in the world.
To understand how humans developed such a reliance on meat, it’s useful to start at the beginning.
Several million years ago, hominids had large guts and smaller brains. That began to reverse around two
million years ago: Brains got bigger as guts got smaller. The primary reason for the change, according to
a seminal 1995 study by evolutionary anthropologist Leslie Aiello, then of the University College London,
is that our ancestors started eating meat, a compact, high-energy source of calories. With meat,
hominids did not need to maintain a large, energy-intense digestive system. Instead, they could divert
energy elsewhere, namely to power big energy-hungry brains. And with those brains, they changed the
world.
As time progressed, meat became culturally important too. Hunting fostered cooperation; cooking and
eating the kill brought communities together over shared rituals—as it still does in backyard barbecues.
Neal Barnard, a nutrition author and physician at George Washington University, argues that today the
cultural appeal of meat trumps any physiological benefits. “We have known for a long time that people
who don’t eat meat are thinner and healthier and live longer than people who do,” he says.
Nutritionally, meat is a good source of protein, iron, and vitamin B12, but Barnard says those nutrients
are easily available from other sources that aren’t also heavy in saturated fats. “For the millennia of our
sojourn on Earth, we have been getting more than enough protein from entirely plant-based sources.
The cow gets its protein that way and simply rearranges it into muscle. People say, ‘Gee if I don’t eat
muscle, where will I get protein?’ You get it from the same place the cow got it.”
To Barnard, the simple conclusion is that everyone should stick to eating plants—and he’s right that it
would be a far more efficient use of all that cropland. And yet to most people, meat tastes good. Studies
suggest that eating meat activates the brain’s pleasure center in much the same way chocolate does.
Even many vegetarians say bacon smells great when it’s cooking. For whatever reason, most people
simply love to eat meat—myself included. And that makes
re-creating it, whether from vegetables or cells in a lab, exceedingly difficult.
***
In the mid-1980s, a food scientist named Fu-hung Hsieh moved to Columbia, Missouri, to start a foodengineering program at the University of Missouri. Hsieh was coming to academia from a successful
career in the processed-foods industry, at Quaker Oats, and he convinced the university to buy him a
commercial-grade extrusion machine, nearly unheard of in an academic setting.
An extruder is one of the processed-food industry’s most important and versatile pieces of equipment,
the invention responsible for Froot Loops and Cheetos and premade cookie dough. Dry and wet
ingredients are poured into a hopper on one end of the machine and a rotating auger pushes them
through a long barrel, where they are subjected to varying levels of heat and pressure. At the barrel’s
end, the ingredients pass through a die that forms them into whatever shape and texture the machine
has been programmed to produce. The mixture emerges at the far end as a continuous ribbon of food,
which is sliced into the desired portions.
On one level, an extruder is a simple piece of technology—something like a giant sausage maker—but
producing the desired result can be devilishly complicated. “Some people say extrusion cooking is an art
form,” says Harold Huff, a meat-loving Missouri native who works with Hsieh as a senior research
specialist. Around 1989, Hsieh and Huff took an interest in using the extruder to make the first realistic
meat analogue. “We didn’t worry about flavor or anything else,” Hsieh tells me. “We wanted it to tear
apart like chicken—it was all just about initial appearance.” They knew there wasn’t a single physical or
chemical adjustment that would bring about a solution. They just had to experiment. “You have to have
the right ingredients, the right temperature, the right hardware,” Huff says. “You try things, make
observations, and make adjustments” for years, even decades. And so it went, until Ethan Brown came
calling in 2009.
Brown, a vegan environmentalist, had been working for a fuel-cell company and had become frustrated
by his colleagues’ ignorance of meat’s role in climate change. “We would go to conferences and sit there
wringing our hands over all these [energy] issues, and then we’d go to dinner and people would order
huge steaks,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is stupid, I want to go work on that problem.’ ” To the ridicule of
old friends, who joked that he was moving to the country to start a tofu factory, he started poring over
journal articles and casting around for meat analogues to market—which is how he heard about Hsieh’s
work.
