The ability to grow new replacement parts for humans when original organs break down is a game-changer when it comes to extending human “health spans” — the amount of time one is alive and healthy. A handful of human subjects have already benefited from innovations in this area and dozens of organs have been successfully grown in the lab, including a rat heart.

The science is not easy, but because of the exponential growth of technological tools, it is moving faster than many had expected. Such growth has happened before.

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Cloud computing, technology delivered over the Internet, has become a hot area in the last few years. The technology marketplace moves at breakneck speeds, but it is still shocking when innovation almost completely wipes out squabbles like those over open source (OS) vs. proprietary software.

“In a cloud world, source code is almost irrelevant,” Matt Asay recently wrote at GigaOm.
Tim O’Reilly was among the first to point this out in 2008, when he said that “Architecture trumps licensing any time.”

This statement rings true to most experts following this space, but for those who remember the heated battles between proprietary software providers and the open source community, the new environment seems almost surreal.

There was a time, for example, when Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer called Linux a “cancer.” Now the company is actively engaging the open source community in various ways, such as offering OS applications on its cloud, the Windows Azure platform, and publicizing that 350,000 OS applications run on Windows.

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The genomics industry, which provides reports about disease risk, ancestry, and drug reactions based on one’s DNA, came under fire last week as a Congressional Committee held hearings and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an unscientific “study” of the sector.

According to undercover discussions with genomics firms, the GAO reports that “fictitious consumers received test results that are misleading and of little or no practical use.” The agency admits, however, that it “did not conduct a scientific study but instead documented observations that could be made by any consumer.”

The GAO’s “sting” operation on this nascent field looks more like a witch hunt, given that it lumped in legitimate testing companies with others that are not.

In one instance, a company representative said that it would be OK to send in someone else’s saliva to be tested. As the GAO points out, that practice is already restricted in 33 states, so this seems more like a matter of enforcement.

The GAO’s report is a tricky way of attempting to perturb the public about genetic testing, but it also raises a key question: Why haven’t government regulators disciplined the companies that are clearly breaking the already-established rules?

The GAO also blasts the genomics industry for providing different results for the same DNA, but when dealing with something as complicated as the human body, there often are valid scientific reasons for variation. As 23andMe points out on its blog, testing is not yet standardized, and some companies “employ different statistical models for making risk estimates; they establish different criteria for the inclusion of associations in their reports; and new associations are being discovered at a faster rate than companies’ development cycles.”

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Read more here: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/70499.html

Personal computing altered the world forever, and now the digitization of biology is poised to bring about sweeping change. Craig Venter’s recent announcement of the first synthetic genome was a huge milestone, but many outside of Silicon Valley remain unaware of the “do-it-yourself biology” movement (DIY bio).

This movement consists of smart engineers who like to tinker in garages, basements and living rooms, hacking the genetic codes of various organisms. Often, their goal is simple fun — to make cells blink, glow or smell like banana. Such pursuits are reminiscent of the beginnings of the PC revolution.

Back in the 1970s, it was the Homebrew Club that brought together clever thinkers — such as future Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak — to trade parts, circuits and information for DIY computing devices.

As Wozniak has recounted, “The Apple I and II were designed strictly on a hobby, for-fun basis, not to be a product for a company.”

Some have argued that biology is different from computing in that it is more complicated and harder to do because lab work is involved.

That idea is put forward by people who don’t understand their history, according to Andrew Hessel, a synthetic biologist heavily involved in the movement.

“In the beginning, computing was very hard,” he said.

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Folks in Silicon Valley are used to the fast pace and uncertainty that come along with exponentially growing technologies like those in the field of genomics, and it was easy to spot the venture capitalists in the crowd. The medical profession and the healthcare industry, on the other hand, are not quite as comfortable with accelerating change. That dynamic played out not only in the scheduled talks, but also informally among participants.

“It feels like the Internet conferences I went to in 1994,” said entrepreneur and investor Alex Jacobson of Aleo Capital — but it is also different, because “the Internet didn’t come out of a regulated industry.”

During her talk, investor and 23andMe board member Esther Dyson was asked “how to sway the FDA to empower consumers.” Her response was that the problem is “not so much the FDA as the medical establishment,” which she compared to officials in the Catholic Church who want to interpret everything for their patients.

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Read more here.

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Read the whole story here.

“There have been striking advances in healthcare, thanks to technology, that have nothing to do with the controversial “reform” efforts under way in Washington. Among the life-improving — even potentially life-saving — gifts of recent years: less costly genome sequencing; health-promoting iPhone applications; electronic health records; and crowdsourcing for better living.”

Here is my column arguing that, while good news abounds, the downside is that a strong belief in a “fountain of youth pill” can lead to big trouble, especially when it comes to diet and exercise.

The commissioners have less than eight months to “ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability,” as well as provide additional guidelines for using existing high-speed Internet infrastructure to support more than a dozen socioeconomic and political objectives.

Officials can sift through more than 1,700 suggestions from a gamut of activist groups, lobbyists and interested consumers. Many of them see the answer in some form of social and economic engineering by government bureaucrats, price controls, wealth redistribution, or other regulatory mandates. Nothing could be further from the truth. Now, as in the past, the FCC should reject proposals that are hostile to market forces.

A new public fund to subsidize Internet access for poor and rural residents is not likely to be effective. Consider the case of E-Rate, a US$2.25 billion FCC fund created in 1997 to connect all children to the Information Age by underwriting up to 90 percent of the costs of hard-wiring classrooms and libraries. Since its conception, however, E-Rate has been a bust. Public and private reports detail the regulatory loopholes, rubber-stamped “gold plated” networks, and criminal abuse.

After disbursing more than $20 billion in funds — collected, ironically, from fees that raise the cost of monthly phone bills — the FCC has still failed to establish basic accountability measures for E-Rate, and according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this March, excessive rules and paperwork keep thousands of schools from seeking reimbursements for legitimate costs. If the FCC is too inept to structure and manage our broadband funds properly today, what will make tomorrow any different?

Read more here.

Signed into law in April, 2009, Kansas Senate Bill 212 allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine shipments over the Web for state residents beginning July 1. A common-sense outcome to many, this victory was hard-fought in a state that previously banned all DTC wine shipments. The victory comes four years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional those shipping rules that discriminate against out-of-state retailers.

Entrenched local wholesalers and retailers in Kansas quashed a 2006 attempt to liberalize shipping laws by financing a dubious voter survey to influence political opinions in an election year. They also pushed for onerous amendments that mandated online winery orders be shipped to retail liquor stores for pickup with a US$5 delivery tax. Shrewd political maneuvering by the brick-and-mortar distributors allowed them to retain their grip, but advocates for consumer choice are learning that the same techniques can be used to expand online economic freedom.

Read more here.