The Facebook portion of tonight's (Dec. 30, 2011) UFC 141: "Lesnar vs. Overeem" preliminary card is in the books.
The start of the fights were delayed when undercard fighter Matt Riddle unexpectedly dropped out of his bout with Luis Ramos because of an illness.
The final Facebook fight of the evening was a welterweight match up between Dong Hyun Kim and Sean Pierson, who were both coming off rough first round losses to top contenders Carlos Condit and Jake Ellenberger respectively.
Kim showed steady improvement in his striking, landing consistently to steal every round and he even nearly finished the fight with a jumping front kick to the face that had Pierson on wobbly legs in the end of the second round.
His footwork and movement were more than enough to score an easy decision victory despite his inability to secure a finish going 30-27 on all three judges' scorecards.
The remainder of the Facebook "Prelims" comprised close battles in the cage, to, which you can catch up with in the extended entry:
Lightweights Jacob Volkmann and Efrain Escudero put on a grappling match that was primarily dominated by Volkmann. The Minnesota fighter was all over Escudero for the first two and a half rounds with top control and occasional threats of submissions but he couldn't put The Ultimate Fighter season 8 winner away.
The only serious drama of the fight came in the final minute when Escudero latched on a power guillotine and threatened to finish the fight after tightening his hold and transitioning to multiple choke attempts while Volkmann tried to squirm free.
Volkmann eventually freed himself and once time ran out in the third round, he was easily awarded the first two rounds to give him a pretty easy 29-28 unanimous decision victory.
Opening the night was a thrilling back and forth battle between featherweights Manny Gamburyan and Diego Nunes. Nunes did a terrific job in the first and third rounds of gauging his distance and peppering his Armenian opponent with repeated kicks and occasional jabs and follow-up crosses.
Gamburyan had his moments, most notably landing a pair of power shots in the second round combined with a big takedown, but Nunes persevered and was able to come back strong. In the end, it was Nunes' ability to control the stand-up portion which allowed him to win a unanimous decision victory going 29-28 on all three judges' scorecards.
Here are the complete Facebook "Prelims" results:
Dong Hyun Kim def. Sean Pierson via unanimous decision Jacob Volkmann def. Efrain Escudero via unanimous decision Diego Nunes def. Manny Gamburyan via unanimous decision
That's it for the preliminary card portion of the card. Be sure to hit up MMAmania.com's for up to the minute results and blow-by-blow coverage of the rest of the night's action by clicking here.
The only logical thing I could think of for that would be one of those "@Home" projects but on a different crowd sourcing scale though even then battery life would suck.
Since you're fully integrated into the Matrix, I think battery life represents an entirely different problem.
SAN ANTONIO ? The quarterback who starred in the breathtaking Alamo Bowl that shattered the record books wasn't the Heisman Trophy winner ? it was Washington's Keith Price.
Upstaging Robert Griffin III on the biggest stage for Baylor's possibly NFL-bound star, Price accounted for a remarkable 477 total yards and seven touchdowns in a game that was so crazy, the sophomore's incredible performance still wasn't even enough to win Thursday night.
Washington (7-6) lost 67-56 in the highest-scoring regulation bowl game in history, letting a fourth-quarter lead slip away in the wildest shootout of this bowl season or any other in memory.
"I think we'll have a hard time this bowl season to see a quarterback play as well as he did," Washington coach Steve Sarkisian.
Price outplayed his Heisman counterpart, going 23 for 27 with 438 yards and four touchdowns. He also ran for another three scores.
Griffin wasn't dazzling in possibly his last college game for No. 15 Baylor but didn't need to be. If this was RG3's final showcase before jumping to the NFL, it was a gripping goodbye to watch.
One of the nation's most electrifying players was upstaged by an even more exciting nail-biter that shattered the previous record for points in regulation set in the 2001 GMAC Bowl.
"We went out in style!" Griffin shouted to his teammates. He paraded the Alamo Bowl trophy around the field before taking it to the front row of the stands and his mother, who's already been looking at her son's NFL draft prospects.
Griffin said he was still catching his breath after this one.
"I want Baylor nation to enjoy this," Griffin said. "It's not about me. I've got about two weeks. I'll enjoy this the next day, and then the next day, and then I'll make it."
The previous bowl record for a regulation game was 102 total points set in the 2001 GMAC Bowl between Marshall and East Carolina. That game went to double overtime and ended with a combined 125 points ? which still stands as the overall bowl record.
Baylor, which won its first bowl game since 1992, and Washington (7-6) also set a bowl record for total offense in a game with 1,397 yards.
"We just knew we needed to score. We needed to score fast, just to give our defense a boost," Price said.
Griffin had an unremarkable night, throwing just one touchdown pass and running for another. But Terrance Ganaway starred ably in his place, rushing for 200 yards and five touchdowns. His last was a 43-yard run with 2:28 left to seal Baylor's first 10-win season since 1980.
Griffin was 24 of 33 for 295 yards ? and his only touchdown throw came on the game's opening drive.
Blown out in four other games against ranked opponents this season, the Huskies finally made one interesting. Not that it started that way after Baylor ran up 245 yards of offense alone in the first quarter ? awful even by the standards of Washington's defense, which is among the nation's worst.
Then the most award-winning QB in the country suddenly stopped looking like even the best one in the Alamodome.
Price, a sophomore who threw a school-record 29 touchdowns in his first year as the starter, began cutting into a 21-7 deficit with a 12-yard scoring strike to James Johnson. Seven minutes later he tied the game when Devin Aguilar somersaulted over the goal line after catching a 1-yard lob.
The overwhelming crowd of Baylor fans ? decked in green-and-gold Heisman shirts and armed with signs such as "Superman wears RG3 socks" ? stood in stunned silenced. That gave way to disbelieving gasps on the next series, when the typically sure-handed Griffin fumbled after getting popped by Andrew Hudson.
After that, it was practically a free-for-all of big plays.
A 56-yard touchdown dash by Chris Polk. An 80-yard touchdown catch by Washington's Jermaine Kearse two plays into the second half. An 89-yard scoring rumble by Baylor's Terrance Ganaway. Kearse again, catching and darting for 60 yards before getting dragged down, setting up Price's fourth touchdown toss the next play.
Back and forth, back and forth. One after another. In all, five plays covered 50 or more yards, three of them for scores.
"That was crazy," Baylor coach Art Briles said.
