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Posts:
6,909
Registered:
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(2 of 3)
British academics boycott Israeli universities
Jun 4, 2009 9:08 AM
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Guardian open letter, 2002
The idea of an academic boycott against Israelis first emerged on April 06, 2002 in an open letter to The Guardian initiated by Steven and Hilary Rose, professors in biology at the Open University and social policy at the University of Bradford respectively, who called for a moratorium on all cultural and research links with Israel.[9] It read:
“ Despite widespread international condemnation for its policy of violent repression against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government appears impervious to moral appeals from world leaders. The major potential source of effective criticism, the United States, seems reluctant to act. However there are ways of exerting pressure from within Europe. Odd though it may appear, many national and European cultural and research institutions, including especially those funded from the EU and the European Science Foundation, regard Israel as a European state for the purposes of awarding grants and contracts. (No other Middle Eastern state is so regarded). Would it not therefore be timely if at both national and European level a moratorium was called upon any further such support unless and until Israel abide by UN resolutions and open serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians, along the lines proposed in many peace plans including most recently that sponsored by the Saudis and the Arab League.[10] ”
By July 2002, the open letter had gained over 700 signatories, including those of ten Israeli academics
Recently Israeli academics from Technion (in Haifa) came up with a new innovative equipment to detect cancer in its early (treatable) stage:
Doctors develop test that may smell cancer
Life and breath
By Jennifer Brown
The Denver Post
Tiny particles — way too small for a human to see or smell — float from the mouth, through a tube and into a plastic bag.
At a lab halfway across the world from Colorado, scientists will determine whether those tiny compounds have the distinct smell of lung cancer.
It's called a "smell print," and it could revolutionize the diagnosis of a disease that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year.
Instead of a body scan or a bronchoscopy — in which an instrument is inserted down the windpipe — patients eventually could blow into the cancer-detecting device during a checkup at the doctor's office.
"It's a bedside tool," said Dr. Nir Peled, an Israeli medical oncologist researching the cancer breath test at the University of Colorado Denver's medical campus in Aurora.
With earlier diagnosis, doctors could save more lives.
Lung-cancer rates are rising in the U.S., despite the fact that smoking rates are declining. Scientists are particularly puzzled about why the disease is striking more young women who have never smoked.
Each year in the United States, about 216,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer and more than 160,000 people die of the disease.
Just 16 percent of lung cancer patients survive at least five years.
The reason is that two-thirds of patients are diagnosed after the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, such as the lymph nodes or other organs.
"If detected in the early stages, then we can start talking about a curable disease," said Dr. Fred Hirsch, another medical oncology professor at UCD. "It is our hope that this research could give us a tool for early detection."
The breath test works with one exhale.
\Air flows into a tube and through an anti-bacterial filter that eliminates environmental scents, which would interfere with the results.
"I don't want to get the analysis that this patient put on in the morning Chanel No. 5," Peled said.
Then the air pushed out of the patient's upper-respiratory tract is captured in one of two plastic bags on the device. The rest of the air — expelled from deep in the lungs, where a cancerous tumor could be growing — is trapped in a second bag that expands like microwaved popcorn.
The second bag is removed from the device, and the particles inside are absorbed into a small vial, which is shipped to Israel for analysis.
Scientists at Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, where the device was invented, have a nanoparticle laboratory that "smells" the volatile organic compounds in a person's breath.
Breath tests might someday tell doctors not only whether a person has cancer but the exact type of cancer. Breast cancer, for example, has a different "smell print" than lung cancer, Peled said.
Scientists already have used dogs to sniff out the scent emitted by tumorous cells.
At the UCD lab, doctors are trapping air released from cancer cells growing in petri dishes and in mice with tumors. And they are collecting breath from 200 people — half of whom have lung cancer.
Among them is a Denver woman who recently had a cancerous tumor in her lung removed. She was diagnosed with cancer after a CT scan of her kidneys revealed a tumor in her lungs.
"It would be wonderful if they could diagnose us like that," said Barbara, who did not want her last name used because she has not told her friends about her disease. "They can have as many blows as they want from me. They told me it won't help me at all, but I want to help others."
Dr. Stephen Lam, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and one of the leading scientists in early cancer detection, said the work at UCD is significant but that it will take several years before doctors can use breath tests.
I hope that those 700 signatories (together with their friends and relatives) will continue to boycott Israeli products, including this one.
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Posts:
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From:
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(3 of 3)
Re: British academics boycott Israeli universities
Jun 28, 2009 3:04 PM
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And the rewalk http://medgadget.com/archives/2008/03/rewalk_exoskeleton.html
Another day, another exoskeleton. Designed to help paraplegics to walk again, ReWalk™ is the product of Israeli company Argo Medical Technologies, Ltd. Massachusetts based SolidWorks Corp, whose 3D CAD software was used to develop the device, is reporting about the exoskeleton:
An innovative alternative to wheelchairs designed in SolidWorks® 3D CAD software lets paralyzed people do what was previously considered impossible: stand, walk, and climb stairs.
Designed by Israeli consultancy Taga for medical device company Argo Medical Technologies, Ltd., the ReWalk exoskeleton is a light, wearable brace support suit featuring DC motors at the joints, rechargeable batteries, an array of sensors, and a computer-based control system. Users wear a backpack device and braces on their legs, and select the activity they want from a remote control. A sensor on the chest determines the torso’s angle and guides the legs to move forward or backward to maintain balance.
“There are a lot of challenges to design something that imitates a human walking, including universal fit for a broad range of user height and weight measurements, as well as a low profile that is both contemporary and user friendly,” said Assaf Barel, design engineer at Taga. “SolidWorks enabled us to be creative in addressing all of these challenges. The finished product is strong, compact, lightweight, and works like a human body.”
Plus the universal flu vaccine: http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles^l2597&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Health&
Imagine if you could get one flu shot that would last for three to five years, and protect you from all the different strains of flu around the world?
That's exactly what Israeli company BiondVax Pharmaceuticals is developing.
Unlike current flu vaccines which can only protect people from a few strains of the virus every year, BiondVax is developing a universal
flu vaccine that could be effective against almost any type of flu, from the regular seasonal ones, to avian flu, and even pandemic flu
viruses like swine flu.
The Ness Ziona based company is now poised to begin clinical trials of the vaccine in a Tel Aviv hospital.
A Safe Treatment for Morning Sickness: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131856
A large-scale Israeli study has found that the anti-nausea drug metoclopramide, sold in the U.S. under the brand name Reglan, does not significantly affect fetuses of women who take it during their first trimester of pregnancy. The study was published in the most recent issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Metoclopramid is commonly prescribed as an anti-nausea drug for pregnant women. It is used extensively in Europe and in Israel to treat the approximately 50-80 percent of women who have morning sickness during their first trimester of pregnancy.
And of course the new treatment for Breast Cancer: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131839
With the alarming incidence of breast cancer in America -- one in eight women can expect to get it sometime in their life -- new solutions for women, their mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and friends, cannot come fast enough.
An Israeli-American research team has stumbled onto a new and interesting find - a non-radiation based therapy that may provide relief for an aggressive and hard to treat breast cancer cell known as HER2+, but which could also have wider applications for treating all kinds of cancer.
Those sneaky Israelis, polluting the world with medical advances!
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What me worry?
--- Alfred E. Newman
Visit Monkey in the Middle
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