Brown licensed the veggie chicken and began fine-tuning it with the scientists for mass consumption. “If
we used too much soy, it was too firm, and if we reduced it too much, it became soft, like tofu,” Brown
remembers. “It took us two years to figure that out, and it’s still not perfect.”
Lab grown meat
As Brown and Hsieh refined the product, it began to gain notice. Bill Gates, who has adopted the meatproduction crisis as one of his signature issues, published a report about the issue on his blog, The Gates
Notes, in which he endorsed Beyond Meat as an important innovation. “I couldn’t tell the difference
between Beyond Meat and real chicken,” he wrote. Perhaps more impressive,New York Times food
correspondent and best-selling cookbook author Mark Bittman tried Beyond Meat in a blind taste test
last year (at the behest of Brown, who served Bittman a burrito) and said that it “fooled me badly.”
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone invested in the company last year, not long after the powerful Silicon
Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers bought a stake.
“We are going to be meat. We’ll just be slaughtering plants instead of animals.”
“One of the partners at Kleiner asked me to meet with Ethan and give them feedback, because they
knew I was a vegan. I said yes, really as a favor,” Stone says. “I went into it thinking it’s going to be a
boutiquey thing, for well-to-do vegans. Instead, I was introduced to this big-science approach. Ethan was
talking about competing in the multibillion-dollar meat business. We are going to be meat, he said, we
are just going to be slaughtering plants instead of animals. And here are all the ways it matters, in terms
of global health, resource scarcity, number of people in the world. I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They are
thinking completely differently.’”
The day I visit, the factory in Columbia is humming because the company is preparing its first shipment
of packaged product to Whole Foods, which agreed to sell it nationwide after a successful trial in some
California stores. On the production floor, the extruder is roaring away, pumping out strips ready for
seasoning, flash-freezing, or quick grilling. A digital readout shows the configuration of the die that gives
Beyond Meat its chicken-like structure. It is the company’s secret sauce, the result of all those years of
research, and Brown darts over to block my view of the readout as we approach. It’s the one thing that’s
not entirely transparent about the operation.
Brown has set up a taste test: three plates of Beyond Meat in three preseasoned flavors. I pop one of
the Southwest-flavored strips into my mouth, and it tastes, well, a bit like soy in the form of chicken,
sprinkled with chipotle dust. That’s also how it chews—very chicken-like but somehow just shy of
chicken. After all the buildup, I’m a little disappointed. But I also have the distinct impression that I’m
eating something more like meat than veggies. And I’m eating it unadorned, as opposed to in Bittman’s
burrito.
Over the course of the next month, I replace boneless chicken breasts with the lightly seasoned strips in
various meals: an omelet with spinach and feta, a plate of fajitas, a wok-ful of fried rice. I’m never once
fooled that it’s chicken. For me, chicken is the whole sensory package—crisp skin, the roasting pan, the
juices—and when I want one, I make one. But when I want lean, chewy protein as a flavor medium in
some other dish, I find I don’t care whether it comes from an animal or vegetable. But what if it comes
from neither?
***
On the other side of Columbia, at a biotech start-up incubator on the edge of the University of Missouri
campus, the scientists at Modern Meadow are working on a very different solution to the meatproduction crisis. When I visit, a 3-D printer about the size of an HP desktop unit streams a line of
yellowish goo onto a petri dish. Back and forth, the machine creates a series of narrow rows a hair’s
breadth apart. After covering a few inches of the dish, the printer switches direction and lays new rows
atop the first ones in a crosshatch pattern. There’s no noise but an electric whir, no smell, nothing to
suggest that the goo is an embryonic form of meat that will turn into a little sausage. Once the printer
finishes its run, the result looks something like a large Band-Aid.
To reach this stage, about 700 million beef cells spent two weeks growing in a cell-growth medium in a
wardrobe-size incubator. The cells were then spun free in a centrifuge, and the resulting slurry, which is
the consistency of honey, was transferred to a large syringe that acts as the business end of the printer.
The printed cells will now go back into an incubator for a few more days, during which time they will
start to develop an extracellular matrix, a naturally occurring scaffold of collagens that gives cells
structural support. The result is actual muscle tissue.
