Friend or Foe? Crows Never Forget a Face, It Seems - NYTimes.com: "Friend or Foe? Crows Never Forget a Face, It Seems
Friend or Foe? Crows Never Forget a Face, It Seems
*
E-Mail
* Print
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By MICHELLE NIJHUIS
Published: August 25, 2008
Crows and their relatives — among them ravens, magpies and jays — are renowned for their intelligence and for their ability to flourish in human-dominated landscapes. That ability may have to do with cross-species social skills. In the Seattle area, where rapid suburban growth has attracted a thriving crow population, researchers have found that the birds can recognize individual human faces.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Top, Keith Brust; Jeff Walls
I KNOW YOU John M. Marzluff, a wildlife biologist tested crows’ ability to distinguish between faces.
Related
Times Topics: Birds
RSS Feed
* Get Science News From The New York Times »
Jeff Walls
The researchers used a simple hat and masks to test the animals' abilities.
John M. Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington, has studied crows and ravens for more than 20 years and has long wondered if the birds could identify individual researchers. Previously trapped birds seemed more wary of particular scientists, and often were harder to catch. “I thought, ‘Well, it’s an annoyance, but it’s not really hampering our work,’ ” Dr. Marzluff said. “But then I thought we should test it directly.”
To test the birds’ recognition of faces separately from that of clothing, gait and other individual human characteristics, Dr. Marzluff and two students wore rubber masks. He designated a caveman mask as “dangerous” and, in a deliberate gesture of civic generosity, a Dick Cheney mask as “neutral.” Researchers in the dangerous mask then trapped and banded seven crows on the university’s campus in Seattle.
In the months that followed, the researchers and volunteers donned the masks on campus, this time walking prescribed routes and not bothering crows.
The crows had not forgotten. They scolded people in the dangerous mask significantly more than they did before they were trapped, even when the mask was disguised with a hat or worn upside down. The neutral mask provoked little reaction. The effect has not only persisted, but also multiplied over the past two years. Wearing the dangerous mask on one recent walk through campus, Dr. Marzluff said, he was scolded by 47 of the 53 crows he encountered, many more than had experienced or witnessed the initial trapping. The researchers hypothesize that crows learn to recognize threatening humans from both parents and others in their flock.
After their experiments on campus, Dr. Marzluff and his students tested the effect with more realistic masks. Using a half-dozen students as models, they enlisted a professional mask maker, then wore the new masks while trapping crows at several sites in and around Seattle. The researchers then gave a mix of neutral and dangerous masks to volunteer observers who, unaware of the masks’ histories, wore them at the trapping sites and recorded the crows’ responses.
The reaction to one of the dangerous masks was “quite spectacular,” said one volunteer, Bill Pochmerski, a retired telephone company manager who lives near Snohomish, Wash. “The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently,” he said, “and it was clear they weren’t upset about something in general. They were upset with me.”
Again, crows were significantly more likely to scold observers who wore a dangerous mask, and when confronted simultaneously by observers in dangerous and neutral masks, the birds almost unerringly chose to persecute the dangerous face. In downtown Seattle, where most passersby ignore crows, angry birds nearly touched their human foes. In rural areas, where crows are more likely to be viewed as noisy “flying rats” and shot, the birds expressed their displeasure from a distance.
Though Dr. Marzluff’s is the first formal study of human face recognition in wild birds, his preliminary findings confirm the suspicions of many other researchers who have observed similar abilities in crows, ravens, gulls and other species. The pioneering animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz was so convinced of the perceptive capacities of crows and their relatives that he wore a devil costume when handling jackdaws. Stacia Backensto, a master’s student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who studies ravens in the oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope, has assembled an elaborate costume — including a fake beard and a potbelly made of pillows — because she believes her face and body are familiar to previously captured birds.
Kevin J. McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology who has trapped and banded crows in upstate New York for 20 years, said he was regularly followed by birds who have benefited from his handouts of peanuts — and harassed by others he has trapped in the past.
Why crows and similar species are so closely attuned to humans is a matter of debate. Bernd Heinrich, a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont known for his books on raven behavior, suggested that crows’ apparent ability to distinguish among human faces is a “byproduct of their acuity,” an outgrowth of their unusually keen ability to recognize one another, even after many months of separation.
Dr. McGowan and Dr. Marzluff believe that this ability gives crows and their brethren an evolutionary edge. “If you can learn who to avoid and who to seek out, that’s a lot easier than continually getting hurt,” Dr. Marzluff said. “I think it allows these animals to survive with us — and take advantage of us — in a much safer, more effective way.”
Friday, August 29, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Groundbreaking Advance Allows for 'Reprogramming' of Adult Cells - washingtonpost.com
Groundbreaking Advance Allows for 'Reprogramming' of Adult Cells - washingtonpost.com
Groundbreaking Advance Allows for 'Reprogramming' of Adult Cells
Research Could Lead to Bevy of Cures, Sidesteps Debate Over Embryonic Stem Cells
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008; 6:05 PM
Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a plethora of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires that have plagued embryonic stem cell research.
Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive.
The feat, published online today by the journal Nature, raises the tantalizing prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.
"It's kind of an extreme makeover of a cell," said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who led the research. "The goal is to create cells that are missing or defective in people. It's very exciting."
The findings left other researchers in a field that has become accustomed to rapid advances reaching for new superlatives to describe the potential implications.
"I'm stunned," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., a developer of stem cell therapies. "It introduces a whole new paradigm for treating disease."
"I think it's hugely significant," said George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston. "This is a very spectacular first."
Even the harshest critics of embryonic stem cell research hailed the development as a major, welcome development.
"I see no moral problem in this basic technique," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a leading opponent of embryonic stems cells because they involve destroying human embryos. "This is a 'win-win' situation for medicine and ethics."
Melton and other researchers cautioned that many years of research lay ahead to prove whether the development would translate into cures.
"It's an important proof of concept," said Lawrence Goldstein, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "But these things always look easier on the blackboard than when you have do them in actual patients."
Although the experiment involved mice, Melton and other researchers were optimistic the approach would work in people.
"You never know for sure -- mice aren't humans," Daley said. "But the biology of pancreatic development is very closely related in mice and humans."
Melton has already started experimenting with human cells in the laboratory and hopes to start planning the first studies involving people with diabetes within a year. "I would say within five years we could be ready to start human trials," Melton said.
Other scientists have already started trying the approach on other cells, including those that could be used to treat spinal cord injuries and neurogenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig's disease.
"The idea to be able to reprogram one adult neuron type into another for repair in the nervous system is very exciting," said Paola Arlotta, who is working in the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School, in Boston.
The research is the latest development in the explosive field of "regenerative medicine," which is trying to create replacement tissues and body parts tailored to patients. That dream appeared within reach after scientists discovered human embryonic stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell in the body. But stem cell research has been plagued by political and ethical debates because the cells can only be obtained by destroying embryos, which has been opposed by President Bush and others who believe that even the earliest stages of human life have moral standing.
Scientists last year shocked the field when they announced they had discovered how to manipulate the genes of adult cells to turn them back into the equivalent of embryonic cells -- entities dubbed "induced pluripotent stem" or "iPS" cells -- which could then be coaxed into any type of cell in the body.
The new work takes further advantage of the increasing prowess scientists have developed in harnessing the once mysterious inner workings of cells -- this time to skip the intermediary step of iPS cells and directly transform adult cells.
"This experiment proves you don't have to go all the way back to an embryonic state," Daley said. "You can use a related cell. That may be easier to do and more practical to do."
Doerflinger argued that the discovery was the latest evidence that research involving human embryos was no longer necessary.
"This adds to the large and growing list of studies helping to make embryonic stem cells irrelevant to medical progress," Doerflinger wrote in an e-mail.
But other researchers disputed that, saying it remains unclear which approach will ultimately prove most useful.
"Embryonic stem cells offer a unique window in human disease and remain a key to the long-term progress of regenerative medicine," Melton said.
For their work, Melton and his colleagues systematically studied cells from the pancreas of adult mice, slowing winnowing the list of genes necessary to make a "beta" cell that produces insulin. After narrowing the candidate genes to nine, the researchers genetically engineered viruses known as adenoviruses to ferry the genes into other pancreatic cells, known as exocrine cells, which normally secrete enzymes to help digest food. That finally enabled the researchers to identify the three crucial genes needed take control of the rest of the cell's genes to convert an exocrine cell into a beta cell.
"It was a mixture of work, luck and guessing," Melton said. "We achieved a complete transformation, or re-purposing, of cells from one type to another. We were delighted."
When the scientists tried the approach on diabetic mice, the animals became able to control their blood sugar levels.
"It didn't cure the mouse, but they were able to reduce their blood sugar levels to near normal," Melton said.
Melton and others said it remains to be seen whether it will be necessary to use genetically engineered viruses, which could face obstacles getting regulatory approval because of concerns about unforeseen risks, or whether chemicals might be found to do the same thing.
If preliminary studies in the laboratory are promising, Melton said he might first try converting liver cells to insulin-producing pancreatic cells because that would be safer than the pancreas. An alternative strategy would be to use the approach to grow beta cells in the laboratory and transplant them into patients.
Lanza said he was optimistic.
"One day, this may allow the doctor to replace the scalpel with a sort of genetic surgery," Lanza said. "If this can be perfected, it would represent one of the Holy Grails of medicine."
Groundbreaking Advance Allows for 'Reprogramming' of Adult Cells
Research Could Lead to Bevy of Cures, Sidesteps Debate Over Embryonic Stem Cells
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008; 6:05 PM
Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a plethora of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires that have plagued embryonic stem cell research.
Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive.
The feat, published online today by the journal Nature, raises the tantalizing prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.
"It's kind of an extreme makeover of a cell," said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who led the research. "The goal is to create cells that are missing or defective in people. It's very exciting."
The findings left other researchers in a field that has become accustomed to rapid advances reaching for new superlatives to describe the potential implications.
"I'm stunned," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., a developer of stem cell therapies. "It introduces a whole new paradigm for treating disease."
"I think it's hugely significant," said George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston. "This is a very spectacular first."
Even the harshest critics of embryonic stem cell research hailed the development as a major, welcome development.
"I see no moral problem in this basic technique," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a leading opponent of embryonic stems cells because they involve destroying human embryos. "This is a 'win-win' situation for medicine and ethics."