For an Alamo Bowl short on drama and light on matchups in recent years, it was a thrilling scoring spree that overshadowed the mere novelty of featuring the Heisman winner. And that in itself was a rarity for a bowl of this stature: Not since Ty Detmer took BYU to the Holiday Bowl in 1990 had a Heisman winner played in a bowl before New Year's Day.
Plenty came to see this one.
Anticipating a surge of Heisman gawkers, Alamo Bowl officials added 800 temporary seats and opened up others with obstructed views that required ticket-buyers to sign a form acknowledging the poor sightlines. Those seats sold, anyway, and the announced attendance of 65,256 was the fifth-largest in the bowl's history.
Others had better seats.
That includes Miami Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland, who kicked for Baylor in the late 1980s but was here on business scouting Griffin in case the fourth-year junior enters the draft. Griffin's parents, two sisters and fiancee watched the nail-biter with front-row seats.
Griffin acknowledged this week his parents are looking at his draft prospects but denies having any substantial talks with them.
Win or lose, it was an impressive finale for Washington after stumbling into the postseason losing four of its last six. Particularly against a ranked team after then-Top 25 opponents Nebraska, Stanford, Oregon and USC all crushed the Huskies by an average of 24 points.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease?
New skeletal evidence suggests Columbus and his crew not only introduced the Old World to the New World, but brought back syphilis as well, researchers say.
Syphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum bacteria, and is usually curable nowadays with antibiotics. Untreated, it can damage the heart, brain, eyes and bones; it can also be fatal.
The first known epidemic of syphilis occurred during the Renaissance in 1495. Initially its plague broke out among the army of Charles the VIII after the French king invaded Naples. It then proceeded to devastate Europe, said researcher George Armelagos, a skeletal biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
"Syphilis has been around for 500 years," said researcher Molly Zuckerman at Mississippi State University. "People started debating where it came from shortly afterward, and they haven't stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today."
Stigmatized disease
The fact that syphilis is a stigmatized sexually transmitted disease has added to the controversy over its origins. People often seem to want to blame some other country for it, said researcher Kristin Harper, an evolutionary biologist at Emory. [Top 10 Stigmatized Health Disorders]
Armelagos originally doubted the so-called Columbian theory for syphilis when he first heard about it decades ago. "I laughed at the idea that a small group of sailors brought back this disease that caused this major European epidemic," he recalled. Critics of the Columbian theory have proposed that syphilis had always bedeviled the Old World but simply had not been set apart from other rotting diseases such as leprosy until 1500 or so.
However, upon further investigation, Armelagos and his colleagues got a shock ? all of the available evidence they found supported the Columbian theory, findings they published in 1988. "It was a paradigm shift," Armelagos says. Then in 2008, genetic analysis by Armelagos and his collaborators of syphilis's family of bacteria lent further support to the theory.
Still, there have been reports of 50 skeletons from Europe dating back from before Columbus set sail that apparently showed the lesions of chronic syphilis. These seemed to be evidence that syphilis originated in the Old World and that Columbus was not to blame.
Armelagos and his colleagues took a closer look at all the data from these prior reports. They found most of the skeletal material didn't actually meet at least one of the standard diagnostic criteria for chronic syphilis, such as pitting on the skull, known as caries sicca, and pitting and swelling of the long bones.
"There's no really good evidence of a syphilis case before 1492 in Europe," Armelagos told LiveScience.
In the seafood?
The 16 reports that did meet the criteria for syphilis came from coastal regions where seafood was a large part of the diet. This seafood contains "old carbon" from deep, upwelling ocean waters. As such, they might fall prey to the so-called "marine reservoir effect" that can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds or even thousands of years. To adjust for this effect, the researchers figured out the amount of seafood these individuals ate when alive. Since our bodies constantly break down and rebuild our bones, measurements of bone-collagen protein can provide a record of diet.
"Once we adjusted for the marine signature, all of the skeletons that showed definite signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe," Harper said, findings detailed in the current Yearbook of Physical Anthropology.
"What it really shows to me is that globalization of disease is not a modern condition," Armelagos said. "In 1492, you had the transmission of a number of diseases from Europe that decimated Native Americans, and you also had disease from Native Americans to Europe."
"The lesson we can learn for today from history is that these epidemics are the result of unrest," Armelagos added. "With syphilis, wars were going on in Europe at the time, and all the turmoil set the stage for the disease. Nowadays, a lot of diseases jump the species barrier due to environmental unrest."
"The origin of syphilis is a fascinating, compelling question," Zuckerman said. "The current evidence is pretty definitive, but we shouldn't close the book and say we're done with the subject. The great thing about science is constantly being able to understand things in a new light."
Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience?and on Facebook.
NEW YORK ? Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods.
The imams and activists said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that they're disturbed at his response to a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing New York Police Department intelligence-gathering programs that monitored Muslim groups, businesses and houses of worship.
Bloomberg has defended the NYPD, saying last week it doesn't take religion into account in its policing.
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser acknowledged Wednesday that about a dozen people turned down the breakfast invitation. But he said "a couple dozen" more said they plan to attend.
The letter to Bloomberg contained the names of several dozen Muslim leaders and organizations and said they believe such police measures "threaten the rights of all Americans, and deepen mistrust between our communities and law enforcement."
"Mayor Bloomberg, the extent of these civil rights violations is astonishing, yet instead of calling for accountability and the rule of law, you have thus far defended the NYPD's misconduct," the letter said.
The Muslim leaders said they appreciate the mayor's staunch support a year ago during an uproar over a planned Islamic center near the World Trade Center site. But they said they were disappointed by what he said after the AP stories since August about the police department's efforts to infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods and mosques with aggressive programs designed by a CIA officer who worked with the department after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The stories disclosed that a team of 16 police officers speaking at least five languages was assigned to use census information and government databases to map ethnic neighborhoods in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Documents reviewed by the AP revealed that undercover police officers known as rakers visited local businesses such as Islamic bookstores and cafes, chatting up store owners to determine their ethnicities and gauge their views. They played cricket and eavesdropped in ethnic cafes and clubs.
The AP stories also revealed that one of the CIA's most experienced clandestine operatives began working inside the police department in July as the special assistant to the deputy commissioner of intelligence.
The CIA is prohibited from spying domestically. Its unusual partnership with the NYPD has troubled top lawmakers and prompted an internal investigation.
Bloomberg in October defended the arrangement, saying it was necessary in a dangerous world.
"There are people trying to kill us," he said. "And if the CIA can help us I'm all for getting any information they have and then letting the police department use it as ? if it's appropriate to protect you and to protect me."
