Justine Nyinobajambere, 30, can barely walk, because both feet are leathery, pus-oozing stumps with flies feasting on them. She has already lost two of her four children, perhaps in part because her deformity makes it difficult to get food and water for them. All that suffering could have been prevented for 3 cents a year.

Attack of the Worms - New York Times

Scientists have transformed mouse skin cells into embryonic stem cells and proved their potency by using the new cells to produce baby mice.

The experiments are seen as a major advance for regenerative medicine, which aims to custom-build tissues and cells to repair ailing and ageing bodies.

Scientists caution there are serious safety issues that must be resolved before the techniques could ever be used on people, but say the advance points to a new way of making embryonic stem cells for patients from their own cells.

There is no need to destroy embryos, and the procedure might allow researchers to sidestep many of the ethical objections now dogging stem-cell research.

Until now, the only way to obtain embryonic stem cells has been to take them from an embryo. Producing cells that are a genetic match for a patient would entail making a clone of that person and harvesting the cells when the cloned embryo is days old, which raises thorny ethical issues and is illegal in several countries, including Canada.

The new work promises cells free of such contentious issues.

"You could take a skin cell, or a blood cell, and reprogram it with these four genes to make embryonic stem cells," Mr. Rudnicki said. The cells could then be turned into any type of cells required for therapeutic use, be they neurons to treat Alzheimer's or insulin producers for diabetics.

He cautions that significant hurdles still need to be overcome.

Embryonic stem cells made from mouse skin

Zanshin means “the remaining mind” and also “the mind with no remainder.” This is the mind of complete action. It is the moment in kyudo (Zen archery) after releasing the arrow. This is “ Om makurasai sowaka” in oryoki practice and drinking the rinse water. In shodo, it is finishing the brush stroke and the hand and brush moving smoothly off the paper. In taking a step, it is the weight rolling smoothly and the next step arising. In breathing in completely, it is this breath. In breathing out completely, it is this breath. In life, it is this life. Zanshin means complete follow through, leaving no trace. It means each thing, completely, as it is.

When body, breath, speech and mind are broken from each other and scattered in concept and strategy, then no true action can reveal itself. There is only hesitation, or trying to push oneself past hesitation. This is the mind of hope and fear, which arises because one is trying to live in some other moment, instead of in the moment that arises now. One is comparing, planning, or trying to maintain an illusion of control in the midst of a reality which is completely beyond control.

zanshin

A gardener has decided to down tools on his working life at the age of 104.

gardening is good for the soul

BBC NEWS | England | Dorset | Gardener downs his tools at 104

“When Steve and Leslie Shaeffer’s daughter, Selah, was diagnosed at age 4 with a potentially fatal tumor in her jaw, they figured their health insurance would cover the bulk of her treatment costs.” But “shortly after Selah’s medical bills hit $20,000, Blue Cross stopped covering them and eventually canceled her coverage retroactively.”

So begins a recent report in The Los Angeles Times titled “Sick but Insured? Think Again,” which offers a series of similar horror stories, and suggests that these stories represent a growing trend: more and more health insurers are finding ways to yank your insurance when you get sick

I read an article like that and I thank God/Buddha/Vishnu/Allah/the quantum flux of the cosmos for the 1945 Labour government, in my country, which introduced our wonderfully socialist National Health Service
so I, with my mental health problems, am looked after and one of my friends doesn't have to worry about bills whilst her son is treated for non-hodgkins lymphoma - at times like that you don't need the stress

Insurance Horror Stories - New York Times

This story, in today's Guardian, is just mind-blowing. The common sleeping pill zolpidem, sold in the US under the name Ambien, can reverse serious brain damage and wake up patients in persistent vegetative states!

The hospital ward sister, Lucy Hughes, was periodically concerned that involuntary spasms in Louis's left arm, that resulted in him tearing at his mattress, might be a sign that deep inside he might be uncomfortable. In 1999, five years after Louis's accident, she suggested to Sienie that the family's GP, Dr Wally Nel, be asked to prescribe a sedative. Nel prescribed Stilnox, the brand name in South Africa for zolpidem. "I crushed it up and gave it to him in a bottle with a soft drink," Sienie recalls. "He couldn't swallow properly then, but I helped him and sat at his bedside. After about 25 minutes, I heard him making a sound like 'mmm'. He hadn't made a sound for five years.

"Then he turned his head in my direction. I said, 'Louis, can you hear me?' And he said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Say hello, Louis', and he said, 'Hello, mummy.' I couldn't believe it. I just cried and cried."

Zolpidem seems to work on PVS patients about 60% of the time, and is effective in the treatment of other brain injuries. Parts of the brain considered "dead" because of zero activity (but not deterioration or necrosis) return to life. It's not a cure -- the pill must be taken on an ongoing basis -- but it is a nearly-miraculous treatment.

Boing Boing: Ambien awakens persistent vegetative state victims