Yesterday, the radio opera was “Hemlet.” But I should be more precise, since this is a 21st century opera, and not the first based on Shakespeare’s play. The composer is Brett Dean, an Australian composer whose work is new to me, and who appears to have been influenced by Thomas Ades.Among the personae, I’m only familiar with those songing Ophelia, Polonius, and the ghost (who doubles as the Gravedigger), but those three are singers I know and like. The libretto is almost all Hamlet, although the lines may not be assigned to the characters Shakespeare gave them to, and it’s been hinted a few lines are from other plays.Two of the singers are counter-tenors (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), and I’m glad to see contemporary composers writing for counter-tenors – provided they also write juicy roles for mezzo-sopranos (and this opera does – Hamlet’s mother Gertrude.) I’d very much like to see it – for me, it works well to hear an opera I’m familiar with, but until I have seen one that’s new, I miss things. I should get a chance though – it’s being shown in theaters, which means it’s being recorded, and should be available eventually for streaming from the Met’s website.
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Democratic Underground – “Democrats officially have more seats on the congressional map than Republicans”
Quote – Y’all, with our win in court in New Hampshire this week, the 50th state is officially done with map drawing, the congressional redistricting landscape is clear – and Democrats and #FairMaps supporters have a lot to celebrate!… Democrats officially have more seats on the congressional map than Republicans – there are now 226 Biden seats to just 209 Trump seats. (This is +1 in Biden seats compared to 2020 and a vast improvement over 2012.) Click through for details. This is a good news story which however does NOT mean we can relax. Democratic majorities for the midterms are not useful if Democrats don’t get out and vote – and we are notorious for that.
The Daily Beast – Utah County Gripped by Bizarre Accusations of Murder and Cannibalization of Kids
Quote – Utah County Attorney David Leavitt, who is running for re-election, is calling for the immediate removal of the county sheriff, Mike Smith, over a bizarre report implicating Leavitt in a “ritualistic” sex ring known for “cannibalizing young children.” The 151-page report, which was released by the sheriff Wednesday among law enforcement but has not been made public, is said to name Leavitt and his wife as integral figures in the trumped up conspiracy. The report claims the abuse took place between 1990 and 2010 and was carried out in three Utah counties. Click through for story. Because this is why this stuff upsets me so. Anyone and everyone is vulnerable. the next pseron to get accused could be me. It could be you.
Letters from an America – June 2, 2022
Quote – U.S. District Court Judge David Carter reviewed a number of documents. In March, he concluded that one particular memo must be released under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, a rule that shields communications between lawyers and their clients. That memo was perhaps “the first time members of President Trump’s team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action,” Carter wrote. He said that the memo “knowingly violated the Electoral Count Act,” the 1887 law that establishes clear procedures for states to certify their electoral votes and assigns to the Vice President the role of opening the certified electoral votes. Carter continued that the memo “likely furthered the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States.” Last week, the January 6 committee made the memo public in its ongoing legal fight with Eastman. Click through – there’s lots more about the memo – and more about the implications of their plans.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
My primary care physiocian once told me I deserved an honorary medical degree because I can spell all my prescription drugs (proprietary and generic), as well as all my OTC meds (proprietary and generic) correctly. He was joking, of course. I simply was born with the spelling gene, and I also do my best to pay attention. But his remark does illustrate how little attention so many people pay to matters of their own health. I am not a doctor nor a medical technician, and I certainly don’t play one on TV. But I do do “due diligence” when anythong new turns up in or near my own body (near meaning physically near, like a pandemic, or emotionally near, like in one or more people I care about.) And cancer is something none of us can really avoid being near at some point or other. So when something like this turns up, so does my gaze.
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‘Masked’ cancer drug stealthily trains immune system to kill tumors while sparing healthy tissues, reducing treatment side effects
Many cancer treatments are notoriously savage on the body. Drugs often attack both healthy cells and tumor cells, causing a plethora of side effects. Immunotherapies that help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells are no different. Though they have prolonged the lives of countless patients, they work in only a subset of patients. One study found that fewer than 30% of breast cancer patients respond to one of the most common forms of immunotherapy.
But what if drugs could be engineered to attack only tumor cells and spare the rest of the body? To that end, my colleaguesand I at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have designed a method to keep one promising cancer drug from wreaking havoc by “masking” it until it reaches a tumor.
Immunotherapies help the immune system recognize and target cancer cells.
The promise of IL-12
Cytokines are proteins that can modulate how the immune system responds to threats. One way they do this is by activating killer T cells, a type of white blood cells that can attack cancer cells. Because cytokines can train the immune system to kill tumors, this makes them very promising as cancer treatments.
