November 8, 2007

• Fun in the Sun, Finally Flickr & A Crushing Defeat in the Fight Against AIDS

  
  I’m finally walking again…though trying to stay off my ankle as much as possible.  It’s a whole lot better than it was last week though.  So…not much new to report.  I got an email yesterday from my friend Luci in Brazil.  She sent me some pictures of her kids, which I just had to post:

  Carey Anthony<careygly@gmail.com>
  

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  Fun in the Sun – News from Brazil!
  

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  From: Luciana	Tue, Nov 6, 2007 at 8:31 AM
  To:Carey
  Greetings from Sunny Brazil! Just wanted to share with you some pictures of our four day weekend in Buzios (near Rio) three weeks ago. Lucas is 2 years and 8 months old  and Amanda is 1 year and 3 months old! Hope all is well with you.  Please send us news! Luci Upper School Counselor/VHS Site Coordinator Graded – The American School of São Paulo, Brazil

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  From:  Carey	Tue, Nov 6, 2007 at 10:02 AM
  To:Luciana
  Oi Lu, I just got off the phone with Department of Children & Family Services.  I’m not sure if their jurisdiction will reach Brazil, but I HAD to file a complaint about a possible crime.  You see, depriving such BEAUTIFUL children the chance of fame and fortune by not sending them to live in Hollywood with their Uncle Carey and pursue a modeling/acting career, is tantamount to child neglect.  I’m sorry it had to come to this, but it’s for the children. I hope you understand.  Until my attorney contacts you, please kiss the children, and give yourself a strong hug for bringing such angels into our world! Beijos, Carey

  
  

    

  
  
  

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  Thanks so much to Albert, who pointed me to this great website that allows you to embed your Flickr photos anywhere you want.  That’s Luci and her husband in the first picture, and a bunch of photos I took in Brazil the last time I was there.  The neatest thing is that you can access any of my over 8000 Flickr photos all from this one slideshow.  You just have to click “Info” and enter my Flickr name: CareyAnthony.  Then just choose a set.  I love it!

  Update:  I’ve left Flickr…they pissed me off.  Stay tuned

  
  

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  Finally, I received some very disturbing news today.  I don’t know how much press this is going to get, but I find it truly shocking that a promising HIV vaccine, designed to immunize people against the disease before they get it, actually might be increasing the chance for test study volunteers to contract HIV and therefore AIDS.  I have a good friend who is enrolled in this trial.  He received 3 vaccinations, though since it was a blinded study, he had no way of knowing whether he got the vaccine or a placebo.  Merck, the company that conducted the trials, is going to un-blind the study, so soon my friend will know if he actually received the vaccine.  If so, he is more at risk of contracting HIV than had he not enrolled in this trial. 

  
  

  He was guaranteed by Merck that the trial could in no way infect him.  So, in essence, by trying to do a good thing and advance the study and science of HIV prevention, he now may be at risk.  Of course this is all speculation at this point, but how dare a worldwide pharmaceutical company like Merck expose people to such a horrific possibility.  My friend is beside himself with worry…nearly sick to his stomach.  I wish the best for him and for the other 3,000 study participants nationwide.  Here’s more, from Time magazine:
  

  
  

  Assessing a Failed AIDS Vaccine
  

  Wednesday, Nov. 07, 2007

  By ALICE PARK

  

  A T-lymphocyte white blood cell infected with AIDS virus (green).

  After 20 years of defeat, it appeared that science may have finally
  developed a viable vaccine against AIDS. Merck’s new drug, V520, was
  being tested in a huge clinical trial, involving 3,000 people in 15
  cities, and it was widely considered the most promising new candidate
  in the field. But last September, when Merck analyzed its initial trial
  data, it found that the vaccine had failed — and failed miserably. On
  Wednesday, the company issued its first report on the V520 trials,
  revealing that the drug did not protect against HIV, and more
  disturbingly, actually increased some people’s susceptibility to the
  virus. “I don’t think anyone imagined the results would be so
  definitively negative so quickly,” says Dr. Gary Nabel, director of the
  Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  V520 may have failed, but somewhere in the details of the drug’s
  nonsuccess, scientists hope to find insight into what will make future
  vaccines work. After all, V520 is just one of about 50 experimental HIV
  vaccines that are currently being tested in clinical trials, and almost
  all of them are designed to function the same way. While most vaccines
  expose the body to weakened or killed viruses, or pieces of them, to
  boost production of antibodies — proteins that recognize invading cells
  and flag them for destruction — that tack alone was too feeble to fend
  off HIV. The new class of vaccines, including V520, takes a more direct
  route: They trigger cell-mediated immunity, which marshals killer T
  cells that both recognize and destroy viruses and bacteria, and can
  lead to a more robust, specific and longer-lived immune defense.

