You ole goat, you!

Wow, so much going on in our world, and so little time to research and read, however, this one is just amazing!

So you have a dire medical problem that requires medication to prevent clotting, an anti-clotting medication that is developed from genetically engineered goats.

FROM AP

Drug from genetically engineered goats a first
January 7th, 2009 By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR , Associated Press Writer in Medicine & Health / Medications

In what would be a scientific first, an anti-clotting drug made from the milk of genetically engineered goats moved closer to government approval Wednesday after experts at the Food and Drug Administration reported that the medication works and its safety is acceptable.

Called ATryn, the drug is intended to help people with a rare hereditary disorder that makes them vulnerable to life-threatening blood clots.

Its approval would be a major step toward new kinds of medications made not from chemicals, but from living organisms genetically manipulated by scientists. Similar drugs could be available in the next few years for a range of human ailments, including hemophilia.

ATryn was developed by a Massachusetts biotechnology company, GTC Biotherapeutics, by altering the genes of goats so they would produce milk rich in antithrombin, a protein that in humans acts as a natural blood thinner.

About 1 in 5,000 people don't produce enough of the protein, putting them at risk of developing blood clots in their veins. Such clots can be extremely painful. If they break loose and travel through the bloodstream to the lungs or the brain, the consequences can be catastrophic. Pregnant women with the disorder are at high risk of miscarriage or stillbirth, because of blood clots in the placenta.

In their everyday lives, patients with the disorder are managed with conventional blood thinners. That would not change. ATryn is for use only when patients are undergoing surgery or having a baby, times when the risk of dangerous clots is particularly high. Those patients would receive the drug by intravenous infusion for a limited time before and after their procedures.

Scientific advisers to the FDA will weigh the risks and benefits of the drug at a meeting Friday, and make a recommendation on approval. The FDA will make the final decision.

"It's the first time we've held an advisory committee meeting on any product from a genetically engineered animal," said FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey. If ATryn is approved, the FDA may require follow-up monitoring to make sure that patients' immune systems don't start making antibodies in reaction to the medication.

Well, you ole goats, something else to affect our immune system...geez...what will they think of next?

Genetically modified corn? Oh, we already have that don't we? Know what's in Canola oil? Perhaps we need to be more informed about what we are eating? Just think, and don't get me wrong, I love goat cheese, but I want to know just what goes from my fork to my mouth...and sets up some invading consequence in my body.

For the complete article...
http://www.physorg.com/news150563615.html

UPDATE !Planting the new 2009 garden at 451 degrees

UPDATE!
Talking about radical change...well it seems that MnP and thrift shops became exempt from this ruling, once they raised enough stink, and somebody in Wishingtonia listened.

Ah, the little man can still be heard, especially since we are in this economic crisis. Who wants to close the thrift stores?

No one right now...here's the link!

http://cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09086.html


Ever see the movie Fahrenheit 451?

Well you don't have to, because it is happening right before your eyes.

While watching the noon news, I caught the end of a report about some Mom and Pop business, who sold gently worn, used clothing, toys and books. It seems that in order for them to stay in business and comply with a new government regulation, they would have to provide certification that if it, any item they sold, did not or would not cause injury to children 13 years of age and younger, they could not sell it.

In order to provide this certification, they would have to purchase a new technology, called a UNIT, that cost $35,000, which would read the levels of...ok here's what is not allowed to be sold or used ...

2. Product Content Limits
The Act prescribes strict limits on the content of certain materials in products intended for children, including lead and phthalates.

In particular:

Effective February 10, 2009, the Act prohibits the sale of childrens toys and child care articles with concentrations of more than 0.1 percent of di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), diisononyl phthalate (DINP), diisodecyl phthalate, (DIDP), or di-n-octyl phthalate (DnOP).

The Act mandates a phased-in ban on lead in substrate for all childrens products, requiring that lead levels be reduced to a maximum of 600 parts per million by February 10, 2009; 300 parts per million by August 14, 2009; and 100 parts per million by August 14, 2011. Electronic devices and inaccessible component parts will be subject to rules to be issued by August 14, 2009.

The Act also reduces permissible lead in paint content from 0.06 percent to 0.009 percent (effective August 14, 2009), which may be lowered further by administrative action.

Now what is this? The above quote is from Amazon, in a letter to all it's vendors, letting them know what is coming down the pike.

The U.S. House and Senate have passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (the Act), and on August 14, 2008, President Bush signed the Act into law.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA H.R. 4040) has a good goal: protect kids from dangerous imports tainted with lead. Bravo! Unfortunately it goes about doing so in such a way that it’ll drive up costs across the board, drive many manufacturers and retailers out of business, and not really make kids any safer.

So what does CPSIA do? It mandates lead testing for ALL items intended for children under 13 or PERCEIVED as being for those under age 13. So items commonly regarded as “kids stuff” even if it is intended for adults, such as many comics, collectible books, high end popups, etc, still falls under the statute even though they’re aimed at adult collectors.

It requires UNIT testing. The final product must be tested from each batch. It doesn’t matter if all the components going into it are certified and have been tested as having no lead, it still must be tested for lead.

Here’s an example. You publish textbooks for 4th graders. You publish a science textbook. You publish a spelling book. They are printed with all the same materials, on the same day, on the same press, with the same crew manning it. You must test the science book and the spelling book separately because they may contain lead!

This basically seems to imply that somehow alchemy works. Non-lead containing item + non-lead containing item = LEAD!

The manufacturer needs to provide a testing certificate to the retailer, which must be available for inspection, should a Consumer Product Safety Administration inspector come in. No certificate, the retailer can’t sell it.

The truly bizarre part is that the new regulations apply retroactively. Even if it was printed 50 years ago and the publisher no longer exists, you need to have a certificate proving it’s not filled with lead. Even if it is the only remaining copy of a rare children’s book worth thousands of dollars and only will ever be handled by collectors, you cannot sell it because you can’t prove it is not filled with lead.

Anything manufactured after November 10th 2008 should have come with a certificate certifying it has been tested for lead. If your distributor didn’t provide one, you need to call and get one. As of Febuary 10th, its in fact illegal for your distributor to sell you a kids’ book without a certificate of lead testing, no matter when it was printed.

Objects without a certification still have to be tested. So those copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows that were printed in 2007 that are still available new at Amazon may have to be destroyed as of February 10th 2009 because they haven’t been tested for lead. (Amazon is taking this seriously and sent a mail to all affiliates asking them to provide the lead testing certificates for all items)

How bad can the punishment be? For selling books? Up to $100,000 PER ITEM and up to five years in jail. It’s also a felony. Get busted, you may lose your right to vote in some states. Even if you can fight it in court, you’ll likely go broke doing so and your local newspaper will carry the headline “Local business selling lead tainted goods”… even though you know they aren’t. Good luck getting them to print the retraction months or years later after that PR disaster.

This includes not just selling, but distribution. So you can’t donate the untested goods to your local library, Good Will, or literacy program. You also can’t sell them to overseas collectors either, as they’re illegal to export. (preventing dumping of truly toxic goods on third world markets is one of the few good portions of this law. Good job on that, bad job on the rest)

This leaves you, the bookseller, with two legal options: store the books indefinitely, hoping regulations change, OR destroy them.

So here's to planting seeds in the garden at 451 degrees! Check out the movie at Netflix...it's worth viewing!

Do you think we need to get some of those bozo's out of Wishingtonia before they REALLY take us to the cleaners? Anybody in eBay? Need a $35,000 tool? How about investing in the MAKER of those UNITS?