The technology in front of me is the work of Gabor Forgacs, a Hungarian-born theoretical physicist who
turned to developmental biology mid-career. In 2005, he led a team that developed a process to print
multicellular aggregates rather than individual cells. His printer produces physiologically viable tubes of
cells that can adhere to create large complex structures.
In 2007, Gabor and his son, Andras, helped found a company called Organovo that uses Gabor’s
technology to print human tissue for medical applications (pharmaceutical testing, for instance) and
aims one day to print functioning human organs for transplants. Gabor was the science mind behind the
company, and Andras worked in various roles on the business side.
“Fairly early on, people asked us, ‘Hey, could you make meat?’ ” Andras remembers. “And we were
pretty dismissive of the idea”—it was simply too far from Organovo’s mission. But by 2011, Organovo
had brought on a new management team and laid plans to go public (which it did in early 2012). Gabor
began brainstorming new projects with his two closest scientific collaborators—Françoise Marga and
Karoly Jakab. Andras, meanwhile, had moved to Shanghai to work in venture capital. He saw how diets
in China were changing and how much of the meat came from places as far away as Latin America and
Australia.
“If we can make living tissues, then we can certainly make food-grade ones.”
That confluence of factors made bio-fabricated meat appear more attractive. Even better, Gabor
suspected meat would be simpler to produce than functioning human parts. “If we can make living
tissues, then certainly we can make food-grade tissues, which don’t have to be as exacting,” he says.
“We do not have to worry about immune compatibility, for instance.”
In late 2011, Andras returned to the U.S., and the team landed a USDA Small Business Innovation
Research grant shortly thereafter. It then received a grant from Breakout Labs, an arm of Peter Thiel’s
foundation. (Thiel is a co-founder of PayPal and a tech investor and futurist.) With help from the grant,
Andras set up a business office at Singularity University on the campus of NASA’s Silicon Valley research
park, and Gabor set up his scientific headquarters in Columbia. Modern Meadow was born.
As ghoulish as growing lab meat sounds, the concept has a long history, and not just in science fiction. In
1931, Winston Churchill wrote, “Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole
chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
He was wrong about the date, but the same sentiment drives the meat-alternatives community today. If
you consider the conditions under which meat is produced—how the animals are treated and how much
waste is involved—factory farming, not tissue culture, seems the ghoulish option. By comparison, lab
meat looks both humane and sensible; a study for the EU predicted that, if produced on a large scale,
lab-grown meat would use 99.7 percent less land and 94 percent less water than factory farming, and it
would contribute 98.8 percent fewer greenhouse gases.
Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have pursued lab-grown meat, most notably Mark
Post in the Netherlands. Post created the burger for his London taste test using a different tissueengineering process that involves growing cells around a cylindrical scaffold. According to Isha Datar, the
director of New Harvest, a nonprofit research and advocacy group that focuses on meat alternatives,
Post’s process may actually be “more amenable to mass production, theoretically” than Modern
Meadow’s 3-D printing. On the other hand, Datar points to the head start Modern Meadow has: “It’s an
actual business. The other groups are all academic, and you never know if they have the power to get
out of the lab.”
By August, Modern Meadow was experimenting with other bio-assembly techniques that could quickly
lay down large cell arrays. And Mark Post revealed his own high-profile Silicon Valley backer: Google cofounder Sergey Brin, whose track record bringing improbable products to market isn’t bad.
But being first to market doesn’t matter if the meat coming out of the labs isn’t appetizing. Post’s burger
got tepid reviews from his two tasters. And Modern Meadow’s current product is hardly even
recognizable as meat; it lacks blood and fat, which are responsible for most of actual meat’s color,
flavor, and juicy texture. Karoly Jakab shows me a couple of the samples he’s storing in the lab
refrigerator: They look like tiny beige-gray sausages—fully grown, rolled-up versions of the Band-Aid I
saw coming out the printer—about the size of an infant’s pinkie finger.
Lab-Grown Burger
In August, Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands served a lab-grown hamburger to two
diners. One said it “wasn’t unpleasant.”