One such cytokine is interleukin-12, or IL-12. Though it was discovered more than 30 years ago, IL-12 still isn’t an FDA-approved therapy for cancer patients because of its severe side effects, such as liver damage. This is in part because IL-12 instructs immune cells to produce a large amount of inflammatory molecules that can damage the body.
Scientists have since been working to reengineer IL-12 to be more tolerable while retaining its powerful cancer-killing effects.
Masking the killer
To create a safer version of IL-12, my colleagues and I took advantage of one of the main differences between healthy and cancerous tissue: an excess of growth-promoting enzymes in cancers. Because cancer cells proliferate very rapidly, they overproduce certain enzymes that help them invade the nearby healthy tissue and metastasize to other parts of the body. Healthy cells grow at a much slower pace and produce fewer of these enzymes.
With this in mind, we “masked” IL-12 with a cap that covers the part of the molecule that normally binds to immune cells to activate them. The cap is removed only when it comes into contact with enzymes found in the vicinity of tumors. When these enzymes chop off the cap, IL-12 is reactivated and spurs nearby killer T cells to attack the tumor.
Killer T cells (green and red) can attach to cancer cells (blue, center) and kill them by releasing toxic chemicals (red), a move scientists have dubbed ‘the kiss of death.’ NIH/Flickr
When we applied these masked IL-12 molecules to both healthy and tumor tissue donated by melanoma and breast cancer patients, our results confirmed that only the tumor samples were able to remove the cap. This indicated that masked IL-12 could potentially drive a strong immune response against tumors without causing damage to healthy organs.
We then examined how safe masked IL-12 is by measuring liver damage biomarkers in mice. We found that immune-related side effects typically associated with IL-12 were notably absent in mice treated with masked IL-12 over a period of several weeks, indicating improved safety.
In breast cancer models, our masked IL-12 resulted in a 90% cure rate, while treatment with a commonly used immunotherapy called a checkpoint inhibitor resulted in only a 10% cure rate. In a model of colon cancer, masked IL-12 showed a 100% cure rate.
Our next step is to test the modified IL-12 in cancer patients. While it will take time to bring this encouraging development directly to patients, we believe a promising new treatment is on the horizon.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, “training” certainly implies a lower level of intellectual involvement than “teaching” or “educating,” but even so, it sounds like pure science fiction to even think about “training”a non-sentient particle such as a protein to act in a certain way – to stop working in some environments and start working in others. Even though it accomplishes this mission by reacting in a particular way to particular enzymes, it still sounds virtually miraculous. This solution is not ready to approve yet, but it is ready for testing in live cancer patients, and, though I know it will take time, I am looking forward to seeing resutlts from that testing. Please, Eumenides, keep an eye out (and help in any way you can.)
Two issues have occupied much of the media lately: guns and abortion, two very touchy topics. The leaked SCOTUS decision that could gut Roe v Wade and the recent spate of mass shootings have inspired numerous headlines, opinion pieces and editorial cartoons.
The recent surges in mass shootings and attacks on reproductive rights could be among the last hurrahs of the Old Boy Network, the white, straight, wealthy, fundamentalist Protestant patriarchy that has controlled this country from Day One. The framers of the Constitution originally intended for voting rights – hell, most civil rights – to be strictly for white men who owned land. Women, people of color, and those who didn’t own land need not apply. It took a bloody civil war to end the evil of slavery, and decades of hell-raising after that to give nonwhites nominal legal equality. Women could not vote in this country till the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, and we are STILL fighting to pass the ERA, though we may be on the threshold of success.
Over the last many years we have seen the rise of “men’s rights” groups and the Incels, as well as organizations such as the Proud Boys. The anti-abortion movement has succeeded in getting harsh laws passed to strip women of reproductive choices, though courts have struck down a lot of them. Many of these extremists are anti-government (while they want everybody’s intimate lives to be strictly regulated) and strongly for more access to guns – in a country where there are 12 guns for every 10 residents. Pro-gun and anti-abortion go together hand in hand because both represent male dominance over women. Of course, not everybody is either pro-gun and anti-choice or vice versa; one can be pro-gun and pro-choice, or against both. However, many gun advocates are anti-choice, and many abortion foes lean strongly right on many other issues.
The “great replacement theory” that wound up front and center after the Buffalo massacre is typical of the vile bilge that extreme right-wingers like to spew. They fear that white people are being replaced by non-whites, which is why they feel a need to kill POCs. Why? The times, they are a-changin’. Out with the old, in with the new. That is how life always has been. All change inspires opposition and protest, all change is painful. But change and grow as a society we must.
