Move to restrict asbestos trade blocked

An attempt to blunt the threat of asbestos in developing countries has failed. Russia and six allies last week blocked a move to have chrysotile, or white asbestos, listed under a UN convention that requires member countries to decide whether they wish to take the risk of importing hazardous substances.

More than 107,000 people die every year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis, according to the World Health Organization.

Although the material is banned in most developed countries, death tolls from its past use in building materials are still rising. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive says the mineral kills at least 4000 people per year ? twice the number killed in road traffic accidents in the country.

Five of the six forms of asbestos are already listed under the UN Rotterdam Convention. Chrysotile cement is, however, still in use ? especially in Asia, as well as in Russia and eastern Europe.

Pros and cons

Russia, the world's leading exporter, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe, India and Vietnam blocked the move to have the mineral listed at a meeting of convention member nations in Geneva, Switzerland, arguing it would increase shipping and insurance costs.

Proponents say a listing would lead to better labelling, improved handling and greater powers to impose safety restrictions, thereby saving thousands of lives.

"This is a disaster and a human tragedy," said Kathleen Ruff of the Rotterdam Convention Alliance. "The convention has been used to protect industry profits rather than public health, and as a result risks becoming a farce."

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Engineered biomaterial could improve success of medical implants

May 14, 2013 ? It's a familiar scenario -- a patient receives a medical implant and days later, the body attacks the artificial valve or device, causing complications to an already compromised system.

Expensive, state-of-the-art medical devices and surgeries often are thwarted by the body's natural response to attack something in the tissue that appears foreign. Now, University of Washington engineers have demonstrated in mice a way to prevent this sort of response. Their findings were published online this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

The UW researchers created a synthetic substance that fully resists the body's natural attack response to foreign objects. Medical devices such as artificial heart valves, prostheses and breast implants could be coated with this polymer to prevent the body from rejecting an implanted object.

"It has applications for so many different medical implants, because we literally put hundreds of devices into the body," said Buddy Ratner, co-author and a UW professor of bioengineering and of chemical engineering. "We couldn't achieve this level of excellence in healing before we had this synthetic hydrogel."

The body's biological response to implanted devices -- medical technologies that often cost millions to develop -- has frustrated experts for years. After an implant, the body usually creates a protein wall around the medical device, cutting it off from the rest of the body. Scientists call this barrier a collagen capsule. Collagen is a protein that's naturally found in our bodies, particularly in connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments.

If a device such as an artificial valve or an electrode sensor is blocked off from the rest of the body, it usually fails to work. Physicians and scientists have tried to minimize this, but they haven't been able to eliminate it, Ratner said.

Ratner's collaborator and co-author Shaoyi Jiang, a UW professor of chemical engineering, and his team implanted the polymer substance into the bodies of mice. The substance is known as a hydrogel, a flexible biomedical material swollen with water. It's made from a polymer that has both a positive and negative charge, which serves to deflect all proteins from sticking to its surface. Scientists have found that proteins appearing on the surface of a medical implant are the first signs that a larger collagen wall will form.

After three months, Jiang and his team found that collagen was loosely and evenly distributed in the tissue around the polymer, suggesting that the mice bodies didn't even detect the polymer's presence.

For humans, the first three weeks after an implant are the most critical, because by then the body will show signs of isolating the implant by building a collagen wall. If this hasn't happened in the first several weeks, it's likely the body won't default to an attack response toward the object.

"Scientists have tried many materials, and with no exception, this is the first non-porous, synthetic substance demonstrating that no collagen capsule forms, which could have positive implications for implantable materials, tissue scaffolds and medical devices," Jiang said.

UW researchers and others have worked for nearly 20 years to find a way to help the body accept implants. In 1996, the National Science Foundation-funded UW Engineered Biomaterials (UWEB) research center opened at the UW, with Ratner serving as director. Since that time, researchers have been trying to make a material that is invisible to the body's immune response and could eliminate the body's negative reaction to medical implants.

Now, nearly two decades years later, engineers have found the "perfect" substance, Ratner said.

"This hydrogel is not just pretty good, it's exceptional," he said.

The UW researchers plan to test this in humans, likely by working with manufacturers to coat an implantable device with the polymer, then measure its ability to ward off protein build-up.

The research was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, UWEB and the UW Department of Chemical Engineering.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/electronics/~3/u-9GMFJWooo/130514122801.htm

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Benghazi Truth Obama Clinton - Business Insider

Caught playing politics with tragedy, what's next for the Obama administration and GOP investigators?

AP

"These changes don't resolve all of my issues or those of my building's leadership." With that sentence, one in a series of emails and draft "talking points" leaked to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, the Obama administration was caught playing politics with Benghazi.

Summaries of White House and State Department emails -- some of which were first published by Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard?-- also contradict the White House version of events that led to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice misleading the public about the cause of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. installation in Libya.

Where does this all lead?

Politics: It would be na?ve to expect any White House to ignore the political implications of a foreign policy crisis occurring two months before a presidential election. But there is a reason why no White House admits to finessing a tragedy: It's unseemly. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland injected politics into the U.S. response to Benghazi when she raised objections to draft "talking points" being prepared for Rice's television appearances.

One paragraph, drafted by the CIA, referenced the agency's warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months prior to the attack, as well as extremists linked to the al-Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Sharia. In an email to officials at the White House and intelligence agencies, Nuland said the information "could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned ..."

The paragraph was deleted. The truth was scrubbed.

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More from National Journal

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Nuland still had concerns. "These changes don't resolve all of my issues or those of my buildings (sic) leadership," she wrote.

Did she have good reason to believe that the GOP would demonize her boss, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (the building leader)? Yes.

Could she trust the GOP to be fair-minded and understanding? No.

Could Benghazi be a campaign issue if not carefully managed? Yes.

But she and her cohorts in the administration were wrong to let political considerations cloud the public record. For far too long, the White House shied away from calling Benghazi a terrorist attack and stood behind Rice's initial statement that it was inspired by protests over a crude anti-Islamic video.

Credibility: The White House has long maintained that the talking points were drafted almost exclusively by the CIA, a claim that gave cover to both President Obama and his potential successor, Clinton. "Those talking points originated from the intelligence community," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in November, adding that the only editing by the White House or the State Department was to change the word "consulate" to "diplomatic facility."? Nuland's emails prove him wrong. ?As I wrote yesterday ("Why Benghazi is a Blow to Obama and Clinton"), Obama has earned the trust of most Americans but credibility is a fragile thing.

Throw Hillary under the bus? In a statement to ABC, Carney notably insulates the West Wing and not the State Department by saying "the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive." And, with no apparent regard to hypocrisy, Carney criticized the GOP for attempting to "politicize the talking points."

Drip, drip, drip: There is almost certainly more to come. While Karl and Hayes did not disclose their sources, a hallmark of congressional investigations is to leak selected evidence to embarrass the sitting administration. It's a safe bet that these emails, produced voluntarily for Congress by the State Department, were summarized and leaked by Republicans. The Obama White House might want to borrow a page from the scandal-ridden Clinton playbook: Release all Benghazi documents at a time and manner of their choosing, before the GOP does so.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/benghazi-truth-obama-clinton-2013-5

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