To make the meat more appealing, Modern Meadow has enlisted the Chicago chef Homaro Cantu,
whose restaurant, Moto, has become an icon of molecular gastronomy. For Modern Meadow, he’ll be
working on what Andras calls “last-mile issues” like texture, flavor, appearance, and mouthfeel by, for
instance, suggesting how much fat to add and what kind. And sometime in the next couple of years,
Andras says, with Cantu’s help, Modern Meadow plans to start conducting invitation-only tasting
sessions, where friends of the company will sign waivers and sample dishes.
There will be plenty of technical hurdles just to get to that point, but putting lab-grown meat in the
hands of the masses could be even trickier because there is no regulatory precedent. Meat falls under
the USDA’s jurisdiction, but Andras expects the FDA to be involved too. “They have the sophistication
and understanding of how tissue engineering works in medicine,” he says. Approval could take at least
10 years.
In the meantime, Modern Meadow needs to make money, so the team is focusing heavily on growing
leather, which turns out to be easier than meat and won’t face as many regulatory hurdles. Gabor hands
me a pepperoni-size disc of dark-brown leather, indistinguishable from the stuff used in one of my
favorite pairs of shoes. It even smells like leather. It is leather. Much as the company is partnering with
chef Cantu on perfecting the meat, it’s in talks with fashion brands and automakers to create products
with the lab-grown leather.
***
Ethan Brown folds his lanky frame into one of the metal chairs at the Main Squeeze, an organic juice
café in downtown Columbia, and begins talking about how he’ll define success for Beyond Meat in the
near term. “I want to be in the meat aisle,” he says. “You go to the grocery store, and they sell meat in
one section and vegetable-based proteins in another section. Why are they penalizing the non-meat?”
He points to the rise of soy milk and its eventual inclusion in the dairy aisle—which helped to drive a 500
percent increase in sales since 1997—as his model.
“Our earliest adopters are the vegans and locavore types who prefer tofu and beans and quinoa,” he
says. “But the sweet spot for us is folks who are simply cutting down on their meat consumption. They
still eat at Taco Bell, but they know they shouldn’t do it that much.”
There’s an uncanny valley of food. Until engineered meat is perfect, it will be creepy.
Appealing to those people with a near-perfect imitation of meat makes sense on one level. But there’s
also a risk, Andras Forgacs says. In the world of animation and robotics, there’s a concept called the
“uncanny valley,” which states that if a simulated human too closely resembles the real thing, it will
repel people. “There’s also an uncanny valley of food,” Andras says. “Until it becomes perfect, it’s going
to be creepy.”
I’ve seen the uncanny valley response up close, when I’ve tried to serve my wife Beyond Meat. She has
no problem eating processed meats that bear no resemblance to the animal they come from: hot dogs,
say, or on the high end, goose liver pâté. And she’ll eat other soy proteins, such as tofu, that don’t
pretend to be meat. But she won’t touch Beyond Meat. To her, it imitates the real thing just a little too
closely.
Modern Meadow may simply back away from the uncanny valley, rather than try to cross it. “I have an
analogy that goes back to Organovo,” Gabor says. “We will never be able to print a heart exactly as it
appears in nature—but we don’t have to. What we need is to create an organ that functions as well as
your heart, or better, from your own cells so that it works in your body. That we can do. And the same
goes for meat. What we are going to put into your mouth is not what you’d get when you slaughter a
cow. But from all other points of view—nutritional value, taste—it will be just like the real thing. You
recognize it as meat, but it’s a different kind of meat.” Like a hot dog or goose liver pâté.
And if fake meat doesn’t have to perfectly mimic real meat, it can be made even better than the real
thing. The teams at Beyond Meat and Modern Meadow envision super meats enhanced with things like
omega-3 fatty acids and extra vitamins. “You could eat a Beyond Meat Philly cheesesteak that lowers
your cholesterol and gives you sexual prowess,” Brown says. He is only half joking.
However they move forward, neither company envisions its product entirely replacing meat, nor do they
see themselves as being in competition with each other. Isha Datar of New Harvest predicts a portfolio
of approaches that would address the meat-production crisis: lab-grown meat and plant-based meats,
yes, but also sustainably raised livestock and less meat-intensive diets. A 2012 study at the University of
Exeter in the U.K. calculated the degree to which diets must change in order to feed the world in 2050
and stave off catastrophic climate change. The researchers found that average global meat consumption
would have to decrease from 16.6 percent of average daily calorie intake to 15 percent. That may not
sound like much, but it translates to roughly halving the amount of meat in Western diets—a major
change, but conceivable with high-quality meat alternatives.