The letter noted that Muslims comprise at least 10 percent of the city's population. It said the Muslims leaders were seeking a meeting with the mayor to discuss the issues raised by the reports.
"We believe it is unequivocally wrong and fundamentally misguided to invest law enforcement resources in religious or racial profiling, rather than investigating suspicious activity," it said. "We seek your clear, unambiguous, public support for the rights and privacy of all New Yorkers, including Muslims; and a condemnation of all policies that profile and target communities and community groups solely based on their religion or the color of their skin."
It also said: "We are deeply disturbed that to date we have only heard your words of strong support for these troubling policies and violations of our rights. We are equally disturbed by (police Commissioner Raymond) Kelly's denials of what we know to be true as verified by the leaked documents."
Kelly, meanwhile, met Wednesday evening at a Bronx mosque with two imams who weren't listed on the letter and with young fans of an NYPD youth soccer league, whose winners were presented with a trophy.
Cleveland Clinic researchers have discovered three genes that increase the risk of thyroid cancer, which is has the largest incidence increase in cancers among both men and women.
Research led by Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D., Chair and founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute of Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, included nearly 3,000 patients with Cowden syndrome (CS) or CS-like disease, which is related to an increased risk of breast and thyroid cancer.
Mutations in the PTEN gene are the foundation of Cowden syndrome. PTEN is a tumour suppressor gene, helping to direct the growth and division of cells. Inherited mutations in the PTEN gene have been found in approximately 80 percent of Cowden syndrome patients.
These mutations prevent the PTEN protein from effectively regulating cell survival and division, which can lead to the formation of tumours.
"Our investigation into the genetics behind thyroid disease raises important details relevant to diagnosis and treatment," said Dr. Eng.
"We hope to promote the earliest diagnosis and most targeted treatment possible."
The study found that all six patients under age 18 had pathogenic PTEN mutations. The researchers recommend that the thyroids of children with PTEN mutation-causing CS-related disease receive increased surveillance.
Children with thyroid cancer are recommended to have testing for PTEN mutations, which could warrant surveillance for additional cancers or maladies. In contrast, alterations in the SDH and KLLN genes did not associate with thyroid cancer in children.
PTEN gene testing in the setting of genetic counselling is already routinely practiced, and has been a powerful gene-enabled diagnostic test, which then personalizes clinical screening and treatment.
Once SDH and KLLN findings are independently validated, the tests could be implemented as a clinical routine test as well. Importantly, these three genes belong to different cell pathways so that specific molecular-targeted treatments can be utilized depending on which gene is involved.
The study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Twitter / Tanner Wilson: #NAHL 12/31: New Mexico Mu ... 12/31: New Mexico Mustangs VS. Amarillo Bulls 7:00 PM, Wichita Falls Wildcats VS. Corpus Christi Icerays 7:05 PMIl y a environ 1 heurevia web
Kentucky's Darius Miller, right, shoots next to Loyola's Erik Etherly during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/James Crisp)
Kentucky's Darius Miller, right, shoots next to Loyola's Erik Etherly during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/James Crisp)
Kentucky's Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, right, dunks next to Loyola's Erik Etherly during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/James Crisp)
Kentucky head coach John Calipari pleads with an official during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Loyola in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. Kentucky won 87-63. (AP Photo/James Crisp)
Kentucky's Anthony Davis looks for an opening between Loyola's Erik Etherly (24), Justin Drummond (2) and Shane Walker (5) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. Kentucky won 87-63. (AP Photo/James Crisp)
Kentucky's Anthony Davis, right, shoots with the hand of Loyola's Jordan Latham in his face during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lexington, Ky., Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. Kentucky won 87-63. (AP Photo/James Crisp)
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) ? Kyle Wiltjer is finally figuring out the tougher play at this level because he's learning all about it in practice.
Wiltjer scored a personal-best 24 points and a trio of freshmen sparked No. 3 Kentucky's 17-2 second-half run to beat Loyola (Md.) 87-63 on Thursday for the Wildcats' 42nd straight win at home.
"It's a lot more physical in college. It's a lot quicker, a lot quicker guys," Wiltjer said. "Fortunately, we have such a good team to go against such good players every day in practice, once you get to a game, it's not so bad."
It's been a shocking learning experience for Wiltjer and one that Kentucky coach John Calipari said they need to continue to work on with the 6-foot-9 forward.
"I think the kid has a toughness at heart, but we're just going to have to help him," the coach said. "I've got to get him to take more charges, not going to block shots, charge, block out more and then when he's in the post we've got to do some things."
Wiltjer and fellow freshmen Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist all had afternoons to remember as Kentucky (11-1) heads into a break before the schedule begins to ramp up.
Meanwhile, Kidd-Gilchrist's mother, Cindy Richardson, has been hospitalized according to a school spokesman who had no details of her ailment or its severity.
"We were trying to figure out whether we should send him home this morning early," Calipari said. "It wasn't so immediate that there was going to be things done today. It's in the early process, and like I said, I hope that what we find out is all good."
Baltimore-based Loyola (8-3) stayed close throughout the first half and pestered Kentucky, which was missing preseason All-America Terrence Jones for the second straight game after he dislocated the pinky finger on his left, shooting hand on Saturday.
"I wanted to make the most of my minutes with Terrence being out," Wiltjer said. "Cal just wants me to be a more aggressive player."
Erik Etherly scored 14 points, Dylon Cormier 13 and Justin Drummond had 10 points for the Greyhounds.
"It was good for us. It shows we can play with them," Cormier said. "If we can play with them, then at the mid-major level we should be something to be reckoned with."
Davis contributed 15 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks, Kidd-Gilchrist added 15 points and seven rebounds and Darius Miller had 13 points. Kentucky hosts Lamar on Wednesday night after a five-day break ahead of renewing its in-state rivalry with No. 4 Louisville on Dec. 31.
Kentucky needed to work a little harder than expected after Etherly cut the lead to 45-41 with the first basket of the second half before the Wildcats began pulling away.
Wiltjer went 7 of 11 from the field after shooting 33 percent over his previous eight games. His 3 early in the second half extended Kentucky's streak to 799 straight games with at least one from beyond the arc and Kidd-Gilchrist finished a dunk to give Kentucky a 56-46 lead with 16:41 to play.
"(Wiltjer) did a great job of knocking down shots and creating shots," Miller said. "He opened up the floor for us."