Melton and other researchers cautioned that many years of research lay ahead to prove whether the development would translate into cures.
"It's an important proof of concept," said Lawrence Goldstein, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "But these things always look easier on the blackboard than when you have do them in actual patients."
Although the experiment involved mice, Melton and other researchers were optimistic the approach would work in people.
"You never know for sure -- mice aren't humans," Daley said. "But the biology of pancreatic development is very closely related in mice and humans."
Melton has already started experimenting with human cells in the laboratory and hopes to start planning the first studies involving people with diabetes within a year. "I would say within five years we could be ready to start human trials," Melton said.
Other scientists have already started trying the approach on other cells, including those that could be used to treat spinal cord injuries and neurogenerative disorders such as Lou Gehrig's disease.
"The idea to be able to reprogram one adult neuron type into another for repair in the nervous system is very exciting," said Paola Arlotta, who is working in the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School, in Boston.
The research is the latest development in the explosive field of "regenerative medicine," which is trying to create replacement tissues and body parts tailored to patients. That dream appeared within reach after scientists discovered human embryonic stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell in the body. But stem cell research has been plagued by political and ethical debates because the cells can only be obtained by destroying embryos, which has been opposed by President Bush and others who believe that even the earliest stages of human life have moral standing.
Scientists last year shocked the field when they announced they had discovered how to manipulate the genes of adult cells to turn them back into the equivalent of embryonic cells -- entities dubbed "induced pluripotent stem" or "iPS" cells -- which could then be coaxed into any type of cell in the body.
The new work takes further advantage of the increasing prowess scientists have developed in harnessing the once mysterious inner workings of cells -- this time to skip the intermediary step of iPS cells and directly transform adult cells.
"This experiment proves you don't have to go all the way back to an embryonic state," Daley said. "You can use a related cell. That may be easier to do and more practical to do."
Doerflinger argued that the discovery was the latest evidence that research involving human embryos was no longer necessary.
"This adds to the large and growing list of studies helping to make embryonic stem cells irrelevant to medical progress," Doerflinger wrote in an e-mail.
But other researchers disputed that, saying it remains unclear which approach will ultimately prove most useful.
"Embryonic stem cells offer a unique window in human disease and remain a key to the long-term progress of regenerative medicine," Melton said.
For their work, Melton and his colleagues systematically studied cells from the pancreas of adult mice, slowing winnowing the list of genes necessary to make a "beta" cell that produces insulin. After narrowing the candidate genes to nine, the researchers genetically engineered viruses known as adenoviruses to ferry the genes into other pancreatic cells, known as exocrine cells, which normally secrete enzymes to help digest food. That finally enabled the researchers to identify the three crucial genes needed take control of the rest of the cell's genes to convert an exocrine cell into a beta cell.
"It was a mixture of work, luck and guessing," Melton said. "We achieved a complete transformation, or re-purposing, of cells from one type to another. We were delighted."
When the scientists tried the approach on diabetic mice, the animals became able to control their blood sugar levels.
"It didn't cure the mouse, but they were able to reduce their blood sugar levels to near normal," Melton said.
Melton and others said it remains to be seen whether it will be necessary to use genetically engineered viruses, which could face obstacles getting regulatory approval because of concerns about unforeseen risks, or whether chemicals might be found to do the same thing.
If preliminary studies in the laboratory are promising, Melton said he might first try converting liver cells to insulin-producing pancreatic cells because that would be safer than the pancreas. An alternative strategy would be to use the approach to grow beta cells in the laboratory and transplant them into patients.
Lanza said he was optimistic.
"One day, this may allow the doctor to replace the scalpel with a sort of genetic surgery," Lanza said. "If this can be perfected, it would represent one of the Holy Grails of medicine."
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
About New York - One Protest, 52 Arrests and a $2 Million Payout - NYTimes.com
About New York - One Protest, 52 Arrests and a $2 Million Payout - NYTimes.com: "One Protest, 52 Arrests and a $2 Million Payout
One Protest, 52 Arrests and a $2 Million Payout
*
E-Mail
* Print
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By JIM DWYER
Published: August 19, 2008
The city has agreed to pay $2,007,000 to end a lawsuit brought by 52 people who were swept up in a mass arrest along a Midtown sidewalk during a protest against the invasion of Iraq.
They were charged with blocking pedestrians, but videotapes show that at their most annoying, they might have slowed a few people carrying coffee into work. Public order did not seem to be in unusual danger that morning — certainly nothing that called for rounding up 52 people, or spending millions of dollars.
Only two people were tried; they were acquitted, and charges against the other 50 were dismissed.
The arrests were made on April 7, 2003, during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq and right after the city persuaded the Republican Party to hold its 2004 convention in New York. The people arrested said their rights to free speech had been abused, and sued the city and the police.
Now, five years later, the $2 million settlement is only part of the bonfire of legal expenses. And only some of the costs from this episode involve money.
Of the $2 million paid to the people who were arrested, $1,057,000 is for legal fees and expenses owed to their lawyers. The Law Department could not provide an estimate on Tuesday of how much it spent on the defense, said Laura Postiglione, a spokesman for Michael A. Cardozo, the city’s chief lawyer.
Just about every Tuesday and Thursday for over a year, witnesses were deposed under oath, part of the pretrial process in civil cases, according to Sarah Netburn, a lawyer with the firm Emery Celli Brinkerhoff Abady, which, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represented many of the people arrested that morning. The deposition transcripts cost over $100,000, said Matthew Brinkerhoff, another lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Among those deposed were 55 police officers and their supervisors. Between preparation and testimony, many would have lost two days of regular police work.
The city had five lawyers handling the case over the last four years, along with a special appellate team. A conservative estimate is that the city spent $1 million on the defense, including the salaries and benefits of police officers and lawyers, before running up the white flag.
“Although defendants believe that they would ultimately have prevailed at a trial, the costs of going forward weighed in favor of a settlement at this time,” said Susan Halatyn, a city lawyer.
But why were the arrests made in the first place?
That morning, two groups gathered on West 56th Street, outside the offices of an affiliate of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that has holdings in defense industries and employs many world figures, including the first President Bush.
One group of about 10 people planned to commit civil disobedience by sitting in front of the building, on the south side of 56th Street. The other group, of about 100 people, stood on the north side of the street, chanting.
Sarah Kunstler, 31, a lawyer, a filmmaker and the daughter of the renowned lawyer, said she had gone to see if there were possibilities of making a film about war protests. “I found out I could get arrested for absolutely no reason,” Ms. Kunstler said.
A film editor, Ahmad Shirazi, 70, said he was in the group on the north side of the street and had just finished speaking with reporters for the BBC when he saw officers beginning to mass.
“All of a sudden, from the Fifth Avenue side, a huge number of police officers entered 56th Street,” Mr. Shirazi said. “The protest was on the south side of the street. We were standing on the north side of the street. They came directly to us, they were in riot gear, and they surrounded us. They made a semicircle around us, shoulder to shoulder, with their batons.”
“Then they started arresting us, one by one. At that point, I got emotional — I could not believe in my country, in my city, I could get arrested for doing absolutely nothing and standing on the sidewalk,” Mr. Shirazi added.
Are there any lessons from the day? The Law Department said the $2 million payout did not mean the police had done anything wrong. “This settlement was reached without any admission of liability on behalf of the city and the individual defendants,” said Ms. Halatyn, the city lawyer.
The Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement.
Mr. Shirazi said that as he was being handcuffed for the first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic cuffs were squeezing him. “He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you came out this morning.’ It was like a dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would come up with anything like that.”
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
One Protest, 52 Arrests and a $2 Million Payout
*
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By JIM DWYER
Published: August 19, 2008
The city has agreed to pay $2,007,000 to end a lawsuit brought by 52 people who were swept up in a mass arrest along a Midtown sidewalk during a protest against the invasion of Iraq.
They were charged with blocking pedestrians, but videotapes show that at their most annoying, they might have slowed a few people carrying coffee into work. Public order did not seem to be in unusual danger that morning — certainly nothing that called for rounding up 52 people, or spending millions of dollars.
Only two people were tried; they were acquitted, and charges against the other 50 were dismissed.
The arrests were made on April 7, 2003, during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq and right after the city persuaded the Republican Party to hold its 2004 convention in New York. The people arrested said their rights to free speech had been abused, and sued the city and the police.
Now, five years later, the $2 million settlement is only part of the bonfire of legal expenses. And only some of the costs from this episode involve money.
Of the $2 million paid to the people who were arrested, $1,057,000 is for legal fees and expenses owed to their lawyers. The Law Department could not provide an estimate on Tuesday of how much it spent on the defense, said Laura Postiglione, a spokesman for Michael A. Cardozo, the city’s chief lawyer.
Just about every Tuesday and Thursday for over a year, witnesses were deposed under oath, part of the pretrial process in civil cases, according to Sarah Netburn, a lawyer with the firm Emery Celli Brinkerhoff Abady, which, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represented many of the people arrested that morning. The deposition transcripts cost over $100,000, said Matthew Brinkerhoff, another lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Among those deposed were 55 police officers and their supervisors. Between preparation and testimony, many would have lost two days of regular police work.
The city had five lawyers handling the case over the last four years, along with a special appellate team. A conservative estimate is that the city spent $1 million on the defense, including the salaries and benefits of police officers and lawyers, before running up the white flag.
“Although defendants believe that they would ultimately have prevailed at a trial, the costs of going forward weighed in favor of a settlement at this time,” said Susan Halatyn, a city lawyer.
But why were the arrests made in the first place?
That morning, two groups gathered on West 56th Street, outside the offices of an affiliate of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that has holdings in defense industries and employs many world figures, including the first President Bush.
One group of about 10 people planned to commit civil disobedience by sitting in front of the building, on the south side of 56th Street. The other group, of about 100 people, stood on the north side of the street, chanting.
Sarah Kunstler, 31, a lawyer, a filmmaker and the daughter of the renowned lawyer, said she had gone to see if there were possibilities of making a film about war protests. “I found out I could get arrested for absolutely no reason,” Ms. Kunstler said.
A film editor, Ahmad Shirazi, 70, said he was in the group on the north side of the street and had just finished speaking with reporters for the BBC when he saw officers beginning to mass.