  It’s not yet clear why V520 didn’t work, but one theory involves its
  vector, or delivery vehicle. Like almost every other AIDS vaccine in
  development, Merck’s drug used the common cold virus to transport its
  payload — three synthetic HIV genes — into the body’s cells. What makes
  the adenovirus ideal for the task is precisely the reason colds make us
  so miserable — once inside a host, the cold virus infects cells and
  starts to replicate quickly. The down side to that efficiency, however,
  is that cold viruses are so common that most people have developed a
  certain level of tolerance to them; if the adenovirus fails to excite
  the immune system, then any bugs piggybacked on the virus, such as HIV
  genes, will also slip past immune defenses. That’s exactly what appears
  to have happened in the Merck trial: People with the highest
  pre-existing immunity to the common cold also had the highest rates of
  infection with HIV.

  “It could be due to chance, or to differences in the populations we
  studied, or to something related to the vaccine itself,” says Dr. Keith
  Gottesdiener, vice president of Vaccine and Infectious Disease Clinical
  Research at Merck. “The ‘why’ is still not well known.”

  Researchers have already set about trying to figure it out. “We have
  to remember that Merck’s was a single product testing a vaccine
  concept, which is that T cell immunity can protect against HIV
  infection,” says Nabel. “And we know there are other ways to stimulate
  T cell immunity.” Nabel is ready to test one such method, a vaccine
  similar to Merck’s that uses different HIV genes and a “prime-boost”
  approach that involves two injections spaced a few months apart,
  instead of one shot, to maximize the stimulation of the body’s T cells.
  Other researchers, like Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond
  AIDS Research Center in New York City and the recipient of a $25
  million grant from the Gates Foundation to study novel vaccine
  strategies, think that the cold virus isn’t the best way to deliver
  HIV. Ho is exploring the possibility that a different vector, such as
  the chicken pox virus, or perhaps no vector at all — simply injecting
  snippets of naked HIV DNA — could yield stronger immune responses.

  At the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), a non-profit
  group of public and private partners focused on funding and
  accelerating AIDS vaccine research, scientists are studying the use of
  crippled, live strains of HIV — based on the success of other such live
  attenuated vaccines against polio and measles — which they think might
  be critical to waking up the right immune system defenses. “There is
  something magical about the replicating virus, because it has virtually
  its entire genome,” says Dr. Seth Berkley, president of IAVI. His group
  is also investigating ways to stimulate so-called neutralizing
  antibodies, a special class of antibodies that appear to be able to
  defuse HIV.

  Despite the ongoing study, experts argue that none of it will
  succeed without some basic changes in the way it’s conducted. Most
  research occurs in isolation; there’s little coordination among labs
  and no network through which data can be shared, making it difficult
  for scientists to learn from each other’s missteps. Worse, it takes
  years to get regulatory approval to start a human trial for a new
  vaccine — not to mention enrolling the volunteers and training the
  right personnel — so, by the time experiments get underway, the science
  around which the vaccine was built has long since become outdated. “The
  trials are not informing science at the moment,” says Dr. Alan
  Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an
  alliance of independent organizations dedicated to accelerating HIV
  vaccine research. “Science — and vaccine development — is an iterative
  process, except that in HIV vaccine research, there isn’t a lot of
  iteration going on.”

  The Enterprise, which was founded in 2005, intends to change that.
  With funding from the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, National
  Institutes of Health and the European Union, it will serve as a hub for
  guiding worldwide HIV vaccine research. �We want to ensure that the
  trials are done faster, better and smarter,� says Bernstein. And
  hopefully, with more success.

  For Merck’s official press release today, click here.

  
  

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  Arnold’s Constitutionality & Flickr Foibles

  
  

  
  Please note that until the writer’s strike is over this blog will only contain photos.  Just kidding.   Though they say if the strike lasts a long time, it could have  devastating and far-reaching effects on the local economy.

  
  

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  I got in to a 5 against 1 heated debate the other day with my friends over the following issue:
  

  
  

  	The “Arnold Amendment” Should we amend the Constitution to let foreign-born U.S. citizens become president?