After a timeout, Etherly scored to cut it to eight, but Kidd-Gilchrist and Wiltjer sparked the 17-2 run. A basket by Wiltjer and a dunk by Eloy Vargas made it 73-50 as Loyola went 5:17 without a point because of Kentucky's throttling defense.
On one play, Davis crossed the lane and swatted J'hared Hall's layup attempt for his third block of the game. Davis has 52 blocks, on pace to easily break the school's season-single record of 83.
Jones again was not in uniform after his finger bent awkwardly early in Saturday's win over Chattanooga. The 6-9 sophomore forward spent another game sitting sat beside Ryan Harrow and the rest of the injured Wildcats after appearing in the first 48 straight games of his collegiate career.
Loyola's longest winning streak since joining Division I in 1981-82 ended at eight at St. Bonaventure on Sunday, and while the Greyhounds hadn't played an SEC opponent in 28 years, they weren't intimidated by the Rupp Arena crowd.
"You have to be honest, we played as hard as we could," Loyola coach Jimmy Pastos said. "They've got five NBA guys out there. We were right there. Did we try as hard as we could? Absolutely."
The Greyhounds only led once at 2-0, but stayed close and even showed some swagger of their own, with Cormier doing his own "3-goggles" salute after hitting a long-range shot midway through the first half.
After a 6-0 run gave Kentucky its first double-digit lead at 33-23, Loyola answered with an 8-0 run that was capped when the Greyhounds stripped Marquis Teague in a halfcourt trap and Etherly finished an alley-oop pass from Robert Olson on the break.
Etherly went right at Davis, one of the top college prospects in the country, when he beat Wiltjer on the dribble and Davis couldn't rotate over to block Etherly's emphatic dunk in time as the Greyhounds trailed 45-39 at halftime.
"We didn't come into this game thinking we were going to get blown out," Etherly said. "We came in here to win, which showed in the first half. But they kind of ran away in the second half."
That's when Wiltjer starting hitting clutch shots and Kentucky tightened its pressure to pull away.
(Reuters) ? Bristol-Myers Squibb Co said on Thursday its liver cancer drug brivanib failed to meet the primary endpoint in a late-stage clinical trial.
Brivanib failed to meet the main goal of improving overall survival versus placebo in liver cancer patients who failed or are intolerant to sorafenib. Sorafenib is used to treat advanced primary liver cancer.
Bristol-Myers said three other trials, to evaluate brivanib in different liver cancer patient groups, will continue as planned.
"We remain committed to the development of brivanib as a potential treatment option for patients with liver cancer, and the ongoing study investigating brivanib 'first-line' is expected to complete in 2012," senior vice president Brian Daniels said in a statement.
Shares of the company closed at $35.09 on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Soham Chatterjee in Bangalore; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)
WASHINGTON ? Careening toward a politically toxic tax hike, President Barack Obama implored House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday to get behind a two-month stopgap until a longer deal could be struck early next year, calling it the only real way out of a mess that is threatening the paychecks of 160 million workers and isolating House Republicans.
In a weary Washington, the outreach accomplished little. All sides seemed to end the day where they began, with heavy political and economic consequences at stake.
Boehner remained insistent on a full-year extension of the existing payroll tax cut before Jan. 1, urging Obama to haul Senate Democrats back to town to talk to his chosen negotiators. "Let's get this done today," Boehner told Obama, according to a speaker's aide, who required anonymity to characterize a private conversation.
But the Capitol was emptying out fast, and the Senate showed no inclination to return, having already passed a bipartisan two-month tax cut it thought had settled the matter.
For taxpayers, and for an economy starting to show some life again, the standoff was all holiday gloom.
Barring any action by Congress, Social Security payroll taxes will go up almost $20 a week for a worker making a $50,000 salary ? that's $40 less for a typical paycheck or $1,000 over the whole year. Almost 2 million people would lose unemployment benefits as well.
The political risks seemed only to deepen, too, particularly for House Republicans. They appeared poised to take the biggest blame for a tax increase even while pushing for a deeper one.
The reliably conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal blasted both Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader, for how they handled the matter. "The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass," the paper's editorial said.
In a year of legislative brinksmanship remarkable even by Washington standards, the latest fight spilled into the lap of Republican candidates running for president.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich chastised Congress, particularly the Senate, for failing to extend the 2 percentage point tax cut for a full year.
"They can't figure out how to pass a one-year extension, so the Senate leaves town?" Gingrich remarked while campaigning in Iowa. "It's an absurd dereliction of duty."
Rival Mitt Romney refused to take a position, again steering clear of Washington's hot policy debate.
"I'm not going to get into the back-and-forth on the congressional sausage-making process," the former Massachusetts governor told reporters after events in New Hampshire. "I hope they're able to sit down and work out a solution that works for the American people."
But the White House made clear the time for talks were over for this year.
"The negotiating has happened already," presidential spokesman Jay Carney said, referring to the Senate bill the White House insists was sealed with Boehner's blessing.
Boehner disputes that he ever gave a nod of support to the two-month tax cut that many in his caucus oppose.
He and other House members call it a poor and unworkable tax policy.
Obama also called the Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid, and praised him for the bipartisan tax-cut bill with McConnell that passed the Senate.
Obama did most of the talking in his 10-minute call to Boehner.
The president made clear to Boehner that this was essentially his last legislative chance: There was no other option under consideration except the two-month tax bill, no surprise last-minute deal, and no real chance that Reid was calling the Senate back, according an administration official who spoke anonymously to describe the private phone call.
From Boehner's perspective, the only real progress was that Obama had shown engagement with the speaker that he had not in weeks, according to an aide who also spoke anonymously to describe internal thinking.
Obama for months has called for a year-long extension of the tax cut; he would prefer that it be deepened, too, although that idea never went anywhere in Congress. Obama reiterated to Boehner that he wants to work out a full-year deal with Congress but there is no time for that to be done right now.
Overall, the stalemate has centered on how to pay for another year's tax cut without adding to the deficit. That is the debate ahead ? if the two-month deal gets done first.
Boehner's reaction gave no hints of a breakthrough, even though House Republicans appear increasingly isolated. They're not getting support from Senate Republicans and are battling against a president whose approval numbers, while not impressive, are better than theirs.
Obama was to have left Washington by now for a Christmas vacation in Hawaii, where his wife and two daughters have been since the weekend.
Instead, after speaking to Boehner and Reid, he found a different escape from the White House.