“All of a sudden, from the Fifth Avenue side, a huge number of police officers entered 56th Street,” Mr. Shirazi said. “The protest was on the south side of the street. We were standing on the north side of the street. They came directly to us, they were in riot gear, and they surrounded us. They made a semicircle around us, shoulder to shoulder, with their batons.”
“Then they started arresting us, one by one. At that point, I got emotional — I could not believe in my country, in my city, I could get arrested for doing absolutely nothing and standing on the sidewalk,” Mr. Shirazi added.
Are there any lessons from the day? The Law Department said the $2 million payout did not mean the police had done anything wrong. “This settlement was reached without any admission of liability on behalf of the city and the individual defendants,” said Ms. Halatyn, the city lawyer.
The Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement.
Mr. Shirazi said that as he was being handcuffed for the first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic cuffs were squeezing him. “He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you came out this morning.’ It was like a dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would come up with anything like that.”
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Pastor Rick's Test
Pastor Rick's Test: "Pastor Rick's Test
The Candidates Submit, and a Principle Suffers
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A15
Pastor Rick's Test
The Candidates Submit, and a Principle Suffers
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A15
At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.
It is also un-American.
For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won.
Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town-hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court?
The candidates' usual supporters felt validated in their choices. McCain convinced and comforted with characteristic certitude those who are most at ease with certitude; Obama convinced and comforted with his characteristic intellectual ambivalence those who are most at ease with ambivalence.
The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.
The loser was America.
In his enormously successful book "The Purpose-Driven Life," Warren begins: "It's not about you." Agreed. Nor is this criticism aimed at Christians, evangelicals, other believers or nonbelievers -- or at Warren, who is a good man with an exemplary record of selfless works. Few have walked the walk with as much determination or success.
This is about higher principles that are compromised every time we pretend we're not applying a religious test when we're really applying a religious test.
It is true that no one was forced to participate in the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency and that both McCain and Obama are free agents. Warren has a right to invite whomever he wishes to his church and to ask them whatever they're willing to answer.
His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than what the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?
The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. Warren's Q&A wasn't an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.
What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What's a proper relationship with Jesus? What's next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?
Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?
What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must -- and what most Americans personally feel is no one's business -- to win the highest office.
Warren tried to defuse criticism about staging the interviews in his church by saying that though "we" believe in the separation of church and state, "we" don't believe in the separation of faith and politics. Faith, he said, "is just a worldview, and everybody has some kind of worldview. It's important to know what they are."
Presumably "we" refers to Warren's church of fellow evangelicals. And while, yes, everybody has some kind of worldview, it shouldn't be necessary in a pluralistic nation of secular laws to publicly define that view in Christian code.
For the moment, let's set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our Founding Fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.
By today's new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson -- the great advocate for religious freedom in America -- would have lost.
Kathleen Parker is syndicated by theWashington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address iskparker@kparker.com.
The Candidates Submit, and a Principle Suffers
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A15
Pastor Rick's Test
The Candidates Submit, and a Principle Suffers
By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A15
At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.
It is also un-American.
For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won.
Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town-hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court?
The candidates' usual supporters felt validated in their choices. McCain convinced and comforted with characteristic certitude those who are most at ease with certitude; Obama convinced and comforted with his characteristic intellectual ambivalence those who are most at ease with ambivalence.
The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.
The loser was America.
In his enormously successful book "The Purpose-Driven Life," Warren begins: "It's not about you." Agreed. Nor is this criticism aimed at Christians, evangelicals, other believers or nonbelievers -- or at Warren, who is a good man with an exemplary record of selfless works. Few have walked the walk with as much determination or success.
This is about higher principles that are compromised every time we pretend we're not applying a religious test when we're really applying a religious test.
It is true that no one was forced to participate in the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency and that both McCain and Obama are free agents. Warren has a right to invite whomever he wishes to his church and to ask them whatever they're willing to answer.
His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than what the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?
The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. Warren's Q&A wasn't an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.
What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What's a proper relationship with Jesus? What's next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?
Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?
What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must -- and what most Americans personally feel is no one's business -- to win the highest office.
Warren tried to defuse criticism about staging the interviews in his church by saying that though "we" believe in the separation of church and state, "we" don't believe in the separation of faith and politics. Faith, he said, "is just a worldview, and everybody has some kind of worldview. It's important to know what they are."
Presumably "we" refers to Warren's church of fellow evangelicals. And while, yes, everybody has some kind of worldview, it shouldn't be necessary in a pluralistic nation of secular laws to publicly define that view in Christian code.
For the moment, let's set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our Founding Fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.
By today's new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson -- the great advocate for religious freedom in America -- would have lost.
Kathleen Parker is syndicated by theWashington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address iskparker@kparker.com.
Candidates' Abortion Views Not So Simple - washingtonpost.com
Candidates' Abortion Views Not So Simple - washingtonpost.com
Candidates' Abortion Views Not So Simple
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A01
The narrative of the presidential campaign appeared to be set on the issue of abortion: Sen. Barack Obama was the abortion-rights candidate who was reaching out to foes, seeking common ground and making inroads. Sen. John McCain was the abortion opponent whose reticence about faith and whose battles on campaign finance laws drew suspect glances from would-be supporters.
But both those impressions have been altered since the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum in California on Saturday.
Obama's hesitant statement at the forum that defining the beginning of life is "above my pay grade" took even some supporters by surprise. Since then, the National Right to Life Committee has challenged him on an obscure law that protects babies born alive after failed abortions, saying that his opposition to the measure in the Illinois state legislature proves he is an extremist.
McCain's performance at the forum seemed to hearten many conservatives, not only because of his firm, uncompromising stand against abortion but his broader appeals on global warming, genocide and the embrace of causes greater than self. But the clarity that McCain exhibited at Saddleback has been somewhat diminished with his suggestion that his running mate might favor abortion rights.
"Since Saturday night, I've seen a lot of confusion in the younger Christian voting bloc because they thought they had figured this thing out," said Cameron Strang, editor of Relevant magazine, which is aimed at a new generation of evangelicals. "There's no absolutely right candidate for an evangelical, and there's no absolutely wrong candidate. They're both right, and they're both wrong."
On paper, this campaign looks fairly standard. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, is staunchly in favor of abortion rights, while McCain, an Arizona Republican, has compiled a solid record over four Senate terms of opposing abortion.
But McCain has repeatedly been at odds with the National Right to Life Committee and other antiabortion groups over his efforts to limit their ability to run pointed "issue advocacy" advertisements in the closing weeks of campaigns. Although his voting record is strictly antiabortion, he has never made religiosity or social issues centerpieces of his political persona. And his 2000 labeling of evangelists Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" deepened evangelical suspicions.
"To be perceived as authentic on this issue, you need to have some grounding in it, and usually that grounding is faith," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University professor of constitutional law who opposes abortion but supports Obama.
As McCain moves toward naming a running mate, he has not backed off a suggestion to the conservative Weekly Standard that his pick could favor abortion rights. Speculation on whom that could be has centered on former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.
Similarly, Obama has made a show of reaching out to abortion opponents to find common ground on pregnancy prevention and adoption. He has urged evangelicals and Catholics to expand the definition of "pro-life" to include opposing torture, poverty and unnecessary war. In the Democratic primary, Obama was criticized by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign and others for being insufficiently committed to abortion rights because he did not cast some votes on the issue in the Illinois legislature.
Abortion foes are now accusing Obama of being an abortion-rights extremist. In recent days, the National Right to Life Committee has charged that Obama is misrepresenting his record to broaden his appeal. At issue is a measure in both Illinois and Congress called the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which defines as a protected human any life expelled from a mother. Abortion foes championed the cause when an Illinois nurse and antiabortion activist said some pre-viable fetuses were being aborted by inducing labor and then being allowed to die.
Obama, then a state senator, opposed the measure in 2001, saying it crossed the line of constitutionality and "essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a pre-viable child, or fetus."
As a committee chairman in the state Senate in 2003, Obama supported GOP efforts to add language to the act, copied from federal legislation, clarifying that it would have no legal impact on the availability of abortions. Obama then opposed the bill's final passage. Since then, he has said he would have backed the bill as it was written and approved almost unanimously the year before.
Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, charged that Obama is trying to have it both ways because the Illinois bill he opposed was virtually identical to the federal law he said he would support.
Obama aides acknowledged yesterday that the wording of the state and federal bills was virtually identical. But, they added, the impact of a state law is different, because detailed abortion procedures and regulations are governed by states. Johnson and others are oversimplifying the situation, aides said.
"They have not been telling the truth," Obama told the Christian Broadcasting Network in response to a question on the matter. "And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."
At Saddleback, McCain won plaudits from conservatives when he said that life begins "at the moment of conception," especially after Obama deflected the question.
But the inroads McCain made are now threatened by his flirtation with a running mate who supports abortion rights.
"I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party. And I also feel that -- and I'm not trying to equivocate here -- that Americans want us to work together," McCain told the Weekly Standard.
Conservative commentator David Limbaugh slammed the idea yesterday, warning that McCain "would make a fatal mistake to assume that social issues, especially abortion, are ever off an equally blazing front burner for an inestimable number of social conservatives."
Abortion remains an important issue to a large portion of the electorate, but it is not the biggest. An early August poll for Time magazine found that one in five likely voters would not consider voting for a candidate who did not share their views on abortion. Twenty-six percent of Republicans saw the issue as decisive, compared with 18 percent of Democrats.
Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Candidates' Abortion Views Not So Simple
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; A01
The narrative of the presidential campaign appeared to be set on the issue of abortion: Sen. Barack Obama was the abortion-rights candidate who was reaching out to foes, seeking common ground and making inroads. Sen. John McCain was the abortion opponent whose reticence about faith and whose battles on campaign finance laws drew suspect glances from would-be supporters.
But both those impressions have been altered since the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum in California on Saturday.
Obama's hesitant statement at the forum that defining the beginning of life is "above my pay grade" took even some supporters by surprise. Since then, the National Right to Life Committee has challenged him on an obscure law that protects babies born alive after failed abortions, saying that his opposition to the measure in the Illinois state legislature proves he is an extremist.
McCain's performance at the forum seemed to hearten many conservatives, not only because of his firm, uncompromising stand against abortion but his broader appeals on global warming, genocide and the embrace of causes greater than self. But the clarity that McCain exhibited at Saddleback has been somewhat diminished with his suggestion that his running mate might favor abortion rights.
