archived: 26 - 31 Aug, 2007         Back                 Next

TPJ Publication resumed on 9/22/07

Human embryonic stem cells have been used to regrow the heart muscles of rats that had survived lab-induced heart attacks, scientists from the University of Washington and a private biotechnology company reported Sunday.

Because the rebuilt heart muscle halted the progression of heart failure, the findings offer encouragement that treatments based on embryonic stem cells someday might be used to help people who suffer heart attacks, a leading cause of death in the U.S., said Chuck Murry, a UW researcher and an author of the study.

To make the breakthrough, Murry and his colleagues used the so-called "presidential lines" of stem cells. Those cells are generated from a group of embryos that already had been destroyed before the Bush administration limited research on embryonic stem cells.

"We're pleased to be able to provide an example of something that can be done with embryonic cells that can't be done with adult stem cells," Murry said.

Murry hopes someday to work with newer lines that would be more suitable for human transplantation.

A [2005] Harvard study of medical bankruptcies highlights the growing number of Americans with dangerously skimpy health insurance coverage and the need to address the problems of the insured as well as the uninsured, according to Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). The study . . . found that half of U.S. bankruptcies, affecting 2 million people annually, were attributable to illness or medical bills. (Copies of the article can be accessed at: http://www.pnhp.org/facts/bankruptcy_study.php)

The physicians’ group pointed out that three-quarters of those bankrupted by illness were insured when they first got sick. While politicians acknowledge the need to cover the uninsured, they have ignored the worsening plight of those with coverage. Rising health care costs, skimpier policies and the cancellation of coverage when illness causes job loss have augmented the financial risk for those with insurance. This heightened risk is reflected in the 2200% increase in medical bankruptcies since 1981 found in the Harvard study.

The declines in employment-based coverage were particularly striking for dependents, as children under 18 without such coverage declined 1.2 percentage points over the year, continuing an annual decline since 2000 of 6.2 percentage points, from 65.9% to 59.7%.  Public insurance has not been strong enough to offset these declines, and so the percent of uninsured children rose for the second year in a row. In the last two years, the number of uninsured children rose by 1 million, from 7.7 million in 2004 to 8.7 million in 2006.  

US consumers are defaulting on credit-card payments at a significantly higher rate than last year, raising the prospect of problems in the stricken US subprime mortgage market spreading to other types of consumer debt.

Credit-card companies were forced to write off 4.58 per cent of payments as uncollectable in the first half of 2007, almost 30 per cent higher year-on-year. Late payments also rose, and the quarterly payment rate – a measure of cardholders' willingness and ability to repay their debt – fell for the first time in more than four years.

The median price of American homes is expected to fall this year for the first time since federal housing agencies began keeping statistics in 1950.

Economists say the decline, which could be foreshadowed in a widely followed government price index to be released this week, will probably be modest — from 1 percent to 2 percent — but could continue in 2008 and 2009. Rather than being limited to the once-booming Northeast and California, price declines are also occurring in cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Houston, where the increases of the last decade were modest by comparison.

The reversal is particularly striking because many government officials and housing-industry executives had said that a nationwide decline would never happen, even though prices had fallen in some coastal areas as recently as the early 1990s.

Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned that the United States may be heading into recession as the biggest victim to date of the sub-prime mortgage debacle was humiliatingly sold for a token sum in Germany.

Traders are braced for another week of turmoil after the near breakdown of America's $2,200bn (£1,100bn) market for commercial paper.

"It would be far too premature to judge this crisis over," Mr Summers said. "I would say the risks of recession are now greater than they've been any time since the period in the aftermath of 9/11."

According to a Gallup poll 72% of respondents think that economic conditions are getting worse, the highest proportion during the Bush presidency. . . . The number is even higher than in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001. A recent “consumer-comfort index” conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News recorded its biggest one-week fall since the survey began in 1985.