One theme cuts through all those visions of the future: Educated consumers who have the benefit of
total transparency into the meat-production process. Brown has considered installing cameras on the
Beyond Meat production floor and streaming the video online so people can see for themselves how
harmless the process is. The contrast to the secretive policies of industrial slaughterhouses would be
stark.
Andras Forgacs imagines something even more dramatic. He pictures Modern Meadow’s production
facilities as regional petting zoos. “You’d need to replenish the cell source periodically so all we’d really
need is a few animals from which we could take occasional biopsies. They’d be like mascots. Other than
getting poked every month or so, they would lead these perfectly charmed lives.” People could come
meet the animals as they grazed and then make their way into a facility to watch a giant 3-D printer
stream the cells onto trays, where they would grow into pork chops and steaks.
“Would you rather visit a slaughterhouse and see a cow get killed, skinned, and disemboweled right
before you go eat a steak dinner, or would you rather visit a petting zoo and a facility that looks a little
Willy Wonka–ish and then go eat the meat right afterward?”
It’s a dream, but Andras insists it’s not outlandish. “Bio-fabrication already exists, and it’s inevitable that
in the coming decades there will be applications beyond medicine—consumer applications, like food.”
The question is whether the world will be ready for them.
Could This Liquid Replace Food?
Soylent, a milky beverage filled with nutrients, lets drinkers go without real food. Meet the inventor
behind the stuff.
By Caleb Hannan Posted 07.18.2013 at 10:01 am Popular Science
Soylent
Since mid-January, Rob Rhinehart has eaten very little of what most people would consider real
food. At times, he's gone nearly a month between meals. Instead, the 25-year-old electrical
engineer from San Francisco has survived almost entirely on Soylent, a nutrient-packed drink he
manufactures in his kitchen. To Rhinehart and a growing legion of followers, the cloudy, white
liquid is a substantial step toward changing how humans eat—or don't.
Our physiological dependence on food has blossomed into an almost sacred attachment,
subdivided into countless cultural, commercial, and aesthetic variations. But food is only fuel.
And that fuel costs time and money. Last summer, Rhinehart found himself broke in San
Francisco. He'd moved there after graduating from Georgia Tech to start a wirelesscommunications company. It failed, and he was left subsisting on the cheapest diet possible:
ramen noodles and Costco corn dogs. He says he and his roommates began taking supplements
to ward off scurvy. "I was unhealthy, hated cooking, shopping, and cleaning, and my only major
expenditure was food," Rhinehart says. Rather than suffer the thrice-daily burden of cooking,
eating, and cleaning up, he decided instead to streamline his food intake.
For three months, Rhinehart pored over pirated textbooks, learning what he could about
biochemistry and nutrition. He assembled a list of ingredients—mostly chemicals—that would
provide everything he needed to survive: whey isolate for protein; maltodextrin for carbs; even
micronutrients like zinc and chromium. He began ordering them from food-additive and
chemical suppliers on Amazon and eBay. Soon he had a kitchen full of powders ready for
mixing.
There are plenty of products that can take the place of a normal meal, but those drinks are not
meant as complete food replacements; in the long run, they are expensive and unhealthy. Done
properly, though, liquid diets are feasible. In 1965, the National Institutes of Health used
California inmates in a 19-week experiment to test whether astronauts could live on a liquid
diet. The prisoners wound up happier and healthier (rumor is, the astronauts objected to the
lack of flavor).
"I watched my life flash before my eyes and chugged."