"Since Saturday night, I've seen a lot of confusion in the younger Christian voting bloc because they thought they had figured this thing out," said Cameron Strang, editor of Relevant magazine, which is aimed at a new generation of evangelicals. "There's no absolutely right candidate for an evangelical, and there's no absolutely wrong candidate. They're both right, and they're both wrong."
On paper, this campaign looks fairly standard. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, is staunchly in favor of abortion rights, while McCain, an Arizona Republican, has compiled a solid record over four Senate terms of opposing abortion.
But McCain has repeatedly been at odds with the National Right to Life Committee and other antiabortion groups over his efforts to limit their ability to run pointed "issue advocacy" advertisements in the closing weeks of campaigns. Although his voting record is strictly antiabortion, he has never made religiosity or social issues centerpieces of his political persona. And his 2000 labeling of evangelists Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" deepened evangelical suspicions.
"To be perceived as authentic on this issue, you need to have some grounding in it, and usually that grounding is faith," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University professor of constitutional law who opposes abortion but supports Obama.
As McCain moves toward naming a running mate, he has not backed off a suggestion to the conservative Weekly Standard that his pick could favor abortion rights. Speculation on whom that could be has centered on former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.
Similarly, Obama has made a show of reaching out to abortion opponents to find common ground on pregnancy prevention and adoption. He has urged evangelicals and Catholics to expand the definition of "pro-life" to include opposing torture, poverty and unnecessary war. In the Democratic primary, Obama was criticized by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign and others for being insufficiently committed to abortion rights because he did not cast some votes on the issue in the Illinois legislature.
Abortion foes are now accusing Obama of being an abortion-rights extremist. In recent days, the National Right to Life Committee has charged that Obama is misrepresenting his record to broaden his appeal. At issue is a measure in both Illinois and Congress called the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which defines as a protected human any life expelled from a mother. Abortion foes championed the cause when an Illinois nurse and antiabortion activist said some pre-viable fetuses were being aborted by inducing labor and then being allowed to die.
Obama, then a state senator, opposed the measure in 2001, saying it crossed the line of constitutionality and "essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a pre-viable child, or fetus."
As a committee chairman in the state Senate in 2003, Obama supported GOP efforts to add language to the act, copied from federal legislation, clarifying that it would have no legal impact on the availability of abortions. Obama then opposed the bill's final passage. Since then, he has said he would have backed the bill as it was written and approved almost unanimously the year before.
Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, charged that Obama is trying to have it both ways because the Illinois bill he opposed was virtually identical to the federal law he said he would support.
Obama aides acknowledged yesterday that the wording of the state and federal bills was virtually identical. But, they added, the impact of a state law is different, because detailed abortion procedures and regulations are governed by states. Johnson and others are oversimplifying the situation, aides said.
"They have not been telling the truth," Obama told the Christian Broadcasting Network in response to a question on the matter. "And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."
At Saddleback, McCain won plaudits from conservatives when he said that life begins "at the moment of conception," especially after Obama deflected the question.
But the inroads McCain made are now threatened by his flirtation with a running mate who supports abortion rights.
"I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party. And I also feel that -- and I'm not trying to equivocate here -- that Americans want us to work together," McCain told the Weekly Standard.
Conservative commentator David Limbaugh slammed the idea yesterday, warning that McCain "would make a fatal mistake to assume that social issues, especially abortion, are ever off an equally blazing front burner for an inestimable number of social conservatives."
Abortion remains an important issue to a large portion of the electorate, but it is not the biggest. An early August poll for Time magazine found that one in five likely voters would not consider voting for a candidate who did not share their views on abortion. Twenty-six percent of Republicans saw the issue as decisive, compared with 18 percent of Democrats.
Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Bloomberg Offers Windmill Plan - NYTimes.com
Bloomberg Offers Windmill Plan - NYTimes.com: "Bloomberg Offers Windmill Plan
*
E-Mail
* Print
* Reprints
* Save
Bloomberg Offers Windmill Plan
*
E-Mail
* Print
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: August 19, 2008
In a plan that would drastically remake New York City’s skyline and shores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is seeking to put wind turbines on the city’s bridges and skyscrapers and in its waters as part of a wide-ranging push to develop renewable energy.
The plan, while still in its early stages, appears to be the boldest environmental proposal to date from the mayor, who has made energy efficiency a cornerstone of his administration.
Mr. Bloomberg said he would ask private companies and investors to study how windmills can be built across the city, with the aim of weaning it off the nation’s overtaxed power grid, which has produced several crippling blackouts in New York over the last decade.
Mr. Bloomberg did not specify which skyscrapers and bridges would be candidates for windmills, and city officials would need to work with property owners to identify the buildings that would best be able to hold the equipment.
But aides said that for offshore locations, the city was eyeing the generally windy coast off Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island for turbines that could generate 10 percent of the city’s electricity needs within 10 years.
“When it comes to producing clean power, we’re determined to make New York the No. 1 city in the nation,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he outlined his plans in a speech Tuesday night in Las Vegas, where a major conference on alternative energy is under way.
He later evoked the image of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, saying he imagined it one day “powered by an ocean wind farm.”
But the mayor’s proposal for wind power faces several serious obstacles: People are likely to oppose technologies that alter the appearance of their neighborhoods; wind-harnessing technology can be exceedingly expensive; and Mr. Bloomberg has less than 18 months left in office to put a plan into place.
Turning New York City into a major source of wind power would likely take years, if not decades, and could require a thicket of permits from state and federal agencies. Parts of New York’s coastline, for example, are controlled by the federal government, from which private companies must lease access.
Mr. Bloomberg is known for introducing ambitious proposals that later collapse, as did his congestion-pricing plan for Manhattan.
But aides said he was committed to developing alternative energy sources in the city, and wanted to jump-start the discussion now.
“In New York,” he said in his speech, “we don’t think of alternative power as something that we just import from other parts of the nation.”
Asserting the seriousness of his intentions, aides said, Mr. Bloomberg met privately with T. Boone Pickens, the oil baron who is trying to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, to discuss possibilities for such technology in New York.
And on Tuesday afternoon the city issued a formal request to companies around the country for proposals to build wind-, solar- and water-based energy sources in New York. “We want their best ideas for creating both small- and large-scale projects serving New Yorkers,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
Rohit Aggarwala, the director of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said that turbines on buildings would likely be much smaller than offshore ones. Several companies are experimenting with models that look like eggbeaters, which the Bloomberg administration says could be integrated into the spires atop the city’s tall buildings. “”You can make them so small that people think they are part of the design,” Mr. Aggarwala said.
“If rooftop wind can make it anywhere, this is a great city,” he said. “We have a lot of tall buildings.”
Creating an offshore wind farm, he said, requires “pretty much the same level of difficulty as drilling an oil rig, but you don’t have to pump oil.”
“You could imagine going as much as 15, 20, 25 miles offshore, where it’s virtually invisible to land,” he said.
Mr. Aggarwala said that developing renewable energy for New York would take considerable time. “Nobody is going to see a wind farm off the coast of Queens in the next year,” he said.
But “the idea of renewable power in and around New York City is very realistic,” he said. “The question is what type makes the most sense and in what time frame. That is what we are trying to figure out.”
The city has experimented with wind power before. It put a turbine on city-owned land at 34th Street and the East River several years ago, but found that the technology was not efficient enough to expand.
The mayor’s plan includes the widespread use of solar panels, possibly on the roofs of public and private buildings. One proposal is to allow companies to rent roofs for solar panels and sell the energy they harvest to residents.
The city is already using tidal turbines under the East River that provide energy to Roosevelt Island. That technology could be widely expanded under the mayor’s proposal.
*
* Reprints
* Save
Bloomberg Offers Windmill Plan
*
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: August 19, 2008
In a plan that would drastically remake New York City’s skyline and shores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is seeking to put wind turbines on the city’s bridges and skyscrapers and in its waters as part of a wide-ranging push to develop renewable energy.
The plan, while still in its early stages, appears to be the boldest environmental proposal to date from the mayor, who has made energy efficiency a cornerstone of his administration.
Mr. Bloomberg said he would ask private companies and investors to study how windmills can be built across the city, with the aim of weaning it off the nation’s overtaxed power grid, which has produced several crippling blackouts in New York over the last decade.
Mr. Bloomberg did not specify which skyscrapers and bridges would be candidates for windmills, and city officials would need to work with property owners to identify the buildings that would best be able to hold the equipment.
But aides said that for offshore locations, the city was eyeing the generally windy coast off Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island for turbines that could generate 10 percent of the city’s electricity needs within 10 years.
“When it comes to producing clean power, we’re determined to make New York the No. 1 city in the nation,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he outlined his plans in a speech Tuesday night in Las Vegas, where a major conference on alternative energy is under way.
He later evoked the image of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, saying he imagined it one day “powered by an ocean wind farm.”
But the mayor’s proposal for wind power faces several serious obstacles: People are likely to oppose technologies that alter the appearance of their neighborhoods; wind-harnessing technology can be exceedingly expensive; and Mr. Bloomberg has less than 18 months left in office to put a plan into place.
Turning New York City into a major source of wind power would likely take years, if not decades, and could require a thicket of permits from state and federal agencies. Parts of New York’s coastline, for example, are controlled by the federal government, from which private companies must lease access.
Mr. Bloomberg is known for introducing ambitious proposals that later collapse, as did his congestion-pricing plan for Manhattan.
But aides said he was committed to developing alternative energy sources in the city, and wanted to jump-start the discussion now.
“In New York,” he said in his speech, “we don’t think of alternative power as something that we just import from other parts of the nation.”
Asserting the seriousness of his intentions, aides said, Mr. Bloomberg met privately with T. Boone Pickens, the oil baron who is trying to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, to discuss possibilities for such technology in New York.
And on Tuesday afternoon the city issued a formal request to companies around the country for proposals to build wind-, solar- and water-based energy sources in New York. “We want their best ideas for creating both small- and large-scale projects serving New Yorkers,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
Rohit Aggarwala, the director of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said that turbines on buildings would likely be much smaller than offshore ones. Several companies are experimenting with models that look like eggbeaters, which the Bloomberg administration says could be integrated into the spires atop the city’s tall buildings. “”You can make them so small that people think they are part of the design,” Mr. Aggarwala said.
“If rooftop wind can make it anywhere, this is a great city,” he said. “We have a lot of tall buildings.”
