Transplant Breakthrough
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008Doctors have developed a transplant technique which can allow recipients to forgo the use of anti-rejection drugs:
The treatment involved weakening the patient’s immune system, then giving the recipient bone marrow from the person who donated the organ. In one experiment, four of five kidney recipients were off immune-suppressing medicines up to five years later.
“There’s reason to hope these patients will be off drugs for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. David Sachs of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the research published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Since the world’s first transplant more than 50 years ago, scientists have searched for ways to trick the body to accept a foreign organ as its own. Immune-suppressing drugs that prevent organ rejection came into wide use in the 1980s. But they raise the risk of cancer, kidney failure and many other problems. And they have unpleasant side effects such as excessive hair growth, bloating and tremors.
Eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs is “a huge advance,” said Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, a University of Louisville immunology specialist who had no role in the work.
Ever since my kidney failure, I’ve worried about the cost of the anti-rejection drugs I would have to take once I got a transplant. I’ve heard that amounts of up to $1,000 a month are not unusual, and when you consider that this would be for the rest of my life it really had me worried. If this technique can be perfected and put into widespread use, it could do a lot for those of us who are fortunate enough to get a new kidney or other organ. One of the causes of organ rejection in transplant recipients is the failure to take anti-rejection drugs in a consistent manner every single day, and this technique would obviously eliminate this possibility.
Reality tells me that these types of breakthroughs take a long time to become available to regular folks like me, so I’m fairly certain that I won’t benefit from this. However, it is good to know that research in this area is yielding such results.
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January 24th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I think that is wonderful news, Nick. I certainly hope that you can benefit from this research in the near future.
I thought it was interesting that the study was funded by the Immune Tolerance Network, an international consortium of federal and advocacy groups.
The ITN, in turn, is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases which are both branches of the National Institute of Health.
Meanwhile, I would point out that funding for the NIH since 2003 has been largely stagnant and President Bush recently vetoed an effort by Congress to bump up the NIH budget by $1 billion.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Ah, didn’t you leave something out here?
Like the fact that Bush vetoed the bill was because of the over 2,000 earmarks Democrats had attached to the bill, including money for a prison museum, a sailing school taught aboard a catamaran, and a “Portuguese as a second language” program. These earmarks put the bill $10 billion over budget.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Point taken that Bush did not veto the bill specifically for the NIH budget increase. However, I still believe that Bush is no friend of the NIH. Furthermore, the total cost of the three earmark projects that Bush singled out is just $400,000 – all for educational programs that are not unworthy of public support. Consider that we blow through more than $400,000 in tax dollars every five minutes that we leave our military mired in Iraq ($8 million an hour), and suddenly Bush’s sanctimonious objections to overspending seems cavalier and petty. And remember too, that half of those 2,000 earmarks in the bill were sponsored by Republicans and realize that the total cost of earmarks this year was 25 percent less than the year prior when Republicans were in charge of Congress.
My point, of course, is that skimping on a few hundred thousand dollars here and there in domestic spending isn’t going to make any difference as long as we are blowing half a trillion dollars in Iraq. And the larger point is that this pollicy of skimping on domestic spending is not helpful when it comes to promoting scientific research.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Mike, if the only reasons for vetoing the bill were these three programs, you’d be right. However, these three programs were only a very small portion of the 2,000 earmarks that the bill was loaded with, which taken together put the bill $10 billion over budget. Regardless of who sponsored the earmarks, their inclusion is what led to the veto.
Now, as for as the War in Iraq is concerned, yes it is expensive. Wars cost tremendous amounts of both blood and treasure. However, once you commence with the fighting, to spend any less than what is needed by the Military to win the war is insane. Just remember, with equal access to intelligence reports from several different governments as well as our own, the majority of both Houses of Congress approved going to war. It seems petty to now go back and say, “Well, if we weren’t spending all this money on the war, our children could learn all about prisons at the prison museum.”
The real cause of problems with all of this is the entitlement mentality that has developed among the poor as well as the younger population. They no longer think that it is their own responsibility to provide themselves with what is needed for success; they simply go to the government and ask it to provide it “free of cost.” Of course, we all know that nothing is ever without cost. The American taxpayer is footing the bill. If so-called entitlement spending could be cut by at least 20%, a lot of budget problems would disappear.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Actually, if you add up the cost of all 2,000 earmarks in the bill (and remember that half are for Republican projects) it comes to just $1 billion. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not $10 billion.