He took his dog, Bo, and went holiday shopping.
___
Associated Press writers David Espo and Andrew Taylor in Washington, Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Kasie Hunt in Keene, N.H., contributed to this story.
The vulnerability, described in a tweet by webdevil, was confirmed by Secunia, which it categorized as a ?highly critical? flaw providing remote system access to an attacker.
?A vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to potentially compromise a user's system?, Secunia said.
?The vulnerability is caused due to an error in win32k.sys and can be exploited to corrupt memory via, e.g., a specially crafted web page containing an IFRAME with an overly large 'height' attribute viewed using the Apple Safari browser. Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code with kernel-mode privileges. The vulnerability is confirmed on a fully patched Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Other versions may also be affected?, it warned. Secunia stressed that ?no effective solution is currently available.?
Microsoft told Kaspersky Lab that they are looking into the reported vulnerability. "We are currently examining the issue and will take appropriate action to help ensure the customers are protected", said Jerry Bryant, group manager of response communications in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group.
"There is no economy in the world.. that will be immune to the crisis we see not only unfolding, but escalating," Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday, warning that the eurozone's crisis threatens not only the developed world, but the entire global economy.
Nothing short of a miracle will stop the eurozone from falling back into a recession, but how deep and how long that recession is depends on how quickly the politics can be fixed and money can be found to reassure not just investors, but corporate financiers and ground-level enterprises that the single currency can be saved and growth restarted.
As economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in their global economic outlook, released on Friday morning, "We're all Europeans now."
"While US events have had a strong 'CNN effect' on global markets, European news has rarely been as powerful. For example, the US payroll report is much more impactful than the German IFO index and the Fed usually overshadows the ECB," The outlook said.
"Apparently, when the US sneezes the world catches a cold, but when Asia or Europe sneezes the world offers a handkerchief. Unfortunately, the current strain of euro-flu is more contagious. Europe matters a lot more today due to capital market linkages."
This is a universal across the bank research outlooks being released in the run up to Christmas. Deutsche Bank's macro strategy report warned that nearly anything could happen, but that the risks were all to the downside.
Expectations that rich emerging markets - or the US - might come to the rescue by increasing their commitments to the IMF or directly to the EU's bailout mechanisms have, so far, been met with insistences that Europe must solve Europe's problems.
European markets opened slightly up and had fallen flat after a couple of hours trading. Many investors have probably priced in the longer term macro risks now, and are waiting for someone - possibly the ECB - to deliver a Christmas miracle. Follow our liveblog below to keep up-to-date with the action.
Despite its dramatic 'no' to treaty change in the December 9 eurozone meeting, the UK is to return to the table for technical discussions surrounding the fiscal integration deal.
The move - agreed on Thursday night in a telephone call between Mr Cameron and the President of the European Council, Herman von Rompuy - is likely to be seen as an olive branch both to the other EU countries and his Liberal Democrat coalition partners.
"The Prime Minister reiterated that he wants the new fiscal agreement to succeed, and to find the right way forward that ensures the EU institutions fulfil their role as guardian of the EU treaty on issues such as the single market," a No 10 spokesman said.
After the crisis deal was agreed last week, there was immediate criticism of Cameron's stance, which many said would not protect the City of London from regulation from Brussels.
There are a few reasons why there never is a contagion of higher borrowing costs for other U.S. states when one state runs into budget difficulties, The Wall Street Journal's David Wessel wrote on Thursday.
A new working paper by the International Monetary Fund found that a rise in borrowing costs in one state resulted in lower borrowing costs in other states: the opposite of the contagion effect of higher borrowing costs in countries across Europe, Wessel noted.
Wessel wrote that there are a few possible reasons why: the markets trust that the federal government (unlike Germany) would bail out a state if necessary, the markets are not concerned that the dollar-union could split apart, and the markets still view the creditworthiness of different states as essentially different. Thus, a fiscal union in Europe both could help and not be enough to prevent higher borrowing costs for struggling countries.
Read the whole story on The Wall Street Journal's website.
--Bonnie Kavoussi
The European Central Bank said in a report on Thursday that Europe needs to adhere to stricter budgetary rules than agreed to at the Brussels summit last week.
The ECB particularly faulted the "discretion" that the European Commission and European Council will have in enforcing budgetary discipline, complaining that the European Union would take relevant factors into account and that the punishment of countries that spend more than allowed would not be automatic.
-- Bonnie Kavoussi
Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said in a speech on Thursday that there is "no external savior" for the eurozone and that struggling countries should supposedly save themselves by cutting spending and agreeing to more control of their budgets by the European Union, according to the Associated Press.
"There is no external savior for a country that doesn't want to save itself," Draghi said in Berlin.
Draghi claimed that countries could restore "financial markets' confidence" on their own by committing to restrained budgets over the long term.
Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman has dismissed attempts to restore business confidence by slashing government spending as an irrational belief in "the confidence fairy" which never arrives.
Draghi said in response to a question after the speech that he is skeptical about the potential economic impact of buying large amounts of securities, which in this case many observers would want to be European government bonds, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"I don't think quantitative easing leads to stellar economic performance. I see no evidence that quantitative easing greatly boosts the U.K. and U.S. economies," Draghi said.
--Bonnie Kavoussi
European stock markets clawed back some of the losses made over the last two days as US jobs data gave them slight hopes that the world's largest economy might pull itself out of its slump.
In Germany, the DAX gave back some of its early gains but closed up 0.98%, while the French CAC-40 ended the day up 0.76%. The FTSE-100 was up 0.63%. The euro came off its 11-month lows, but only just.
The day's main highlights:
The Anglo-French rift on Europe is widening, as both the president and the central bank governor make digs.
ECB chief Mario Draghi said very little in a speech, but indicated that there will be no infinite bond buying.
Technocratic Italian PM Mario Monti got a taste of the fractious politics that finished off his predecessor, and will face a vote of confidence.
Both the Markit Purchasing Managers Index and Ernst & Young forecast a eurozone recession early next year.
Investors, as they have since the EU summit last Friday, been trading into an information vacuum, with little, apart from speculation over the tangled legalities of the summit document.
European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi gave little away in a speech in Berlin, and the release of the monthly bulletin was equally unenlightening.
There were more weak projections of the eurozone's economic growth, which hit at its debt reduction strategies, but they failed to scare markets any more than they already are. Likewise, the fact that Mario Monti's government will have to face a confidence vote on austerity measures passed without real alarm.