In my essay about the Buffalo shooting I touched on the fears of the Straight White Rich Male establishment losing its grip. Extending such rights as voting, marriage, and equality before the law is not a zero-sum game. When people who are different from you gain civil and human rights, your own rights are not lessened; in fact, everybody wins.
CNN – He helped decode Mark Meadows’ texts. What he found scared him (Long but meaty. Partial transcript here.) https://crooksandliars.com/2022/06/intelligence-expert-says-jan-6-data
The Daily Show – The Story of Covfefe: Based on a True Typo
Beau – Let’s talk about Georgia showing Wyoming the way….
Yesterday,I slept in again, due to shoulder issues again, although, because I resomved them a couple of hours earlier than the night before, I also got more sleep than the night before. Hopefyllu I have figures out the frmula and can resolve them earlier still while they last. I al assuing they are arthritis, and arthritis (and sciatica) hae a habit of coming in flare-ups and gong away again after 2-6 weeks, depending. That doesn’t mean they won’t ever come back, but – touching wood – after my knee flareup in February 2020 (which was agonizing), that knee has been fine ever since – unlike some other body parts I could mention. So there can be good long periosof no to minimal pain also.
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Project on Government Oversight – How to Protect Yourself from Surveillance While Seeking Reproductive Health Care
Quote – Living under an abortion ban in 2022 will not be similar to 1972, before Roe v. Wade. Due to the massive surveillance powers the government now possesses, the consequences of the ban could be much more draconian. Law enforcement not only has powerful tools to monitor individuals, but can capture a stream of sensitive data we produce in our daily lives, often without us realizing it’s happening. And investigating individuals for prohibited abortions will likely direct the government’s immense surveillance powers at the most intimate medical, familial, and sexual details of people’s lives. Click through for other aspects. I know a lot of readers here will never be pregnant – I won’t myself. But, in addition to at least some of us having people in our lives we care about whoo could, I found reading this made me think about other things I tend to take for granted. You may also.
Science alert – The Human Heart Can Repair Itself, And We Now Know Which Cells Are Crucial For It
Quote – Key to the study was the discovery of the role played by macrophages, specialist cells that can destroy bacteria or initiate helpful inflammation responses. As the first responders on a scene after a heart attack, these macrophages produce a particular type of protein called VEGFC, the researchers report. “We found that macrophages, or immune cells that rush to the heart after a heart attack to ‘eat’ damaged or dead tissue, also induce vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGFC) that triggers the formation of new lymphatic vessels and promotes healing,” says pathologist Edward Thorp from Northwestern University in Illinois. Click through for full info. There’s nothing here that makes any recommendations for current patients – but it’s hopeful that such recommendations may come as we understand more.
Yesterday, I hadn’t slept well, due to a dull ache in one of my shoulders which wouldn’t go away and was just enough to keep me awake. Buy trial and error (lots of error) I was finally able to quell it with an [artificial] ice pack. But there was a lot of error which took a lot of time. So I ended up sleeping in.eventually I’ll catch up, of course.
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Wonkette – Oh Look, Democrats Are Doing A Gun Bill!
Quote – House Democrats are introducing some tough legislation on guns that can serve as a reminder that one party actually has plans to address gun violence, while the other blathers on about a catalogue of bullshit distractions meant to avoid doing anything about the goddamned guns. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) has introduced a bill called the “Protecting Our Kids Act” that combines several smaller gun control bills; Nadler scheduled the bill for a markup session beginning tomorrow, even though the House is in recess, so the bill could potentially be ready for a vote next week. Click through for story. I’m sure we could find it less snarkily told – but Wonkette does respect facts, so I’m confident of theinformaition.
Mother Jones – How John Durham’s Probe Has Exposed Trump’s Russia Con
Quote – Despite declaring over two years ago that he had reason to question the FBI’s opening of the Russia investigation, Durham has failed to make good on his assertion. His investigation has yielded zilch in this regard. His prosecutions are all sideshows. But Durham has done Trump and his cultists a great favor by providing material they can exploit for one of their favorite pastimes: deflection. Click through for why this matters. Personal confession: That stern (by courtesy) facial expression of Durham’s is probably supposed to inspire fear. To me it just makes him look stupid.)
PolitiZoom – Gary Kasparov Chastises Those Who Would Sell Out Ukraine to Putin
Quote – Stop thinking about concessions Ukraine can make. They are paying a terrible price in blood, with decades of rebuilding to come. They are paying for years of weakness and corruption of the European nations that eagerly did business & diplomacy with their invader. 11/13 Click through for details. It’s from Twitter, but via the thread reader, soreading it is not difficult. I do believe players of chess (especially Grand Masters) are worth listening to about strategy.