The rest is a result of the differing priorities between the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress. While Bush likes to blow half a trillion dollars on needless wars and many more hundreds of billions on tax breaks for the wealthy, Democrats would like to see more investments in education, healthcare and scientific and medical research. Thus, the $1 billion increase in NIH funding, was part of the reason why the final price tag was $10 billion above the arbitrary cap set by the Bush administration. But in the big scheme of things, $10 billion is a drop in the bucket when we see that last week Bush rushed out to promote a $150 billion (give or take $5 billion) “stimulus package” to try and revive the sluggish economy that somehow never ramped up as a result of his earlier tax cuts (instead we just got stuck with massive budget deficits again).
The real reason that Bush vetoed the legislation was not because he is overly concerned about spending an extra $10 billion, it was to serve as a basis for attacking Democrats as “big spenders” during the political campaign season and also to make it more difficult for Democrats to get legislation passed so that Republicans can accuse them of not doing anything. It was all done for partisan political reasons. I really think Bush is indifferent as to whether or not the NIH gets its extra funding.
As for the war in Iraq, I was opposed to it from the beginning because I was never convinced that Iraq posed a serious threat to the United States. That view has now been confirmed and invading Iraq was a costly mistake. But once we were in, I agree that we have to fully support our military. However, our military accomplished everything that they could there years ago. Bush should have declared victory and pulled the troops out long, long ago. There was not point to be there in the first place, and especially after Hussein was toppled there was no point in sticking around. Send in the Peace Corps. Send in the U.N., but get our troops OUT! I’m convinced now that the only reason our troops are still there today is so that Bush never has to admit error in the whole mess. That’s why I now refer to it as Operation Cover Bush’s Ass. But this is really a whole other topic.
I do not disagree that there is a problem with the entitlement mentality that many people have, but I do not think that cutting entitlements by 20 percent is going to solve our budget problems unless we also pull out of Iraq and eliminate most if not all of Bush’s tax giveaways to the rich.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
The real cause of problems with all of this is the entitlement mentality that has developed among the poor as well as the younger population. They no longer think that it is their own responsibility to provide themselves with what is needed for success; they simply go to the government and ask it to provide it “free of cost.”
Would you care to try to back that assertion up with any objective data, Nick? As for the actions of our Congress prior to our invasion of Iraq, they did not authorize “going to war” but rather the “use of force” – arguably a minor difference, but nevertheless one that is costing many of those who voted for it their jobs, and rightfully so. Because while maybe they did have “equal access” (that, I think, is debatable) it is clear that a significant number of them didn’t do their homework and relied instead on cherrypicked data fed to them by the administration. As for spending what is “needed to win the war” I assume you don’t think that includes massive fraud and waste which again supports Mike’s point that Bush’s “sanctimonious objections to overspending seems cavalier and petty.”
January 26th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I was unclear in the way I said it, but I did not mean to say that the earmarks were entirely the reason that the bill was $10 Billion over budget. Also, you are correct in saying that most of the budget overage for this bill was due to the same thing it is always due to, the differing priorities of the two opposing parties. As for the budget cap being arbitrary, I suppose anyone who doesn’t agree with the thinking behind a particular budget can call caps arbitrary. Many Republicans thought that Clinton’s caps on military spending were arbitrary.
Regarding tax cuts, it’s funny how the Democrats only have one position on tax cuts, and that is that they are always for the wealthy only and that they never benefit anyone else. The fundamentals of the economy are strong, even though large portions of the economy are stagnant at the moment, unemployment is practically non-existent, and yet Democrats see no connection between these facts and the Bush Tax Cuts which allowed businesses to take the money they would have paid in tax and instead invest it in their businesses and to hire more workers. Oh well, I guess it just sounds good to blame those who achieve for the problems of those who don’t. It gives you a scapegoat for all of society’s ills.
Finally, I can’t believe what you are saying about the Iraq War. If we had pulled out right after Saddam was toppled, within a month the same terrorists who are killing our troops now would have taken over, and the whole effort would have been for naught. The bigger goal here is to install a democracy in the heart of the Middle East so that the people of the Middle East will see what is possible when the yolk of tyranny is removed from their shoulders. People who have lived in squalor all of their lives will see that it is possible for them to be free and to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Once this has been successfully done, the rest of the people of the Middle East will fight for their freedom from the theocracies which seem to run everything over there right now.
As for sending the UN in, they refused to go in years ago, mainly because Russia and Germany and France were making millions of dollars selling arms and goods to Saddam. They didn’t give a damn about what the right thing to do was; they just wanted to keep making money regardless of who died.