It is possible the market was oversold on Tuesday and Wednesday, but with the way the politics has proceeded to date, it is unlikely that many investors will want to take long positions into the weekend.
This morning's robust rally on the stock markets has come off the boil a bit - the DAX is still on to gain 1.06% but the CAC-40 is now up 0.81% on the day, and the FTSE-100 up 0.77%.
The euro is off the floor - yesterday it hit 11-month lows - but is still below $1.30.
European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi said today that the need to recapitalise struggling banks needed to be balanced by the need to free up credit into the real economy.
He said:
Banks in the euro area have recently come under pressure both as regards their capital bases and their funding conditions.
The plan to strengthen their capital bases is an attempt to reinforce their standing in financial markets, but this is not an easy process. There are essentially three options for banks to pursue to raise their capital ratios as demanded by the European Banking Authority: they can raise their capital levels, sell assets or reduce their provision of credit to the real economy.
The first option is much better than the second, and the second option is much better than the third.
Speaking at the Ludwig Erhard Foundation's annual lecture - named after the economist who helped to shape Germany's postwar recovery - Draghi also made what could be a pointed remark about the pressure on the bank itself, saying:
Ludwig Erhard also helped to enshrine the principle of central bank independence. When in the early 1950s the independence of the German central bank system was not yet settled, he as minister of the economy argued that the government should not issue instructions to the central bank. You all know that the statutes of the ECB inherited this important principle and that central bank independence and the credible pursuit of price stability go hand in hand.
Here's the speech in full.
The morning's rally has held firm into the afternoon, as European stock markets keep the faith ahead of the US open. Solid job data from the US added to the positive sentiment. As of 2pm GMT, the German DAX had gained more than 1.85% and the French CAC-40 was up nearly 1.25%, reversing some of the big losses made over the previous two days. In London, the FTSE stayed strong over 1%.
This comes despite Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) reiterating that he does not see any extension of the bank's bond buying programme, and continuing worries about Italy.
Many investors expect the ECB to relax its stance and print money.
There is a very brief story on the Reuters wire that quotes a Russian aide to Vladimir Putin saying that the country could put $10bn into the IMF to help the EU.
Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy are meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev today to discuss possible contributions.
In the scheme of things, $10bn (?7.7bn) is not a great deal, when the EU is seeking hundreds of billions of euros.
In the face of renewed pressure over the strict austerity measures that Italy is going to have to undergo if it is to climb out of its debt hole, the technocratic government is to hold a vote of confidence. The move was announced after the session in the lower house had to be suspended this morning, AP reports.
Votes of confidence are relatively commonplace in Italy - Silvio Berlusconi survived more than 50 - and the move is a calculated gamble to reduce the dissent that saw lawmakers from the Northern League protesting in parliament.
From AP:
The vote of confidence was announced in the lower house, where the speaker earlier suspended the session and ejected two lawmakers from the unruly right-wing Northern League who held up banners against the resurrection of a tax on primary residences. The Northern League caucus, the only party not to support Monti's government in a vote of confidence confirming the new Cabinet last month, also whistled in protest of the measures before the chamber.
"Shepherds whistle, not lawmakers," a clearly agitated Gianfranco Fini told deputies as he sought to bring order.
Yet more bad news out of Italy, via the Financial Times.
The FT reports that the main lobby of Italian employers, Confindustria, is forecasting a contraction of 1.6% in the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012. The group actually predicted a slight rise in its last release, in September, so the number seems indicative of a real worsening of sentiment amongst domestic employers.
Guy Dinmore writes:
?We are in recession,? Corrado Passera, minister for development, told a Confindustria conference in Rome. ?but this is not our fault,? he said, blaming the crisis on Europe?s ?inadequate management of the Greek crisis?.
Mr Passera warned that without economic growth the government?s programme would be ?unsustainable?, with its emphasis on social equity at risk.
The eurozone looks likely to fall into recession next year, according to a major business survey - the Markit Eurozone Composite Purchasing Managers Index (PMI).
A score of over 50 on the PMI is indicative of positive economic growth, while a score below that means recession. The survey compiles the investment activity of companies across the single currency area.
Better-than-expected results in Germany and France cause the index to beat expectations of a decline, as the PMI rose from 47.0 to 47.9, but it remains firmly in negative territory.
Ernst & Young also released their eurozone forecast this morning, and said that the economy in the region is likely to contract in the first quarter of 2012.
Spain has sold ?2.5bn of five-year bonds with a yield of just over 4% - considerably less than the 6% that investors demanded of Italy for debt with the same maturity earlier this week. The auction was covered twice over, showing that markets are still clinging onto confidence in Spain, if not in Italy.
The scale of Italy's debt problems, relative to the amount of money available in European and IMF coffers to backstop it, are coming to the fore, as Italy's politics shows signs of the kind of polarity and tension that characterised the Berlusconi government.
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the bail out fund, has ?275bn left, after committing to support Greece, Ireland and Portugal. The IMF has, possibly, ?100bn ready to deploy this year. Add to this the ?150-200bn (dependent on who agrees to pay) from the December 9 summit, and the total is between ?495-545bn that is deployable in the short term.
By the summer, Italy's debt was more than ?1.8tr. Italy and Spain between them are going to need to find nearly ?600bn next year, as existing stocks of debt mature. Their costs of borrowing are well above sustainable levels - Italy paid euro era record highs on its five-year debt auction earlier this week.
It is a concern echoed by John Paulson, the hedge fund manager, in an op-ed in the Financial Times this morning. Saying that the amount of money available was inadequate, he called on policymakers to learn from the US experience:
"Drawing on our experience restructuring companies along with lessons learned in the US following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, we suggest the ECB consider a sovereign debt guarantee programme as a solution to the European sovereign debt crisis."
When the opportunity to review the high-tech Home Chef Apron by iRepel came around, I volunteered immediately. Before I was foolish enough to go to law school and join the computer/online industry, I worked as a chef for a few restaurants. This meant I spent a great deal of time turning kitchen whites and my [...]
IOM report recommends stringent limits on use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral research Public release date: 15-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Christine Stencel news@nas.edu 202-334-2138 National Academy of Sciences
WASHINGTON -- Given that chimpanzees are so closely related to humans and share similar behavioral traits, the National Institutes of Health should allow their use as subjects in biomedical research only under stringent conditions, including the absence of any other suitable model and inability to ethically perform the research on people, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. In addition, use of these animals should be permissible only if forgoing their use will prevent or significantly hinder advances necessary to prevent or treat life-threatening or debilitating conditions, said the committee that wrote the report. Based on these criteria, chimpanzees are not necessary for most biomedical research.