On January 12, Rhinehart measured each of his ingredients on a scale, dumped them into a
pitcher, and added water. "I watched my life flash before my eyes," he says, "and chugged." He
quickly realized he'd forgotten to include fiber, which helps regulate absorption; while he felt
great after immediately metabolizing 800 calories, he soon crashed, feeling exhausted and out
of it. After a few adjustments and a brief bout of potassium poisoning (which left Rhinehart
with heart palpitations), he created a working formula. He went a month, then two, then three,
ingesting almost nothing but Soylent, a name he came up with as a nod to the 1970s sciencefiction film Soylent Green. He consumed three or four liquid meals a day, each of which took
about a minute to prepare, drink, and clean up. To make sure he was healthy, he got occasional
blood tests, and he tracked his progress on his blog, Mostly Harmless. There, he noted changes
to the formula, such as replacing one third of the maltodextrin with oat powder in order to get
more fiber and a lower glycemic index. He also began recording changes to his life.
Not buying food and not cooking saves him a lot of time and money. The raw materials in the
2,692 calories per day he drinks cost him only $154.82 per month, as opposed to the $500 he
says he used to spend on solid food. Rhinehart also credits Soylent with a marked increase in
energy, clearer skin, and less dandruff. While documenting his progress, he has gained a
following.
The response to Soylent has been mixed, mostly because it causes people to so deeply question
the nature of food and their relationship to it. That has prompted some to lash out at
Rhinehart. "Have fun dying of cancer," one person wrote. Nutritionists, too, are skeptical.
According to Joy Dubost, a dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics, "Everything we eat is a chemical, so in that sense, I don't have a problem with it.
What I do have a problem with is his one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition. There's no scientific
evidence that indicates it's going to do what he says it will do." Also, Dubost says, "I've tried it,
and it tastes terrible."
Yet, for every anti-Soylent response, Rhinehart has received one in favor of it. These "reverse
foodies," as a few of his fans call themselves, are driven by the same frustration over food and
its constraints. They include people like Daniel Dow, a 27-year-old chemistry and math teacher
in central Indiana who has spent the past few months happily eating almost nothing but a
Soylent imitation he began making once Rhinehart posted his formulas online.
Reverse foodies like Dow won't have to subsist on their own for too long. In May, Rhinehart and
three friends started an online crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000, with the goal of
mass-producing Soylent. They thought they'd need a month. Instead, they raised the money in
two hours. At press time, the total was nearly $600,000, and donations were still coming in.
In an ideal world, Rhinehart says, he would like to make enough off Soylent sales to subsidize it
for poor and famine-ridden regions overseas. He would also like to supply some big customers.
While he won't specify which branch, Rhinehart says the U.S. military is interested in providing
Soylent to soldiers. What he wants most of all, though, is to change the perception of what
does and does not constitute food—a line he blurs every time he sits down to eat.
SELECTED INGREDIENTS*
(*Rhinehart does not publish his complete formula, and he updates it frequently. For news,
visitrobrhinehart.com.)
+ Maltodextrin (250g) for carbs
+ Oat powder (125g) for carbs and fiber
+ Whey isolate (60g) for protein
+ Medium-chain triglycerides (65g) for fats
+ Potassium gluconate (27g) for electrolytes
+ Calcium carbonate (2.5g) for bone density
+ Lycopene (500mcg) for antioxidants
+ Sodium chloride (5.8g) for electrolytes
+ Copper (2mg) for collagen formation
+ Vanadium (100mcg) for glucose regulation
Caleb Hannan is based in Denver. He has not tried Soylent. Yet.
This article originally appeared in the August 2013 issue of Popular Science.
How I Survived A Week Without Food
I consumed nothing but Soylent, a food-replacing beverage, for a week. Here's what happened to me
(and my poop).
By Julie Beck Posted 06.07.2013 at 4:15 pm Popular Science
My best friend's graduation ceremony starts in 10 minutes and I'm trying to suppress vomit at a
Speedway.
It's my third day on homemade Soylent—a food-replacing beverage made of nutrients in their raw
chemical forms—and this is the second time I've made my friend Tom pull over on the way to the
ceremony. I've been nauseous ever since chugging two glasses this morning, and every time I get out of
the car, the fresh air helps just enough that I can't make anything come up.
As I breathe deeply and wrestle down bile, Tom decides to wax philosophical. "I think every generation
has its preferred word for vomit, and I think ours is 'vom,'" he says. Speaking as someone about to vom,
this does not help.
