Eyesight In Gaza - With Help From Haifa!

A baby in Gaza who was blind from birth has been given the gift of sight thanks to a team of Israeli medics.

This wonderfully heart-warming story - just right for an icy-cold holiday season - was picked up by the 'Haifa Diarist', Stuart Palmer, who after a career in international marketing, knows a superb story when he sees one.

He writes: "A build up of fluid causing pressure within the eyeball is called glaucoma and it’s not "Good News". When that condition is present at birth then the baby is blind and requires very intricate surgery.

"This is what happened to Halla, a little girl from the Gaza Strip who was brought to the Carmel Medical Centre in Haifa (just five minutes down the road from where I live) at the age of ten months and blind from birth. Ophthalmologists at the hospital performed two operations one after the other, the first, to drain the fluid and the second and more complicated procedure, to implant microscopic tubes to maintain the drainage process.

"The fairy tale ending – Halla can see, she reacts to her surroundings, she smiles, she laughs, she’s putting on weight and doing all the things that a ten month old baby should be doing. With all the expenses being met by the Peres Peace Centre all her overjoyed parents need to do is take her back home.

"This beats all the negative ideology being spewed out on the Gazans' radio, TV and newspapers."

In fact, we can say little Halla is now "as right as rain".

• The picture above, from the Sunday Times, is for illustration only.

Technorati Tags: Eyesight,Baby,Glaucoma,Stuart Palmer,Halla,Gaza,Carmel Medical Centre Haifa,Peres Peace Centre

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A Healthful, Lovin' Spoonful!

I hate to boast. But, like Groucho may have quipped, in this case, I'll make an exception!

Now, read on ...

"Dear Friends, Very many thanks from all at Safer Medicines Campaign and Safer Medicines Trust for your wonderful support over the past year. We we wish you a peaceful holiday and good health and happiness in 2010. We have had a busy year, as can be seen from the long list of items on our Latest News page, which now has RSS feeds, for those who wish to keep up to date with our latest news. Our Safety of Medicines Early Day Motion (569) was phenomenally successful, raising awareness of this issue amongst MPs to an enormous extent, thanks to your letters and emails, which helped to encourage so many MPs to support the motion ...   Our conference at the House of Lords was a great success ... The proceedings of our Royal Society conference have been published and are available ... With our warmest thanks and best wishes from Safer Medicines Campaign and Trust."

So it was worth a tiny bit of effort from members of the public but the real thanks are due to Members of Parliament like Ivan Lewis and Gillian Merron.

Technorati Tags: Safer Medicines Campaign,Safer Medicines Trust,Early Day Motions,House of Lords

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'GUARDIAN' NEWSPAPER'S BLEAK HARVEST

The Guardian newspaper is never wrong. Ever. Moreover, it is most assuredly always brimming with moral rectitude whenever it discusses Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.

Glory be! It must 100% accurate in all this, as its long-serving Middle East editor is a very nice - and extremely talented - Jewish boy from Yorkshire with whom I was casually acquainted in our teens.

So what happened this week? How did The Guardian and all its magnificent works go so horribly wonky to the extent that it actually admitted in cold print that it was, er, not absolutely right?

The idea of the Jewish State 'harvesting' the organs of dead people - no matter their origin - is worthy of the worst Medieval anti-Jewish blood libels. So what happened?

I'll let this august organ (of the Press!) explain for itself. The style is convoluted and verbose - perhaps well past its threshing date - but let's have a go:

The Guardian

"Corrections and Clarifications • We should not have put the headline "Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs" on a story about an admission, by the former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv, that during the 1990s specialists at the institute harvested organs from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers without getting permission from the families of the deceased (21 December, page 15). That headline did not match the article, which made clear that the organs were not taken only from Palestinians. This was a serious editing error and the headline has been changed online to reflect the text of the story written by the reporter."

Well, that's a relief. Should any Guardian staff, God forbid, ever need a cornea transplant, they may now visit Abu Kabir with impunity; without a backward glance; without looking over either shoulder ...

Technorati Tags: The Guardian,Abu Kabir,organ harvest,Israelis,Palestinians,mistake

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ISRAEL'S FORTY WAYS FOR 40 DAYS

YOU MUST HAVE NOTICED that the biblical word "forty" means a lot; a long time; positively ancient; out-of-code; well passed its sell-by-date.

But there's nothing antique or tedious about  40 of Israel's top  water and sustainable energy 'start-ups' which recently exhibited at the annual WATEC water conference in Tel Aviv, drawing hundreds of potential clients worldwide towards an innovative approach to water use and management.

First to realise the 'pipe-dream' was Netafim  which devised drip irrigation. Now the current class of start-ups like Takadu has developed a way of allowing water utilities to detect and send alerts about leaks in water networks.

Applied Cleantech, which views sewage as a treasure trove(!), has a wastewater treatment process that recycles municipal sewage into usable commodities while Solaris Synergy has developed a system of mirrors that concentrates the sun on  solar collectors that can float on any body of water.