NIH also should limit the use of chimpanzees in behavioral research to studies that provide otherwise unattainable insights into normal and abnormal behavior, mental health, emotion, or cognition, the report says. NIH should require these studies to be performed only on acquiescent animals using techniques that are minimally invasive and are applied in a manner that minimizes pain and distress. Animals used in either biomedical or behavioral studies must be maintained in appropriate physical and social environments or in natural habitats, the report adds.
"The report's recommendations answer the need for a uniform set of criteria for assessing the scientific necessity of chimpanzees in biomedical, comparative genomics, and behavioral research," said committee chair Jeffrey Kahn, senior faculty member, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, Baltimore. "The committee concluded that research use of animals that are so closely related to humans should not proceed unless it offers insights not possible with other animal models and unless it is of sufficient scientific or health value to offset the moral costs. We found very few cases that satisfy these criteria."
Advances in the development of other research tools and methods, including cell-based tests and other animal models, have rendered chimpanzees largely nonessential as research subjects, the committee noted. It acknowledged two possible ongoing uses: the development of a limited number of monoclonal antibody therapies already in the pipeline, and development of a vaccine that would prevent infection by hepatitis C virus (HCV).
New methods such as recombinant technologies can replace the chimpanzee in efforts to develop monoclonal antibodies. While industry and academic laboratories are in the process of adopting these alternate approaches, there may be a few therapies in development that require continued use of chimpanzees to keep progress from stalling and slowing patients' access to needed new treatments. These cases should be assessed to ensure that they meet the criteria outlined in this report, and NIH should continue to support the development of and access to alternatives to make future use of chimpanzees unnecessary.
The committee did not reach a consensus decision on whether chimpanzees are essential to the development of a prophylactic HCV vaccine and if or how much the use of chimpanzees would accelerate or improve this work. Roughly 3.2 million Americans are chronically infected with HCV, and about 17,000 new infections occur each year in the United States alone. Persistent infection can lead to liver disease and cancer; it is the most common cause of liver failure and transplantation in the United States.
Chimpanzees and humans are the only two species that are susceptible to HCV infection, and no other suitable animal models currently exist to test a prophylactic vaccine. However, chimpanzees' immune systems clear HCV from their bodies more effectively, and they are less likely to develop liver damage. The committee members agreed that it would be possible and ethical to test a prophylactic vaccine candidate in humans without prior testing in chimpanzees, provided that it was first shown to be safe and to stimulate an immune response in other animals. However, the committee was evenly split on the necessity of testing various HCV vaccine candidates in chimpanzees before proceeding to human trials.
Research to develop a therapeutic HCV vaccine one that would be given to people already infected with HCV to boost their immune systems' ability to clear the virus and antiviral drugs for patients with chronic HCV infection can be performed without use of chimpanzees, the committee agreed. These products can be more readily and rapidly tested in people, and new drugs and therapeutic vaccine candidates are moving forward without the use of chimpanzees.
The committee would not close the door on the possibility that chimpanzees may be needed in future research to develop treatments or preventive tools against as yet unknown diseases or disorders. It is impossible to say in advance whether other animal models or research tools will always serve effectively and quickly enough in the face of a novel health threat.
The report's recommendations focus on the scientific necessity of the chimpanzee as a research subject, but also take ethical issues into account. Chimpanzees' genetic closeness to humans and their similar biological and behavioral characteristics not only make chimpanzees a uniquely valuable species for certain types of research but also demand greater justification for conducting research with them, the committee said.
###
The study was mandated by Congress and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Established in 1970 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine provides objective, evidence-based advice to policymakers, health professionals, the private sector, and the public. The Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Research Council together make up the independent, nonprofit National Academies. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org or http://iom.edu. A committee roster follows.
Contacts:
Christine Stencel, Senior Media Relations Officer
Luwam Yeibio, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
Copies of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu. Additional information is available at http://iom.edu. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE
Board on Health Sciences Policy
Committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research
Jeffrey P. Kahn, M.P.H., Ph.D. (chair)
Robert Henry Levi and Ryda Hecht Levi Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy
Berman Institute of Bioethics
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore
John G. Bartlett, M.D.
Professor of Medicine
School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore
H. Russell Bernard, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
University of Florida
Gainesville
Floyd E. Bloom, M.D.
Professor Emeritus
Molecular and Integrative Neuroscience Department
The Scripps Research Institute
La Jolla, Calif.
Warner C. Greene, M.D., Ph.D.
Director and Senior Investigator
Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology;
Nick and Sue Hellmann Distinguished Professor of Translational Medicine; and
Professor of Medicine, Microbiology, and Immunology
University of California
San Francisco
Diane E. Griffin, M.D., Ph.D.
Distinguished University Service Professor, and
Alfred and Jill Sommer Chair
W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore
Edward E. Harlow Jr., Ph.D.
Professor
Harvard Medical School
Cambridge, MA
Jay R. Kaplan, Ph.D.
Professor of Pathology and Anthropology
Department of Comparative Medicine
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Margaret S. Landi, D.V.M.
Vice President of Global Laboratory Animal Sciences, and
Chief of Animal Welfare
GlaxoSmithKline
King of Prussia, Pa.
Frederick A. Murphy, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Pathology
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston
Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences, Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
Sharon Terry, M.A.
President and CEO
Genetic Alliance
Washington, D.C.
STAFF Bruce M. Altevogt, Ph.D.
Study Director
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
IOM report recommends stringent limits on use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral research Public release date: 15-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Christine Stencel news@nas.edu 202-334-2138 National Academy of Sciences
WASHINGTON -- Given that chimpanzees are so closely related to humans and share similar behavioral traits, the National Institutes of Health should allow their use as subjects in biomedical research only under stringent conditions, including the absence of any other suitable model and inability to ethically perform the research on people, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. In addition, use of these animals should be permissible only if forgoing their use will prevent or significantly hinder advances necessary to prevent or treat life-threatening or debilitating conditions, said the committee that wrote the report. Based on these criteria, chimpanzees are not necessary for most biomedical research.
NIH also should limit the use of chimpanzees in behavioral research to studies that provide otherwise unattainable insights into normal and abnormal behavior, mental health, emotion, or cognition, the report says. NIH should require these studies to be performed only on acquiescent animals using techniques that are minimally invasive and are applied in a manner that minimizes pain and distress. Animals used in either biomedical or behavioral studies must be maintained in appropriate physical and social environments or in natural habitats, the report adds.