Will cutting entitlements fix the budget? Not entirely, but if you can start to control spending on the programs which cost the most, it is a huge step in the right direction.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Ann, nice to meet you. Let’s see what I can do to set you straight
First of all, it is hard to believe that you can not see for yourself the effect of generations of poor families being on the public dole, in some cases for their entire lives. The children who grow up in this environment have never seen mom and dad wake up in the morning, get dressed, and then leave for work. Instead, all they’ve seen is mom and dad, if there is a dad, sleeping late in their bed when they get up to go to school. When they come home, the TV has Jerry Springer on, and mom has just come back from the mailbox with her welfare check. When the kid does go to school, breakfast and lunch are provided for free. After school, even though there are a selection of programs designed to help these kids break the cycle of poverty, the kids instead go play basketball or hang out at the mall.
In short, for all of their lives, even though they haven’t done a single thing to earn it, they’ve just been handed everything they needed. Food, housing you name it, they get it handed to them. Why should we expect them to change into a self-reliant individual just because they turn 18 years of age?
Regarding the war, it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that every intelligence agency which saw the pre-war intelligence estimates came to the same conclusion President Bush did. Even the Clinton Administration had come to the same conclusion, so your claims of Democrats having been manipulated by being fed “cherry-picked” information ring hollow. What is the conclusion I am speaking of? That Iraq was hiding a huge stash of weapons of mass destruction, and that if left to their own devices, they would sell the weapons to terrorist groups in the Arab world, and possibly beyond. Clinton believed it, Bush believed it, Britain believed it, Israel believed it, and after looking at the same intelligence estimates everyone else did, the majority in Congress believed it. Of course, since the war began, we have learned that the intelligence was faulty and that the danger everyone believed we were in did not exist. However, it seems that only the Democrats have forgotten that when the same intelligence was presented to them during the Clinton Administration, they were all out there giving speeches about how we may have to go to war with Iraq to keep Saddam in his place.
If certain members of Congress “didn’t do their homework,” well that is between them and their constituents. You can’t blame any President for the lack of effort of a member of Congress.
Wasteful spending happens whenever a government is put in charge of anything, whether it is a war or a social program. The biggest reason for this is that politicians are involved, on both sides of the aisle. Whenever a politician is put in charge of spending, you can count on waste and fraud. Is it right? Hell no; after all, I’m paying for it. However, until someone can figure out how to eliminate the waste and fraud which appears to be inherent in our system we are doomed to live with it.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Nick,
First, I want to thank you for your well thought out and reasoned responses to both myself and Ann. It is much appreciated.
Now, let me pick apart some of your arguments.
When you say “Democrats only have one position on tax cuts,” that is demonstratably untrue. Democrats are all over the map with regards to tax cuts. In fact, it’s exceedingly difficult to get them all in the same room on the issue. I’m sure there are some who would fit your description as rejecting all tax cuts as benefitting only the wealthy. But if you go back and look at the legislative history, you will see that everytime President Bush and the Republicans pushed one of their fiscally irresponsible tax bills through Congress, there was a competing Democratic alternative that would have shifted more of the tax relief to the working poor, students, and the middle class. Each time, the Democrats warned that the Republican bills were too weighted down in favor of the wealthy and would only serve to exacerbate the federal budget deficit. Each time, the Democrats were proved right.
You say that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” and yet we are teetering on the verge of one of the worst recessions in decades. And even if it doesn’t get as bad as feared, it will be many months before things will get any better. The best that anyone can say about the past seven years is that it could have been worse. But when you compare it to the prior eight years, there is no getting around the fact that it stank. Unemployment may be relatively low, but the jobs that are currently employing people are paying less while the cost of living (gas prices, health costs) are skyrocketing.
And now it is only going to get worse.
What great things did the Bush tax cuts achieve? We have more people in poverty, more people uninsured, personal savings rates are down, consumer debt is up, we’ve added $3.5 trillion to the national debt. Bush’s entire presidency has been an abysmal failure. He has nothing positive to show for the past seven years. Why do you think he is going to spend his last State of the Union addressing touting a nonissue like earmarks? It’s pathetic!
With regards to Iraq, first off we have a problem with the terminology, specifically with what I see as the misuse of the word “terrorists”. The Bush administration has taken to using the term “terrorists” to identify any group or individual who is opposed to U.S. foreign policy objectives.
When you invade a country, you can expect there will be resistance from the native population. That doesn’t make them all “terrorists” and yet that is what the Bush administration has pretended all these years. Only a tiny contingent of the people we are fighting have any links to al-Qaeda, and they wouldn’t even be there if we were not. We have essentially thrown ourselves into the midst of a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites, where there is no clear “good guys” on either side. The Sunnis are the former Baathists who ruled the country under Saddam. The Shiites, on the other hand, have close ties to the fundamentalist regime in Iran.