Oded Distel, director of NewTech, an initiative of the Israel Ministry of Industry and Trade, says: "The know-how, experience, technology, managerial skills, legal framework [for the water industry] - everything was developed here purely out of necessity."

Technorati Tags: Israel21c,WATEC water technology,NewTECH,Tel Aviv-Jaffa,advertisement,sustainable energy

With thanks to Israel 21c

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Gorgeous, Sweet, Engaging And Yes, That Husky Voice Is As ...

'Right As Rain'

"Who wants to be right as rain?
It's better when something is wrong
You get excitement in your bones
And everything you do's a game
When night comes and you're all on your own
You can say I chose to be alone
Who wants to be right as rain?
It's harder when you're on top
Cause when hard work don't pay off
And I'm tired there ain't no room in my bed
As far as I'm concerned
So wipe that dirty smile off
We won't be making up
I've cried my heart out
And now I've had enough of love
Who wants to be riding high
when you'll just crumble back on down
You give up everything you are
And even then you don't get far
They make believe that everything
Is exactly what it seems
But at least when you're at your worst
You know how to feel things
See when hard work don't pay off
And I'm tired there ain't no room in my bed
As far as I'm concerned
So wipe that dirty smile off
We won't be making up
I've cried my heart out
And now I've had enough of love
Go ahead and still my heart
To make me cry again
Cause it will never hurt
as much as it did then
When we were both right
And no one had blame
But now I give up
On this endless game
Cause who wants to be right as rain
It's better when something is wrong
I get excitement in your bones
Even though everything's a strain
When night comes and I'm all on my own
You should know I chose to be alone
So who wants to be right as rain
It's harder when your on top
Cause when hard work don't pay off
And I'm tired there ain't no room in my bed
As far as I'm concerned
So wipe that dirty smile off
We won't be making up
I've cried my heart out
And now I've had enough of love."

Or may be you prefer ...

No wonder the Prime Minister thinks she's a cure-all for the country's ills. So, enjoy a dose with me!

Technorati Tags: Adele,Right As Rain,Gordon Brown,cure

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Safe For Neither Man Nor Beast!

If there's one thing sure to infuriate me it's the interminable hypocrisy surrounding the use of animals in  human drugs' tests.

Any half-decent person must feel the pain and panic of helpless, terrified  creatures  caged up in laboratories ready for experiments, especially as we know the lethal effects some new drugs have had on willing human subjects.

But not all scientists are insentient clods and an independent group of professionals is campaigning for human-biology based tests to be compared with the animal tests currently required by law.

Kathy Archibold, director of the Safer Medicines Campaign (formerly Europeans for Medical Progress) wrote in a newsletter earlier this year:

"A million Britons are hospitalised by medicines every year, costing the NHS £2 billion. We believe 21st century science can do better".

The SMC brought together a cross-party group of MPs  who launched the Safety of Medicines (Evaluation) Bill in January and four of their colleagues, who had won a ballot to table any Bill of their  choice today, were urged  to use the chance to advance the Bill. They were told:

"There is strong evidence that human biology-based technologies may offer significant improvements in safety as well as large reductions in cost and time. The comparison of safety testing methods proposed by the Bill is unprecedented and could benefit the NHS and patients dramatically. "

Meanwhile I'd asked Ivan Lewis, MP for Bury South (also Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East) if he would intervene.

As a Minister,  he could not sign Early Day Motion 569 launched in support of the Bill but he wrote to colleague, Gillian Merron enclosing the relevant material.

Ms Merron, MP for Lincoln and Minister of State in the Department of Health, forwarded everything to  Mike O'Brien, QC MP, Minister of State for Health Services.

However, I was disappointed to discover that much of Mr O'Brien's response is little more than well-mannered  evasion. He wrote inter alia:

"Appropriate animal research plays an important role in providing vital safety for information for potential new medicines, and there is a rigorous procedure in place concerning the use of any animal in the discovery and development of new medicines ...

"Once the pharmacological, pharmacokinetic and toxicological profile of a product has been evaluated in animals, it is then tested in humans ...

"Many animal studies are designed to provide reassurance before proceeding to human trials, because some aspects of the toxicological assessment of products cannot be adequately assessed in man. For example, the assessment of the carcinogenic potential and of reproductive effects of new medicines relies on the results of animal studies, for both ethical and practical reasons."

But while the Government may have made "a commitment to  minimising the use of animal testing and to encouraging the development of  other in vitro methods" by doubling the amount of money to be available for research, I insist it will never be enough until animal testing is phased out altogether.

Meanwhile, women who care about what they put on their faces should not be deceived by packaging which may include on of those  cute bunny logos.

I'm still unsure whether I was ever able to convince my step-daughter and her chums when they were in their teens that animal test-free make-up often includes animal ingredients.

There are still remarkably few companies which provide totally vegan cosmetics. Even my favourite, Beauty Without Cruelty, is shunned by ultra-strict vegans as - so I'm reliably informed! - it uses silk in its face-powder. So, now you know!

Technorati Tags: animal testing,animal ingredients,Safer Medicines Campaign,Beauty Without Cruelty,Ivan Lewis,Gillian Merron,Mike O'Brien

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