But somehow, I make it. My stomach settles. I see Sarah walk across the stage in her cap and gown and I
don't blow Soylent all over her family's Sunday best.
Later, at my parents' house, my dad walks in to the living room where Sarah and I are sitting with our
other best friend, Cortney, who was recently accepted to several masters' programs.
"It looks like you all deserve congratulations," he says. "Sarah graduated, Cortney, you're going to
graduate school, and Julie, you didn't vomit up that stuff."
***
That stuff is the brainchild of Rob Rhinehart, a Silicon Valley software engineer who got fed up with food
and went looking for an alternative. "Food just seems to pop up, like this obnoxious biological need that
I need to get rid of," he says.
When you're on a liquid diet, everyone wants to know about your poop.
Basically, Rhinehart turned to the Food and Drug Administration's recommended daily values for all the
different nutrients we need—everything from carbohydrates and protein to things we only need a few
micrograms of, like Vitamin K and selenium--and combined them into a drink he named Soylent.
Rhinehart also includes a few things that aren't strictly necessary, but which studies have shown to have
positive effects, like lycopene and omega-3 fatty acids. Olive oil provides the fat; everything else is in
powder form. Soylent is not yet commercially available, but Rhinehart has raised nearly half a million
dollars on his crowdfunding campaign and says he is in talks with manufacturers.
Almost everything in Soylent comes in powder form
After living on only Soylent for a month, Rhinehart wrote a blog post called "How I Stopped Eating
Food." In four weeks, he had more energy, he claimed, his skin was clearer, his sleep better, his reflexes
improved. And he lost 13 pounds.
The Internet, being the Internet, latched on quickly, and I was one of the many people who found myself
intrigued by the little slice of science fiction that Rhinehart presented. It's hard to be healthy. And no
one can quite agree on how. (Paleo? Mediterranean diet? Eat food, not too much, mostly plants?) I want
to believe that one drink could be a perfectly balanced diet, that it could help me sleep better, give me
more energy, help me lose weight, clear up my skin. Rhinehart cautions me that weight loss is not the
goal of Soylent, and, sure, that's only part of its appeal. (Rhinehart also says Soylent could have
implications for world hunger.) But it's hard not to think of it as a silver bullet for all the problems we
have with our bodies, especially when he's gone and made the tagline for his product "Free Your Body."
Some nutritionists refute Rhinehart's claim that Soylent is healthy. One nutritionist told Business Insider
that she sees "a red flag for a potential eating disorder." Another accused Rhinehart of "hubris" on NPR,
saying he shouldn't assume he knows what his body needs.
Nevertheless, a small community of people determined to make their own Soylent sprung up and
became active on forums (Rhinehart doesn't officially recommend the homemade version, for liability
reasons). One of those DIYers is my friend Tom, a chemical engineering grad student at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor, the town over from where I grew up. "I have a weird thing to tell you," he said
on Gchat one day, and less than two weeks later I was on a bus to Michigan, determined to try it for
myself.
***
For the month that he's been on Soylent so far, Tom has been hiding his operation in his bathroom. A
blender sits by the toothpaste on the counter, and he fills it with a variety of white powders--salt, fiber,
potassium chloride, monosodium phosphate and maltodextrin (carbohydrates) from an enormous tub
labeled "Muscle Feast" and adorned with a weirdly muscular dog. A liquid multivitamin, some whey
protein (pick your flavor: chocolate, strawberry or plain), olive oil and some water to dilute it, and we
end up with a blenderful of fizzing, frothy liquid, a watery beige color like the peeling paint of a high
school hallway. Plus 13 pills to take that he didn't grind up and put in the drink, for the sake of avoiding
chunks.
I tilt the glass up to my lips but don't drink, like leaning over the edge of a cliff. Tom chugs his down in
mere seconds. I take a cautious sip, and it's immediately clear that his approach was better.
"This is the moment when you realize you've resigned yourself to drinking this for a week," he says.
It is not good.
The chocolate, strawberry and plain-flavored whey makes the Soylent taste like a chocolate malt, a
strawberry wafer cookie and a vanilla milkshake, respectively, except not quite. It's as though an alien
race tried to recreate the taste of those things out of chemicals they had available to them and they
came very, very close, but couldn't quite make it. There's a chemical aftertaste that lingers, rising in your
throat like a vapor. After that first day, I stick to the "plug and chug" system—plug your nose and chug it.
