October 30, 2015

Congress just doesn't get it. more robo collection calls coming.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/28/boehnerland-lobbyists-win-right-to-bombard-student-borrowers-with-robocalls/

Deep inside the 114-page budget deal that passed the House Wednesday, legislative leaders tucked in a provision that will free debt collectors to bombard student loan borrowers with unlimited robocall and automated text messages where it hurts most — on their mobile devices — even when they are asked to stop.
The change is a major victory for the debt collections industry, which has retained a small army of lawyers and lobbyists for years to weaken the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the law that protects people from unwanted robocalls and prerecorded messages.
It’s also a big win for the small network of lobbyists within outgoing Speaker John Boehner’s inner circle, a cadre nicknamed “Boehnerland” by D.C insiders.

snip

Marc Lampkin, Boehner’s former general counsel and close personal friend, is a lobbyist with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a law firm that has led the charge on Capitol Hill and with the Federal Communications Commission requesting liability exemptions from the TCPA on behalf of student loan servicing giant Nelnet. Barry Jackson, Boehner’s chief of staff for nearly 12 years, also works at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
Records show that Brownstein met with FCC officials over half a dozen times this year to ask for the exemptions. The firm also collected at least $220,000 from Nelnet to lobby Congress on the issue.
As the Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasirpour reported, “The measure in the potential budget deal (Section 301) would amend existing law to allow companies to use auto-dialers when they call borrowers’ cell phones — even when federal student loan borrowers haven’t consented to them, and even if the borrowers will be charged for them.” (bold added by me)

snip

President Barack Obama also supports changing the law to allow more automated calls by debt collectors.
Consumer advocates are livid that congressional leaders, including Boehner, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate leaders, would agree to such a deal.
“Robocalls continue to be one of the top consumer complaints, and the overly broad provision in the budget bill would only make things worse,” said Christine Hines, legislative director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “It’s a handout to the student loan and debt collection industries and it would roll back consumer protections against unsolicited and unwanted prerecorded calls.”

snip

Other critics note that Nelnet has abused debt collection practices in the past, including one case in which a student who had never taken out a loan was harassed with 80 unwanted calls.
Lawmakers also used the debt ceiling as a maneuver to give legislative handouts to special interests last year. The so-called CRomnibus deal included $120 million in tanks that the Pentagon specifically asked Congress to stop requesting.

October 30, 2015

FDA approves first virus will kill cancer cells.

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/fda-approves-first-virus-will-kill-cancer-cells/

BY THE NUMBERS, the newest FDA-approved treatment for skin cancer doesn’t seem a real game changer. A $65,000 course of treatment extends melanoma patients’ lives by less than four and a half months, on average—and that result is barely statistically significant.

snip

It’s how the new drug—Imlygic, made by the biotechnology company Amgen—works that has the oncology world so worked up. Imlygic is a virus—alive and infectious, the first to get a stamp of approval in the US for its ability to attack cancer cells. It opens a whole new front in the fight against cancer, which has the sneaky habit of coming back after chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. “It is a totally new class of weapons that we can now use,” says Antonio Chiocca, a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And the armory could be bigger, because coming up right behind Imlygic are over a dozen clinical trials for more anti-cancer viruses.

snip

Imlygic itself is a reengineered version of the herpesvirus—the one that causes cold sores. To administer the drug, oncologists inject a massive dose—millions of viruses—directly into the skin tumor. Herpesvirus also prefers to infect cancer cells, busting them into bits. “The immune system sees all the debris,” says Chiocca. “This makes the immune system wake up and say, ‘Hey, there’s something going on here. Let’s check it out.’” So it’s a two-fer: Notionally, Imlygic attacks the tumor directly, and helps stimulate the patient’s own immune system into joining the fight.

snip

What the data do show, though, is that Imlygic isn’t that great a drug by itself. In trials it extended survival time by 4.4 months and shrunk tumors for at least six months in 16 percent of patients. That’s not terribly effective (though its side effects—flu-like symptoms—are downright mild compared to most chemotherapy). It does show promise in combination with other drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, which inhibit the molecules that inhibit—so basically, stimulate—the immune system. One small trial of 19 patients with Imlygic and a checkpoint inhibitor called Yervoy found a response for half of the patients. “I think these combination approaches are where the real action is going to happen the future,” Bell says.


alot more at the link.

cancer sucks.

October 24, 2015

well I am a little late to the revolution but I am getting there.

have replaced most of my light bulbs ( Incandescent )
with LED bulbs still have a few that haven't burned out yet
but they will be replaced when they go.

I never used the curly ones … never liked em. they didn't seem
to last as long as advertised.

we lost a lot of good jobs making light bulbs .. many of them union jobs.

I like these LED ones better.