Creating an offshore wind farm, he said, requires “pretty much the same level of difficulty as drilling an oil rig, but you don’t have to pump oil.”
“You could imagine going as much as 15, 20, 25 miles offshore, where it’s virtually invisible to land,” he said.
Mr. Aggarwala said that developing renewable energy for New York would take considerable time. “Nobody is going to see a wind farm off the coast of Queens in the next year,” he said.
But “the idea of renewable power in and around New York City is very realistic,” he said. “The question is what type makes the most sense and in what time frame. That is what we are trying to figure out.”
The city has experimented with wind power before. It put a turbine on city-owned land at 34th Street and the East River several years ago, but found that the technology was not efficient enough to expand.
The mayor’s plan includes the widespread use of solar panels, possibly on the roofs of public and private buildings. One proposal is to allow companies to rent roofs for solar panels and sell the energy they harvest to residents.
The city is already using tidal turbines under the East River that provide energy to Roosevelt Island. That technology could be widely expanded under the mayor’s proposal.
Beijing Beat: A Blog of the 2008 Olympic Games : What Chinese Stars Like Liu Xiang Earn From Sport
Beijing Beat: A Blog of the 2008 Olympic Games : What Chinese Stars Like Liu Xiang Earn From Sport: "What Chinese Stars Like Liu Xiang Earn From Sport
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:44 AM
By Newsweek
What Chinese Stars Like Liu Xiang Earn From Sport
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:44 AM
By Newsweek
The injury that cost Liu Xiang his chance to defend his Olympic gold in Beijing is likely to cost the Chinese hurdle star financially as well. It is unclear how much the athlete will lose in terms of endorsements and ad revenue, but what is clear is that his earnings show just how much China has changed over the years. Olympic stars who once could not have expected to make a living from their sports are now finding that there is money to be made from their prowess--but that bureaucracy often takes a cut, too. NEWSWEEK’s Chinese-language partner, Newsweek Select, takes a look at how fame has brought fortune to some of the nation’s stars.
By Diao Ying
NEWSWEEK SELECT IN CHINA
Xu Haifeng was the first Chinese to win an Olympic gold medal. That was in the 1984 free pistol shot competition in Los Angeles, and it earned Xu the first national prize money for an Olympic champion--9,000 RMB (about $1,312) and a salary increase from 51.5 RMB ($7.50) to 98 RMB ($14) per month. "At that time, that was already considered a lot of money," says Xu, now the deputy director of China’s Cycling and Fencing Sports Administrative Center.
No longer. While Xu Haifeng might have been one of the first athletes to make any money out of his sport, China’s top-earning athlete is now NBA star Yao Ming, whose estimated income for 2007 was 380 million RMB ($55.4 million). The country’s second biggest earner is Shanghai’s Liu Xiang, whose 2004 Olympic gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles earned him 160 million RMB (about $23 million) last year. Both are beneficiaries of China’s changing economic system. Wei Jizhong, a consultant to the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, and former national sports official who led the women's volleyball team to five consecutive championships, points out that during Xu Haifeng's era, people around the country were still discussing whether or not China should adopt a free-market economic system, not the commercialization of sports. "Xu Haifeng won in 1984, but the formal decision to adopt a market economy was made after [former Communist Party leader] Deng Xiaoping's 1992 southern tour," says Wei.
The changing stakes have led to changing attitudes too. While older athletes saw their sports as more about the glory of themselves and their nation, the new generation has learned the value of packaging itself. One example of an athlete ‘on message’ is Liu Xiang as spokesman for Amway’s nutrition supplement Nutrilite. At one press conference for the brand, Liu Xiang’s first comment was a plug for the brand. "It's been my dream to represent Amway,” he said as he took his seat. “From a young age, I used Amway products my father's work unit gave to him and felt they were great." When a journalist asked about Liu's dreams for the future, the athlete did not speak about hurdles or life, but instead resolutely said, "I hope everyone will use Nutrilite."
Advertisement
Olympic medals don’t always bring in the money. Lu Hao, a high profile sports agent whose clients include Yao Ming, says that athletes’ market values are closely related to their media exposure and the type of sport they play. That’s why the gorgeous young athletes on the national badminton team--featured last year on a magazine cover that presented them dressed like Hollywood stars--have signed contracts with Federal Express, Bank of China, Pepsi and L’Oreal. The Chinese Ping-Pong team, by contrast, lags behind in these deals, in spite of its excellent match performances.
Most athletes, also, are still managed by state organizations. While sports like basketball and soccer are more commercialized than others, most still fall under a system called Sports for the Nation, where the value of an athlete’s brand falls largely under the domain of “state assets”. Yao Ming, who moved abroad to play, has an international team of professional money managers. Liu Xiang's "state owned" business activities, on the other hand, are managed by the Chinese Athletics Association. Intermediary organizations must pass through the Association to discuss advertising representative business. Under the state-owned athletic system, athletes' advertising earnings are allocated by provisions of China’s State General Administration of Sport. Accordingly, Liu Xiang keeps 50 percent of his earnings, with 15 percent going to his coach Sun Haiping, and 20 percent to his hometown Shanghai's sports bureau. The remaining 15 percent is allocated to the Chinese Athletics Association. Although there isn't a vast difference between the number of ads done by Yao Ming and Liu Xiang, the hurdle star’s income is less than half of the basketball star. “Yao Ming is already a professional athlete,” says Wei. “He only participates in national training for a short time when there's to be a match. Under the national system, athletes receive government subsidy and are financially taken care of by the state. So they don't entirely answer to themselves."
Chinese athletes who disobey the rules can pay a heavy price. In 2005, Sydney Olympic diving champion Tian Liang was removed from the Olympic team for participating in too many commercial events. The decision forced Tian out of the Beijing Olympics and also saw the sponsorships for the former “Sunshine Boy” fade into the twilight.
The next generation of sports stars is likely to be even savvier about marketing their achievements. Where Yao Ming’s parents refused to let him go to sports school because they felt he would not be able to make a living from his athleticism, parents like Ding Wenjun are now making enormous financial sacrifices to promote their children’s talent. Ding is the father of snooker player Ding Junhui, winner of the 2005 World Snooker China Open and the world’s Number 11 ranked player. Ding Wenjun, a former cigarette salesman, risked ruin by selling his family’s house to support his son’s career. The gamble paid off. Last year, the 21-year-old champion made 4.8 million RMB (almost $700,000) in ad and endorsement money--more than 500 times the award money Xu Haifeng received back in 1984.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:44 AM
By Newsweek
What Chinese Stars Like Liu Xiang Earn From Sport
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:44 AM
By Newsweek
The injury that cost Liu Xiang his chance to defend his Olympic gold in Beijing is likely to cost the Chinese hurdle star financially as well. It is unclear how much the athlete will lose in terms of endorsements and ad revenue, but what is clear is that his earnings show just how much China has changed over the years. Olympic stars who once could not have expected to make a living from their sports are now finding that there is money to be made from their prowess--but that bureaucracy often takes a cut, too. NEWSWEEK’s Chinese-language partner, Newsweek Select, takes a look at how fame has brought fortune to some of the nation’s stars.
By Diao Ying
NEWSWEEK SELECT IN CHINA
Xu Haifeng was the first Chinese to win an Olympic gold medal. That was in the 1984 free pistol shot competition in Los Angeles, and it earned Xu the first national prize money for an Olympic champion--9,000 RMB (about $1,312) and a salary increase from 51.5 RMB ($7.50) to 98 RMB ($14) per month. "At that time, that was already considered a lot of money," says Xu, now the deputy director of China’s Cycling and Fencing Sports Administrative Center.
No longer. While Xu Haifeng might have been one of the first athletes to make any money out of his sport, China’s top-earning athlete is now NBA star Yao Ming, whose estimated income for 2007 was 380 million RMB ($55.4 million). The country’s second biggest earner is Shanghai’s Liu Xiang, whose 2004 Olympic gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles earned him 160 million RMB (about $23 million) last year. Both are beneficiaries of China’s changing economic system. Wei Jizhong, a consultant to the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, and former national sports official who led the women's volleyball team to five consecutive championships, points out that during Xu Haifeng's era, people around the country were still discussing whether or not China should adopt a free-market economic system, not the commercialization of sports. "Xu Haifeng won in 1984, but the formal decision to adopt a market economy was made after [former Communist Party leader] Deng Xiaoping's 1992 southern tour," says Wei.
The changing stakes have led to changing attitudes too. While older athletes saw their sports as more about the glory of themselves and their nation, the new generation has learned the value of packaging itself. One example of an athlete ‘on message’ is Liu Xiang as spokesman for Amway’s nutrition supplement Nutrilite. At one press conference for the brand, Liu Xiang’s first comment was a plug for the brand. "It's been my dream to represent Amway,” he said as he took his seat. “From a young age, I used Amway products my father's work unit gave to him and felt they were great." When a journalist asked about Liu's dreams for the future, the athlete did not speak about hurdles or life, but instead resolutely said, "I hope everyone will use Nutrilite."
Advertisement
Olympic medals don’t always bring in the money. Lu Hao, a high profile sports agent whose clients include Yao Ming, says that athletes’ market values are closely related to their media exposure and the type of sport they play. That’s why the gorgeous young athletes on the national badminton team--featured last year on a magazine cover that presented them dressed like Hollywood stars--have signed contracts with Federal Express, Bank of China, Pepsi and L’Oreal. The Chinese Ping-Pong team, by contrast, lags behind in these deals, in spite of its excellent match performances.
Most athletes, also, are still managed by state organizations. While sports like basketball and soccer are more commercialized than others, most still fall under a system called Sports for the Nation, where the value of an athlete’s brand falls largely under the domain of “state assets”. Yao Ming, who moved abroad to play, has an international team of professional money managers. Liu Xiang's "state owned" business activities, on the other hand, are managed by the Chinese Athletics Association. Intermediary organizations must pass through the Association to discuss advertising representative business. Under the state-owned athletic system, athletes' advertising earnings are allocated by provisions of China’s State General Administration of Sport. Accordingly, Liu Xiang keeps 50 percent of his earnings, with 15 percent going to his coach Sun Haiping, and 20 percent to his hometown Shanghai's sports bureau. The remaining 15 percent is allocated to the Chinese Athletics Association. Although there isn't a vast difference between the number of ads done by Yao Ming and Liu Xiang, the hurdle star’s income is less than half of the basketball star. “Yao Ming is already a professional athlete,” says Wei. “He only participates in national training for a short time when there's to be a match. Under the national system, athletes receive government subsidy and are financially taken care of by the state. So they don't entirely answer to themselves."