  BackgroundWhen the Framers wrote the Constitution in 1787, they feared theinfluence foreign powers and foreign wealth might have on the newnation. In Europe, royal families in one country often tried to put oneof their own on another nation’s throne. To prevent some powerfulEuropean nobleman from coming to America, buying up political favorsand seizing the presidency, the Framers adopted a clause makingforeign-born U.S. citizens (except those present at the time of theConstitution’s adoption) ineligible to become president. For most ofthe 216 years since the adoption of the Constitution, there has beenlittle debate about this provision. But now there are four proposals inCongress to permit foreign-born citizens to runfor president. Each allows a foreign-born American to run for presidentafter a lengthy period of citizenship. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has become anemblem for the cause. Advocates of change say the current provision isout-of-date and un-American. Millions of immigrants have made this themost diverse nation on Earth and contributed to its strength. As amatter of equal rights, proponents say, they should have an equalchance to dream about becoming president. Opponents say the Framers’concerns about the possibility of divided allegiances are still validand that the Constitution should not be changed.

  
  Our debate wasn’t actually about Arnold, it was about a Constitutional Amendment to allow foreign-born US citizens to become president.  I’m as liberal as the next Californian, but this is something I actually don’t support (which scares me, because it really is a red state/blue state issue).  It’s not because I don’t like Arnold, and it’s not because I don’t think there are plenty of foreign born Americans who would make excellent presidents.  I suppose I’m a bit of a Constitutionalist (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) at heart.  But I couldn’t articulate to my friends my reasoning.  To be honest, I think they were quite flabbergasted at my perceived intolerance.  (For the record, I’m also not in favor of a Constitutional Amendment to allow gay marriage (nor certainly one to ban it), though I fully support gay marriage.  I just think it’s something for the states to decide, and it doesn’t belong in the Constitution any more than an amendment about the right to celebrate Christmas.  But that’s a whole other blog entry.)
  

  
  I, like most Americans (even the foreign born ones who went to US schools), grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school:
  
  

  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands; one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  
  
  I believe that patriotism, like family bonds, are something we learn at a very young age.  In most cases, we are bound by our countries of birth as tightly as we are bound by our families, inextricably.  I can’t imagine that’s a typically American feeling.  Surely this one country doesn’t cause everyone who comes here to want to pledge their allegiance to our flag.  I’m an Italian American, and though I would love to live in Italy if my lifestyle could afford it, I would never pledge allegiance to Italy. (Though I did root for them to win the World Cup!)
  
  But maybe my thinking is too American.  As the National Review pointed out:
  
  

  One of the wonders of American culture, of course, is the spectacle ofpeople becoming American. We call this assimilation or, lessclinically, Americanization. It is a rough process that affects peoplein different ways. On an individual level, it includes successes,failures, and much in between. It also holds a special place in thepublic imagination-most Americans can name an immigrant forebear, and agreat many know immigrant ancestors as more than names. Their storiesof arriving here, learning English, and gaining citizenship are centralnot just to millions of family histories, but to the whole country’ssense of itself. As Harvard’s Oscar Handlin remarked 50 years ago,”Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then Idiscovered that immigrants were American history.” By proposing toremove the single legal distinction the United States makes betweencitizens by birth and citizens by choice (their own or their parents’),an Amendment would fit inside a grand tradition of assimilation andacceptance.

  
  
  But, as pointed out in The Spectator (God, now I’m quoting The Spectator!  What’s happening to me??):
  
  

  But the risk goesbeyond the potential of foreign powers planting someone in thepresidency or influencing a president born and raised abroad. Even aforeign-born president not subject to malign foreign influence is arisk not worth taking, given that unavoidably divided loyalties (due toan attachment to a country in which the president was born and raised,has fond memories of, family in, and so on) could make him eitherdangerous or ineffectual. Theframers’ concern about divided loyalties wasn’t nativist caprice but arealistic recognition that a president needs to have an extremely deepattachment to America in order to serve it effectively in times ofcrisis.

  
  
  So is my thinking flawed?  Not that it should matter, but 4 out of 5 of the friends that I had this debate with were not born in the United States.  And the fifth is so liberal that she has a New York accent even though she’s from Texas!    So my final question to my friends was this;
  
  “Would you want George W. Bush to be able to become president of your countries??” 
  
  And besides, does anybody remember what happened the last time as Austrian became president of another country?  Sorry (On no he di’nt!)
  

  
  

   

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  On a completely unrelated note, does anybody know how to embed Flickr sets in Xanga?  It’s driving me crazy.
  

  
  

  

   
  

  • 1:27 am
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