Sure, it would be nice to have democracy spring up in Iraq, but that isn’t going to happen at the point of a gun and even under the best of conditions it would take years if not decades to take hold. Right now, this idea of a democracy in Iraq serving as a beacon for the rest of the Middle East is a pipe dream and a fantasy with no basis in reality. The little pretend democracy they have their right now will collapse like a house of cards the very instant that we withdraw our military forces. But leaving our troops there for the next 10 years won’t make a difference either.
As for sending in the U.N., I don’t think that is the miracle cure either, rather it would just serve as a buffer while we are transitioning our troops out. And on a historical note, when you mention that “Russia and Germany and France were making millions of dollars selling arms and goods to Saddam”, do you know where Saddam was getting all that money to make those purchases?
January 28th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
If it’s OK with Ann, I’d like to respond to a couple of things in your response to her as well.
First, there are a number of fallacies in your statement about welfare dependency.
Your story about a child growing up on welfare can’t be extrapolated onto the entire population. First, there are lots of “welfare to riches” stories out there of people who did not continue to be dependent on welfare. Secondly, there is the obvious point that denying benefits to this population will not necessarily make them “self-reliant”. In fact, it is more likely to make their situation worse. Regardless of what you might think about “government handouts” perpetuating dependency, this is a nation that will not tolerate homeless families and hungry children and thank God for that.
There are many myths about welfare that we would need to hash through before we could come to a meeting of the minds on this topic. But suffice it to say that I believe that while far from a perfect solution to poverty, welfare is at least preferable to the “conservative alternatives” which seem to be to do nothing and look the other way.
On to Iraq:
You say “it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that every intelligence agency which saw the pre-war intelligence estimates came to the same conclusion President Bush did.” But this is misleading. While many people, including Clinton, Gore, etc., accepted that Saddam had in some shape or form “WMDs” prior to the invasion, they DID NOT agree with Bush’s proposed solution to that problem (i.e. launching an unprovoked military invasion of Iraq).
Even I was convinced that Saddam had WMDs (which I presumed were left over from the ones WE gave him during the Iran-Iraq war), but I was never convinced that Hussein posed “an eminent threat” that necessitated a full-scale invasion and occupation of the country.
We know without a doubt that North Korea has not just WMDs, but nukes, and we chose to handle that situation diplomatically rather than with military force. Are you going to tell me that Kim il Jung is considered to be more stable than Saddam Hussein was?
Plain and simple, Bush/Cheney decided to invade Iraq because they were convinced that it would be “a cakewalk” and would boost their electoral chances for the next election.
Once that proved not to be the case, they quickly started to change their tune, jumping from one rationale to another before finally settling on the “we are bringing democracy to the Middle East” pipe dream.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Mike, there you go again!
As with everything except abortion and raising taxes, there are several layers of gray in almost any Democrat position and tax cuts are no different. When you say that Democrat tax cut proposals, “shifted more of the tax relief to the working poor, students, and the middle class,” what you are really saying is that government should give the poor more handouts by taking money away from the wealthy and the corporations and redistribute it to them. This is a capitalist society, and that just won’t work. The reason wealthy people get more out of tax cuts is because they pay most of the taxes. How can you reduce the amount of taxes a person pays if he isn’t paying any to begin with? Under the Democrats, the government would do it by taking money from one group of people and just handing it out to another group.
As for the economy, it is common knowledge that in our government, the President proposes spending, and the Congress actually does the spending. In the first years of the Bush Administration, when Republicans had majorities in both the House and Senate, Bush’s tax cuts were passed and the economy grew. Then, in 2006, the Democrats took over the Congress and ever since they’ve loaded every spending bill with tons and tons of pork (remember Hillary’s $1 Million Woodstock Museum?) So, what we ended up with was Bush’s tax cuts without the reductions in spending needed to balance them out, which is why we’re where we are today. Did Bush spend too much? Yep, he sure did and he has been hearing from his base ever since. As for what Clinton left behind, all he did was ride the coat tails of the Republican Majority in the Congress which kept the economy chugging along nicely. Yeah, since he was President at the time, he gets the credit, but don’t let that convince you that his policies had anything to do with it.
Funny, but when Nancy Pelosi et al were talking about the issue of earmarks, Democrats didn’t think it was a non-issue. Now, because Bush wants to address it, its a non-issue.
The term “terrorist” is quite appropriate for the people who are coming to Iraq to fight for al Qaeda. They are not just against US foreign policy; they are killing innocents in order to promote a political change. Most of these people are not “native” to Iraq; they are pouring over the border from Iran and Syria.
Finally, as to the UN, what exactly are they going to do about any of this? Send a strongly-worded letter telling the terrorists that if they don’t stop they will get very angry at them? The UN is worse than impotent; it actually mucks things up so bad that the terrorists often have plenty of room to do whatever they want, as long as they are paying off the Secretary General.