Chinese athletes who disobey the rules can pay a heavy price. In 2005, Sydney Olympic diving champion Tian Liang was removed from the Olympic team for participating in too many commercial events. The decision forced Tian out of the Beijing Olympics and also saw the sponsorships for the former “Sunshine Boy” fade into the twilight.
The next generation of sports stars is likely to be even savvier about marketing their achievements. Where Yao Ming’s parents refused to let him go to sports school because they felt he would not be able to make a living from his athleticism, parents like Ding Wenjun are now making enormous financial sacrifices to promote their children’s talent. Ding is the father of snooker player Ding Junhui, winner of the 2005 World Snooker China Open and the world’s Number 11 ranked player. Ding Wenjun, a former cigarette salesman, risked ruin by selling his family’s house to support his son’s career. The gamble paid off. Last year, the 21-year-old champion made 4.8 million RMB (almost $700,000) in ad and endorsement money--more than 500 times the award money Xu Haifeng received back in 1984.
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery - WSJ.com
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery - WSJ.com: "Stem Cells and Breast Surgery
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008
Yokohama, Japan
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008
Yokohama, Japan
Researchers around the world are seeking ways to regenerate damaged hearts, spines and skin with stem cells. At an operating table here recently, Kotaro Yoshimura leaned over a 51-year-old woman and put stem cells to use for a different purpose: cosmetic breast surgery.
[popular procedure]
Dr. Yoshimura jabbed the underside of the woman's left breast with a thick, long needle, drawing it in and out. At his side, an assistant slowly cranked the handle of a canister filled with an orange-colored mixture, pumping it into the needle through a tube. The substance was a fat concoction from the woman's own body -- which had been processed in an adjoining laboratory to fortify the stem cells it contained. Then it was injected into the patient to enlarge her breasts.
The combination of fat and stem cells -- used to either make breasts larger or repair them after cancer surgery -- has become one of the hottest, and most controversial, corners of cosmetic medicine. Breast surgeries that rely on a person's own fat are being performed in Japan and Europe and are hurtling toward the U.S., where some surgeons are already experimenting.
The "genie is out of the bottle," says Grant Carlson, a plastic surgeon and surgical oncologist at Emory University in Atlanta. He worries that commercialization of the procedure is moving too fast, before data are collected about long-term consequences.
This is uncharted territory for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates products and devices but not procedures. However, the FDA says fat augmented with stem cells creates a "biologic product" that would require regulatory approval.
The surgery relies on an old idea: the use of human fat to make a woman's breasts larger. Attempts to use fat transplantations in such a way date back more than a century, but they usually failed because most of the fat grafted onto the breast died, turning into hard lumps or calcifications. The concept has long been frowned upon in the U.S., although fat transfer has been used with limited success in other parts of the body.
Now, surgeons are returning to the idea, spurred by the discovery over a decade ago that fat contains a rich supply of cells similar to the stem cells found in bone marrow.
Using Fat as a Cosmetic Tool
A stem cell is a cell from which other types of cells develop. The theory behind the new procedures is that fat may be processed or handled in a way that allows fragile stem cells to create a blood supply for the transplant that helps the fat survive. During a single operation, fat is siphoned from a woman's thigh or abdomen and then processed using various techniques. The fat is injected back into the breasts. Because the patient is the donor, there is no risk of tissue rejection.
Harvesting stem cells from fat doesn't present the ethical issues that arise when stem cells are retrieved from human embryos. In fact, fat is routinely discarded by plastic surgeons after liposuction, one of the most popular cosmetic procedures. Research is increasingly looking into the therapeutic potential of adult stem cells taken from blood, bone marrow or fat.
The possibility of creating soft, natural-looking breasts has incited interest among cosmetic surgeons. Artificial implants, filled with saline or silicone gel, can rupture, and some say they don't look natural. A small San Diego company, Cytori Therapeutics Inc., says it has invented a machine that combines fat with a mixture of stem cells and other regenerative cells. The device is being used by some hospitals in Europe and Japan. Cytori is sponsoring human tests in Europe and talking to the FDA about similar efforts in the U.S.
Some doctors worry the fat, when reinjected in the breast, could calcify and interfere with mammographic cancer screening. Another concern is that fat injections could increase the risk of breast cancer, because certain anticancer drugs work in postmenopausal women by inhibiting the production of estrogen, a hormone in fat tissue.
Regardless, some U.S. surgeons are showing before-and-after pictures of breasts they have enlarged, reshaped or repaired using fat grafting. There is no proven technique, but some surgeons say they have been encouraged to experiment after successfully grafting fat to other parts of the body, including faces and hands.
Jafar Koupaie, a cosmetic surgeon in Brookline, Mass., says he performed breast surgeries on two women April 1, using a Korean cell-processing device. He says he is using a patient's own cells and isn't adding anything from outside the human body. One of the patients, he says, was his wife.
The FDA says it has only sketchy details about Dr. Koupaie's procedure. "If you're mixing stem cells with fat cells, that requires FDA approval," said Karen Riley, an agency spokeswoman. When told of the FDA's comment, Dr. Koupaie said, "If they want more information, they can come and see we put only the patient's fat into the machine."
Sydney Coleman, a New York plastic surgeon, published a breast study last year about fat grafting in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, a medical journal. He has been grafting fat to the breast, without adding a stem-cell mixture, for many years, although other doctors have had difficulty adopting his technique. Cytori has begun working with plastic surgeons in Japan, Israel, Italy and France who are using its device.
Even the medical establishment is revisiting the issue: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery's research arm is funding a breast-augmentation study. Patients are being recruited at ClinicalTrials.gov.
The cost of fat-grafting procedures for cosmetic breast surgery ranges widely, from $15,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the surgeon and clinic.
Fat transplantation "has moved into center stage from the backroom," says Scott Spear, a plastic surgeon at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who is conducting the study. He says he hopes it will validate the safety and efficacy of fat grafting in the breast. But Dr. Spear says the study won't answer a key question: how much the processing of fat-derived stem cells contributes to the success of the surgery. It is possible that the transplanted fat alone contains enough stem cells to do the job, he says.
So far, neither Cytori nor Dr. Yoshimura -- who uses his own, manual process to supplement stem cells in fat -- has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that bolstering fat with more stem cells improves graft survival, Dr. Spear says. Dr. Yoshimura and Cytori, who are working separately, both say their studies are promising but agree more research is needed.
'Natural Looking Forever'
Dr. Yoshimura says he began testing his technique in patients in 2003. He has performed about 200 operations, mostly on Japanese women, but also on some from the U.S. and Canada. He operates on Saturdays out of the luxurious, wood-paneled Cellport Clinic in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama.
The clinic, which includes a cell-processing laboratory, was built two years ago at a cost of $26 million by Japan's Biomaster Inc. The venture-capital-backed company's chairman, Ryuji Kuwana, says he is talking with potential partners about constructing similar clinics outside Japan.
Dr. Yoshimura, who calls his operation "cell-assisted lipotransfer," starts with a liposuction procedure to obtain fat, typically from a woman's thigh. He divides the fat in two: Half is processed through a centrifuge, yielding a concentrated stem-cell mixture that is then recombined with the other half. The cell-supplemented graft is delivered through a syringe at four injection sites into the breast. The surgery takes three to four hours, he says.
Like other surgeons who perform fat-transfer procedures, he can't predict exactly how much of a graft will survive, but says most of the tissue volume stabilizes within three months. Dr. Yoshimura says his average graft survival rate is 54%. That makes it difficult to give a woman an augmentation of more than one bra-cup size, from an "A" to a "B," for instance. But the procedure can be repeated. A handful of Dr. Yoshimura's patients have returned for a second augmentation surgery. One Canadian woman says she paid about $20,000 for the first operation and $15,000 for the second.
Such surgeries are also being done at two other clinics in Japan, the Seishin Cosmetic Clinic in Tokyo and Kyushu Central Hospital in Fukuoka. Surgeons at both places process stem cells using the machine developed by Cytori.
By automating the cell-processing procedure at bedside during a surgery, Cytori hopes to make fat transplantation easier, faster and more predictable. It says it is aiming for a total procedure time of about one hour with new machines developed with its partner, Olympus Corp., the Japanese maker of cameras and medical equipment.
To tout its procedure, the Seishin clinic recently ran pictures of a bikini-clad woman showing how her natural bust was augmented by surgery. Speaking through a translator, the woman, Erika Igarashi, said in an interview she was unhappy about her flat chest and began researching Internet sites last fall. She found the Seishin clinic and volunteered. After a consultation, she stopped dieting to have enough body fat for the operation, which was performed Nov. 7. Ms. Igarashi said she didn't pay for the procedure.
When she woke up, she says, "I looked down and saw big breasts." She felt pain in her thighs where fat was harvested and her breasts initially felt "hard and heavy." Now, more than nine months later, her breasts are a bit smaller, but the size has stabilized, she says. Her new form gives her "lots of confidence," she says, adding she can wear "a greater variety of clothing," including low-cut dresses. The 22-year-old university graduate works part-time in a nightclub and is looking for a job in the cosmetics industry.
Cytori says it has invested about $100 million in researching and developing its device, which looks like a portable dishwasher and is priced between $75,000 and $100,000.
With commercialization moving ahead in Japan and Europe, Cytori is now taking aim at the U.S. It hopes the FDA will allow it to begin human tests with its device next year to reconstruct breasts damaged by cancer surgery. It has also retained Dr. Coleman, the New York surgeon, as a consultant. Cytori hopes its device will eventually be used to regenerate tissue for treating cardiovascular disease, orthopedic damage, gastrointestinal disorders and pelvic health conditions.
Write to Rhonda L. Rundle at rhonda.rundle@wsj.com
[stem cells]
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008
Yokohama, Japan
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008
Yokohama, Japan
Researchers around the world are seeking ways to regenerate damaged hearts, spines and skin with stem cells. At an operating table here recently, Kotaro Yoshimura leaned over a 51-year-old woman and put stem cells to use for a different purpose: cosmetic breast surgery.