"The report's recommendations answer the need for a uniform set of criteria for assessing the scientific necessity of chimpanzees in biomedical, comparative genomics, and behavioral research," said committee chair Jeffrey Kahn, senior faculty member, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, Baltimore. "The committee concluded that research use of animals that are so closely related to humans should not proceed unless it offers insights not possible with other animal models and unless it is of sufficient scientific or health value to offset the moral costs. We found very few cases that satisfy these criteria."
Advances in the development of other research tools and methods, including cell-based tests and other animal models, have rendered chimpanzees largely nonessential as research subjects, the committee noted. It acknowledged two possible ongoing uses: the development of a limited number of monoclonal antibody therapies already in the pipeline, and development of a vaccine that would prevent infection by hepatitis C virus (HCV).
New methods such as recombinant technologies can replace the chimpanzee in efforts to develop monoclonal antibodies. While industry and academic laboratories are in the process of adopting these alternate approaches, there may be a few therapies in development that require continued use of chimpanzees to keep progress from stalling and slowing patients' access to needed new treatments. These cases should be assessed to ensure that they meet the criteria outlined in this report, and NIH should continue to support the development of and access to alternatives to make future use of chimpanzees unnecessary.
The committee did not reach a consensus decision on whether chimpanzees are essential to the development of a prophylactic HCV vaccine and if or how much the use of chimpanzees would accelerate or improve this work. Roughly 3.2 million Americans are chronically infected with HCV, and about 17,000 new infections occur each year in the United States alone. Persistent infection can lead to liver disease and cancer; it is the most common cause of liver failure and transplantation in the United States.
Chimpanzees and humans are the only two species that are susceptible to HCV infection, and no other suitable animal models currently exist to test a prophylactic vaccine. However, chimpanzees' immune systems clear HCV from their bodies more effectively, and they are less likely to develop liver damage. The committee members agreed that it would be possible and ethical to test a prophylactic vaccine candidate in humans without prior testing in chimpanzees, provided that it was first shown to be safe and to stimulate an immune response in other animals. However, the committee was evenly split on the necessity of testing various HCV vaccine candidates in chimpanzees before proceeding to human trials.
Research to develop a therapeutic HCV vaccine one that would be given to people already infected with HCV to boost their immune systems' ability to clear the virus and antiviral drugs for patients with chronic HCV infection can be performed without use of chimpanzees, the committee agreed. These products can be more readily and rapidly tested in people, and new drugs and therapeutic vaccine candidates are moving forward without the use of chimpanzees.
The committee would not close the door on the possibility that chimpanzees may be needed in future research to develop treatments or preventive tools against as yet unknown diseases or disorders. It is impossible to say in advance whether other animal models or research tools will always serve effectively and quickly enough in the face of a novel health threat.
The report's recommendations focus on the scientific necessity of the chimpanzee as a research subject, but also take ethical issues into account. Chimpanzees' genetic closeness to humans and their similar biological and behavioral characteristics not only make chimpanzees a uniquely valuable species for certain types of research but also demand greater justification for conducting research with them, the committee said.
###
The study was mandated by Congress and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Established in 1970 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine provides objective, evidence-based advice to policymakers, health professionals, the private sector, and the public. The Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Research Council together make up the independent, nonprofit National Academies. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org or http://iom.edu. A committee roster follows.
Contacts:
Christine Stencel, Senior Media Relations Officer
Luwam Yeibio, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
Copies of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu. Additional information is available at http://iom.edu. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE
Board on Health Sciences Policy
Committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research
Jeffrey P. Kahn, M.P.H., Ph.D. (chair)
Robert Henry Levi and Ryda Hecht Levi Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy
Berman Institute of Bioethics
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore
John G. Bartlett, M.D.
Professor of Medicine
School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore
H. Russell Bernard, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
University of Florida
Gainesville
Floyd E. Bloom, M.D.
Professor Emeritus
Molecular and Integrative Neuroscience Department
The Scripps Research Institute
La Jolla, Calif.
Warner C. Greene, M.D., Ph.D.
Director and Senior Investigator
Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology;
Nick and Sue Hellmann Distinguished Professor of Translational Medicine; and
Professor of Medicine, Microbiology, and Immunology
University of California
San Francisco
Diane E. Griffin, M.D., Ph.D.
Distinguished University Service Professor, and
Alfred and Jill Sommer Chair
W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore
Edward E. Harlow Jr., Ph.D.
Professor
Harvard Medical School
Cambridge, MA
Jay R. Kaplan, Ph.D.
Professor of Pathology and Anthropology
Department of Comparative Medicine
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Margaret S. Landi, D.V.M.
Vice President of Global Laboratory Animal Sciences, and
Chief of Animal Welfare
GlaxoSmithKline
King of Prussia, Pa.
Frederick A. Murphy, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Pathology
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston
Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences, Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Stanford University
Stanford, Calif.
Sharon Terry, M.A.
President and CEO
Genetic Alliance
Washington, D.C.
STAFF Bruce M. Altevogt, Ph.D.
Study Director
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
MAKHACHKALA, Russia (Reuters) ? The founder of a newspaper that investigated government corruption was shot dead in Russia's North Caucasus region, in what an international watchdog called "a lethal blow to press freedom."
A gunman shot Gadzhimurat Kamalov as he was leaving the offices of the newspaper Chernovik in the capital of Dagestan province shortly before midnight on Thursday, the regional Interior Ministry said.
Police said Kamalov was shot eight times and was pronounced dead on the way to hospital.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said journalists at Chernovik, known for reporting on corruption in the provincial administration, had been "routinely persecuted for their work".
"The assassination of Gadzhimurat Kamalov is a massive loss for independent journalism in the North Caucasus, Russia's most dangerous place for reporters," the advocacy group's regional coordinator Nina Ognianova said in a statement.
Russian journalists who investigate corruption face serious risks, particularly in the provinces, where authorities are less likely to face scrutiny over attacks on journalists.
Predominantly Muslim Dagestan is plagued by violence stemming from an Islamist insurgency rooted in the 1990s separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya as well as conflicts over business and political power.
There have been 19 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since 2000, including the 2006 killing of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, according to the CPJ.
It lists Russia as eighth on its "Impunity Index", a list of states where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes.
(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Tim Pearce)
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 15-Dec-2011
Share ]