The author, demonstrating the “plug and chug” system
The thing I notice most about living on Soylent is how I don't feel particularly different. In fact, most of
the time, I feel no extremes at all. I'm not hungry, I'm not full, I'm not tired, I'm not particularly
energetic. The nausea on the way to Sarah's graduation seems to be a fluke associated with the plain
whey; neither strawberry nor chocolate make me sick. Drinking Soylent doesn't make me feel full in the
classical sense; there's no heaviness in my stomach, no food baby. I just stop being hungry. Which is not
to say I don't want food. The first night, Tom and I go out with friends and drink beers, watching while
they chow down on burgers and macaroni and cheese.
"You took me to a place that has pulled pork nachos?" I accuse, looking at the menu.
On day two, my dad makes barbecue and my family eats it in front of me, unconvincingly calling it
"gross," for my sake. On night four I have a dream that I can't take it anymore and I eat a meatball
sandwich, only to make myself throw it up so I don't ruin the integrity of this article. On day six I tell a
friend that never having a food baby is overrated, that if I had one now I would cherish it and care for it.
I would put headphones on my stomach and play it Baby Mozart if only I could eat a hamburger.
I tell people I've 'transcended food.'
But these are isolated incidents, and for the most part, I find the ease alluring. I never have to think
about what I'm going to eat, or decide between packing a lunch and being on time to work. Though I
have cravings, I'm never actually hungry. I tell people I've "transcended food." In seven days, I lose three
and a half pounds, and two and a half inches off my waist. And my skin is clearer.
I get used to living on Soylent. I usually take my pills and drink two glasses in the morning, one around
lunchtime and one for dinner. I think of it much in the same way I do exercise--you just have to make
yourself miserable for a finite period of time, to reap the benefits later. When I stop to think, on the
second to last day, that I haven't chewed and swallowed something in six days--such a seemingly basic
process--it feels incredibly strange.
To combat the weirdness of being on a liquid diet, I chew a lot of gum. But I'm careful not to swallow it.
Tom made that mistake in his early days of Soylent, which of course meant the only solid thing in his
stomach was the gum. "When push came to shove," as he puts it, he spent a good amount of time in the
bathroom. Apparently it felt a lot like blowing a bubble.
When you're on a liquid diet, everyone wants to know about your poop. Rhinehart says reporters
(myself included) ask him about it all the time. I bring some Soylent home to Chicago to finish out my
week, and it's the first thing my co-workers ask me.
"You want your poop to be soft, like a snake," one of them advises.
Rhinehart says he still poops on Soylent, just much less. I'm a little loath to go into too much detail on
my experience in case I ever have a date with an overzealous Googler, but I will say I spend more time in
the bathroom than Rhinehart led me to expect, and on that fateful plain whey day I climb higher on
the Bristol Stool Scale than I ever care to again. The other days aren't so bad, though.
***
My last day of Soylent is bittersweet. "Soylent, my old friend," I say aloud in my kitchen to no one.
"We've had some times together, have we not?" I go to the grocery store, because there is no food in
my house, and think of it as "shopping for my new life," which is...weird. I get overwhelmed by all of the
different flavors available to me. I almost don't remember the taste of anything else.
Almost everyone has expressed disbelief that I've made it this long. "You didn't cheat once?" my boss
asks. "You didn't sneak a bite of anything?"
Even Tom, who was supposed to be my partner in this journey, let me down. He only made it three days
in a row.
"You are weak and I hate you," I tell him.
I think of my Soylent journey as my own personal "There and Back Again" (both "there" and "back" often
being "to the bathroom"). Perhaps the lasting value of this experiment will be proof of my fortitude. If I
can force myself to live on only Soylent in the face of mac and cheese, my dad's barbecue and pulled
pork nachos, surely I can make myself eat healthy things that I don't have to plug my nose while
ingesting once in a while. On my first day back on food, though, I purchase and consume an entire pizza.
So I guess we'll see.