[popular procedure]
Dr. Yoshimura jabbed the underside of the woman's left breast with a thick, long needle, drawing it in and out. At his side, an assistant slowly cranked the handle of a canister filled with an orange-colored mixture, pumping it into the needle through a tube. The substance was a fat concoction from the woman's own body -- which had been processed in an adjoining laboratory to fortify the stem cells it contained. Then it was injected into the patient to enlarge her breasts.
The combination of fat and stem cells -- used to either make breasts larger or repair them after cancer surgery -- has become one of the hottest, and most controversial, corners of cosmetic medicine. Breast surgeries that rely on a person's own fat are being performed in Japan and Europe and are hurtling toward the U.S., where some surgeons are already experimenting.
The "genie is out of the bottle," says Grant Carlson, a plastic surgeon and surgical oncologist at Emory University in Atlanta. He worries that commercialization of the procedure is moving too fast, before data are collected about long-term consequences.
This is uncharted territory for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates products and devices but not procedures. However, the FDA says fat augmented with stem cells creates a "biologic product" that would require regulatory approval.
The surgery relies on an old idea: the use of human fat to make a woman's breasts larger. Attempts to use fat transplantations in such a way date back more than a century, but they usually failed because most of the fat grafted onto the breast died, turning into hard lumps or calcifications. The concept has long been frowned upon in the U.S., although fat transfer has been used with limited success in other parts of the body.
Now, surgeons are returning to the idea, spurred by the discovery over a decade ago that fat contains a rich supply of cells similar to the stem cells found in bone marrow.
Using Fat as a Cosmetic Tool
A stem cell is a cell from which other types of cells develop. The theory behind the new procedures is that fat may be processed or handled in a way that allows fragile stem cells to create a blood supply for the transplant that helps the fat survive. During a single operation, fat is siphoned from a woman's thigh or abdomen and then processed using various techniques. The fat is injected back into the breasts. Because the patient is the donor, there is no risk of tissue rejection.
Harvesting stem cells from fat doesn't present the ethical issues that arise when stem cells are retrieved from human embryos. In fact, fat is routinely discarded by plastic surgeons after liposuction, one of the most popular cosmetic procedures. Research is increasingly looking into the therapeutic potential of adult stem cells taken from blood, bone marrow or fat.
The possibility of creating soft, natural-looking breasts has incited interest among cosmetic surgeons. Artificial implants, filled with saline or silicone gel, can rupture, and some say they don't look natural. A small San Diego company, Cytori Therapeutics Inc., says it has invented a machine that combines fat with a mixture of stem cells and other regenerative cells. The device is being used by some hospitals in Europe and Japan. Cytori is sponsoring human tests in Europe and talking to the FDA about similar efforts in the U.S.
Some doctors worry the fat, when reinjected in the breast, could calcify and interfere with mammographic cancer screening. Another concern is that fat injections could increase the risk of breast cancer, because certain anticancer drugs work in postmenopausal women by inhibiting the production of estrogen, a hormone in fat tissue.
Regardless, some U.S. surgeons are showing before-and-after pictures of breasts they have enlarged, reshaped or repaired using fat grafting. There is no proven technique, but some surgeons say they have been encouraged to experiment after successfully grafting fat to other parts of the body, including faces and hands.
Jafar Koupaie, a cosmetic surgeon in Brookline, Mass., says he performed breast surgeries on two women April 1, using a Korean cell-processing device. He says he is using a patient's own cells and isn't adding anything from outside the human body. One of the patients, he says, was his wife.
The FDA says it has only sketchy details about Dr. Koupaie's procedure. "If you're mixing stem cells with fat cells, that requires FDA approval," said Karen Riley, an agency spokeswoman. When told of the FDA's comment, Dr. Koupaie said, "If they want more information, they can come and see we put only the patient's fat into the machine."
Sydney Coleman, a New York plastic surgeon, published a breast study last year about fat grafting in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, a medical journal. He has been grafting fat to the breast, without adding a stem-cell mixture, for many years, although other doctors have had difficulty adopting his technique. Cytori has begun working with plastic surgeons in Japan, Israel, Italy and France who are using its device.
Even the medical establishment is revisiting the issue: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery's research arm is funding a breast-augmentation study. Patients are being recruited at ClinicalTrials.gov.
The cost of fat-grafting procedures for cosmetic breast surgery ranges widely, from $15,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the surgeon and clinic.
Fat transplantation "has moved into center stage from the backroom," says Scott Spear, a plastic surgeon at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who is conducting the study. He says he hopes it will validate the safety and efficacy of fat grafting in the breast. But Dr. Spear says the study won't answer a key question: how much the processing of fat-derived stem cells contributes to the success of the surgery. It is possible that the transplanted fat alone contains enough stem cells to do the job, he says.
So far, neither Cytori nor Dr. Yoshimura -- who uses his own, manual process to supplement stem cells in fat -- has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that bolstering fat with more stem cells improves graft survival, Dr. Spear says. Dr. Yoshimura and Cytori, who are working separately, both say their studies are promising but agree more research is needed.
'Natural Looking Forever'
Dr. Yoshimura says he began testing his technique in patients in 2003. He has performed about 200 operations, mostly on Japanese women, but also on some from the U.S. and Canada. He operates on Saturdays out of the luxurious, wood-paneled Cellport Clinic in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama.
The clinic, which includes a cell-processing laboratory, was built two years ago at a cost of $26 million by Japan's Biomaster Inc. The venture-capital-backed company's chairman, Ryuji Kuwana, says he is talking with potential partners about constructing similar clinics outside Japan.
Dr. Yoshimura, who calls his operation "cell-assisted lipotransfer," starts with a liposuction procedure to obtain fat, typically from a woman's thigh. He divides the fat in two: Half is processed through a centrifuge, yielding a concentrated stem-cell mixture that is then recombined with the other half. The cell-supplemented graft is delivered through a syringe at four injection sites into the breast. The surgery takes three to four hours, he says.
Like other surgeons who perform fat-transfer procedures, he can't predict exactly how much of a graft will survive, but says most of the tissue volume stabilizes within three months. Dr. Yoshimura says his average graft survival rate is 54%. That makes it difficult to give a woman an augmentation of more than one bra-cup size, from an "A" to a "B," for instance. But the procedure can be repeated. A handful of Dr. Yoshimura's patients have returned for a second augmentation surgery. One Canadian woman says she paid about $20,000 for the first operation and $15,000 for the second.
Such surgeries are also being done at two other clinics in Japan, the Seishin Cosmetic Clinic in Tokyo and Kyushu Central Hospital in Fukuoka. Surgeons at both places process stem cells using the machine developed by Cytori.
By automating the cell-processing procedure at bedside during a surgery, Cytori hopes to make fat transplantation easier, faster and more predictable. It says it is aiming for a total procedure time of about one hour with new machines developed with its partner, Olympus Corp., the Japanese maker of cameras and medical equipment.
To tout its procedure, the Seishin clinic recently ran pictures of a bikini-clad woman showing how her natural bust was augmented by surgery. Speaking through a translator, the woman, Erika Igarashi, said in an interview she was unhappy about her flat chest and began researching Internet sites last fall. She found the Seishin clinic and volunteered. After a consultation, she stopped dieting to have enough body fat for the operation, which was performed Nov. 7. Ms. Igarashi said she didn't pay for the procedure.
When she woke up, she says, "I looked down and saw big breasts." She felt pain in her thighs where fat was harvested and her breasts initially felt "hard and heavy." Now, more than nine months later, her breasts are a bit smaller, but the size has stabilized, she says. Her new form gives her "lots of confidence," she says, adding she can wear "a greater variety of clothing," including low-cut dresses. The 22-year-old university graduate works part-time in a nightclub and is looking for a job in the cosmetics industry.
Cytori says it has invested about $100 million in researching and developing its device, which looks like a portable dishwasher and is priced between $75,000 and $100,000.
With commercialization moving ahead in Japan and Europe, Cytori is now taking aim at the U.S. It hopes the FDA will allow it to begin human tests with its device next year to reconstruct breasts damaged by cancer surgery. It has also retained Dr. Coleman, the New York surgeon, as a consultant. Cytori hopes its device will eventually be used to regenerate tissue for treating cardiovascular disease, orthopedic damage, gastrointestinal disorders and pelvic health conditions.
Write to Rhonda L. Rundle at rhonda.rundle@wsj.com
[stem cells]
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells - Los Angeles Times
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells - Los Angeles Times
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Scientists said today that they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The research team outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online in the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.
It would also ensure that patients are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.
"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic stem cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."
Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells that are responsible for making blood in the body, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.
In the new study, researchers were able to make up to 100 billion red blood cells -- enough to fill two or three collection tubes -- from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some of them to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.
Up to 65% of the resulting cells matured to the point at which they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive+.
The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the research team is conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.
Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.
Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars per unit -- far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," Dodd said.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Scientists said today that they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The research team outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online in the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.
It would also ensure that patients are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.
"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic stem cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."
Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells that are responsible for making blood in the body, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.
In the new study, researchers were able to make up to 100 billion red blood cells -- enough to fill two or three collection tubes -- from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some of them to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.
Up to 65% of the resulting cells matured to the point at which they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive+.
The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the research team is conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.
Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.
Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars per unit -- far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," Dodd said.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops - NYTimes.com
As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops - NYTimes.com: "As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops
Jorge Silva/Reuters
Workers in an oil field in Venezuela, one of the countries that experts say hold the oil supplies of the future.
As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops
Jorge Silva/Reuters
Workers in an oil field in Venezuela, one of the countries that experts say hold the oil supplies of the future.
*
E-Mail
* Print
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: August 18, 2008
Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Big Profits, Bigger TroublesGraphic
Big Profits, Bigger Troubles
Back Story With Jad Mouawad (mp3)
Add to Portfolio
* Exxon Mobil Corp
* BP Plc
* Chevron Corp
Go to your Portfolio »
Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies.
And much of their production is in mature regions that are declining, like the North Sea.
The reality, experts say, is that the oil giants that once dominated the global market have lost much of their influence — and with it, their ability to increase supplies.
“This is an industry in crisis,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, the associate director of Rice University’s energy program in Houston. “It’s a crisis of leadership, a crisis of strategy and a crisis of what the future looks like for the supermajors,” a term often applied to the biggest oil companies. “They are like a deer caught in headlights. They know they have to move, but they can’t decide where to go.”
The sharp retreat in all of the commodities’ prices over the last month, about 20 percent, reflects slowing global growth and with it reduced demand for more oil in the short term. But over the next decade, the world will need more oil to satisfy developing Asian economies like China. The oil companies’ difficulties suggest that these much-needed future supplies may be hard to come by.
Oil production has failed to catch up with surging consumption in recent years, a disparity that propelled oil prices to records this year. Despite the recent decline, oil remains above $100 a barrel, unimaginable a few years ago, causing pain throughout the economy, like higher prices at the gas pump and automakers posting sizable losses.
The scope of the supply problem became more clear in the latest quarter when the five biggest publicly traded oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, said their oil output had declined by a total of 614,000 barrels a day, even as they posted $44 billion in profits. It was the steepest of five consecutive quarters of declines.
While that drop might not sound like much in a world that consumes 86 million barrels of oil each day, today’s markets are so tight that the slightest shortfalls can push up prices.
Along with mature fields, the companies have contracts with producing countries whose governments allocate fewer barrels to oil companies as prices rise.
“It has become really, really difficult to grow production,” said Paul Horsnell, an analyst at Barclays Capital. “International companies have a portfolio of assets in areas of significant decline and no frontier discoveries to make up for that.”
As a result of the industry’s troubles, energy experts do not expect oil supplies to grow this year in countries outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Global demand for oil is expected to expand by 800,000 barrels a day, mostly because of rising demand in China and the Middle East, despite lower consumption in developing countries.
This imbalance between supplies and demand will be one thing that OPEC ministers will consider when they meet next month to decide whether or not to increase their production. OPEC has about 2 million barrels a day in untapped capacity that its members control.
The new oil order has been emerging for a few decades.
As late as the 1970s, Western corporations controlled well over half of the world’s oil production. These companies — Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total of France and Eni of Italy — now produce just 13 percent.
Today’s 10 largest holders of petroleum reserves are state-owned companies, like Russia’s Gazprom and Iran’s national oil company.
Sluggish supplies have prompted a cottage industry of doomsday predictions that the world’s oil production has reached a peak. But many energy experts say these “peak oil” theories are misplaced. They say the world is not running out of oil — rather, the companies that know the most about how to produce oil are running out of places to drill.
“There is still a lot of oil to develop out there, which is why we don’t call this geological peak oil, especially in places like Venezuela, Russia, Iran and Iraq,” said Arjun Murti, an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs. “What we have now is geopolitical peak oil.”
Western companies are far better than most national oil companies at finding and extracting petroleum, experts say. They have developed advanced exploration technologies and can muster significant financing to develop new fields. Many of the world’s exporting states, however, have spurned their expertise.
Oil company executives see a straightforward explanation: a trend known as resource nationalism. They contend that they have been shut out of promising regions by a rising assertiveness in the Middle East, in Russia, in South America and elsewhere by governments determined to keep full control of their oil.
Even in places where they are allowed to operate, the Western oil companies face growing problems. Countries like Russia, Algeria, Nigeria and Angola have recently sought to renegotiate their contracts with foreign investors to capture a bigger share of the profits.
“The problem with the supply side of the equation is a problem of accessing the resources in the ground so they can be explored and developed,” Rex W. Tillerson, the chairman of Exxon, said in a recent interview. “That’s a political question where governments have made choices.”
This sense of being hemmed in helps explain why the Western oil companies want more offshore drilling in the United States. They see it as one of their few options.
These companies have also tried to diversify. They have turned to natural gas as a profitable source of growth. They are tackling hydrocarbon resources, like deep-water reserves, heavy oil or tar sands. And some companies, like Shell and BP, are investing in renewable fuels.
Unquestionably, the oil companies could have done more. They failed to invest heavily in exploration after the oil-price collapse of the mid-1980s, which lasted through the 1990s.
In 1994, the top five oil companies spent 3 percent of their free cash on share buybacks and 15 percent on exploration. By 2007, they were spending 34 percent of their free cash on buybacks — in effect, propping up their share prices — and a mere 6 percent on exploration, according to figures compiled by a team led by Ms. Jaffe and Ronald Soligo of Rice University. As a result, some experts warn that supplies will fall short of the demand over the next decade, perhaps sending prices well above today’s levels.
At a recent conference in Madrid, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of the French company Total, said the world would be hard-pressed to raise supplies beyond 95 million barrels a day by 2020. Only a few years ago, forecasters expected 120 million barrels a day by 2030, a level many analysts now view as unrealistic.
The major companies picked up their capital spending around 2005, although much of the increase has been offset by the soaring cost of development. Exxon, for example, expects to spend about $25 billion annually for the next three years to expand its business, compared with $15 billion a year from 2002 through 2006.
“It’s amazing the difference from the 1970s, where a lot of money went into exploration, development and production of new resources,” said Paul Stevens, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London policy research organization. “It is happening a little bit now, but it is not going to be enough.”
As the power and clout of Western companies erode, the world may become increasingly dependent on government-controlled entities for oil.
While some may be up to the task, like Saudi Aramco, others, like Petróleos de Venezuela, suffer from bureaucratic inefficiencies and political interference.
“We are going to depend on the Venezuelan, the Nigerian or the Iranian oil companies for the future of our oil supplies,” said Bruce Bullock, the director of the energy institute at Southern Methodist University. “This is a troubling trend.”
Jorge Silva/Reuters
Workers in an oil field in Venezuela, one of the countries that experts say hold the oil supplies of the future.
As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops
Jorge Silva/Reuters
Workers in an oil field in Venezuela, one of the countries that experts say hold the oil supplies of the future.
*
* Reprints
* Save
* Share
o Linkedin
o Digg
o Facebook
o Mixx
o Yahoo! Buzz
o Permalink
Article Tools Sponsored By
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: August 18, 2008
Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Big Profits, Bigger TroublesGraphic
Big Profits, Bigger Troubles
Back Story With Jad Mouawad (mp3)
Add to Portfolio
* Exxon Mobil Corp
* BP Plc
* Chevron Corp
Go to your Portfolio »
Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies.
And much of their production is in mature regions that are declining, like the North Sea.
The reality, experts say, is that the oil giants that once dominated the global market have lost much of their influence — and with it, their ability to increase supplies.
“This is an industry in crisis,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, the associate director of Rice University’s energy program in Houston. “It’s a crisis of leadership, a crisis of strategy and a crisis of what the future looks like for the supermajors,” a term often applied to the biggest oil companies. “They are like a deer caught in headlights. They know they have to move, but they can’t decide where to go.”
The sharp retreat in all of the commodities’ prices over the last month, about 20 percent, reflects slowing global growth and with it reduced demand for more oil in the short term. But over the next decade, the world will need more oil to satisfy developing Asian economies like China. The oil companies’ difficulties suggest that these much-needed future supplies may be hard to come by.
Oil production has failed to catch up with surging consumption in recent years, a disparity that propelled oil prices to records this year. Despite the recent decline, oil remains above $100 a barrel, unimaginable a few years ago, causing pain throughout the economy, like higher prices at the gas pump and automakers posting sizable losses.
The scope of the supply problem became more clear in the latest quarter when the five biggest publicly traded oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, said their oil output had declined by a total of 614,000 barrels a day, even as they posted $44 billion in profits. It was the steepest of five consecutive quarters of declines.
While that drop might not sound like much in a world that consumes 86 million barrels of oil each day, today’s markets are so tight that the slightest shortfalls can push up prices.
Along with mature fields, the companies have contracts with producing countries whose governments allocate fewer barrels to oil companies as prices rise.
“It has become really, really difficult to grow production,” said Paul Horsnell, an analyst at Barclays Capital. “International companies have a portfolio of assets in areas of significant decline and no frontier discoveries to make up for that.”
As a result of the industry’s troubles, energy experts do not expect oil supplies to grow this year in countries outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Global demand for oil is expected to expand by 800,000 barrels a day, mostly because of rising demand in China and the Middle East, despite lower consumption in developing countries.
This imbalance between supplies and demand will be one thing that OPEC ministers will consider when they meet next month to decide whether or not to increase their production. OPEC has about 2 million barrels a day in untapped capacity that its members control.
The new oil order has been emerging for a few decades.
As late as the 1970s, Western corporations controlled well over half of the world’s oil production. These companies — Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total of France and Eni of Italy — now produce just 13 percent.
Today’s 10 largest holders of petroleum reserves are state-owned companies, like Russia’s Gazprom and Iran’s national oil company.
Sluggish supplies have prompted a cottage industry of doomsday predictions that the world’s oil production has reached a peak. But many energy experts say these “peak oil” theories are misplaced. They say the world is not running out of oil — rather, the companies that know the most about how to produce oil are running out of places to drill.
“There is still a lot of oil to develop out there, which is why we don’t call this geological peak oil, especially in places like Venezuela, Russia, Iran and Iraq,” said Arjun Murti, an energy analyst at Goldman Sachs. “What we have now is geopolitical peak oil.”
Western companies are far better than most national oil companies at finding and extracting petroleum, experts say. They have developed advanced exploration technologies and can muster significant financing to develop new fields. Many of the world’s exporting states, however, have spurned their expertise.
Oil company executives see a straightforward explanation: a trend known as resource nationalism. They contend that they have been shut out of promising regions by a rising assertiveness in the Middle East, in Russia, in South America and elsewhere by governments determined to keep full control of their oil.
Even in places where they are allowed to operate, the Western oil companies face growing problems. Countries like Russia, Algeria, Nigeria and Angola have recently sought to renegotiate their contracts with foreign investors to capture a bigger share of the profits.
“The problem with the supply side of the equation is a problem of accessing the resources in the ground so they can be explored and developed,” Rex W. Tillerson, the chairman of Exxon, said in a recent interview. “That’s a political question where governments have made choices.”
This sense of being hemmed in helps explain why the Western oil companies want more offshore drilling in the United States. They see it as one of their few options.
These companies have also tried to diversify. They have turned to natural gas as a profitable source of growth. They are tackling hydrocarbon resources, like deep-water reserves, heavy oil or tar sands. And some companies, like Shell and BP, are investing in renewable fuels.
Unquestionably, the oil companies could have done more. They failed to invest heavily in exploration after the oil-price collapse of the mid-1980s, which lasted through the 1990s.
In 1994, the top five oil companies spent 3 percent of their free cash on share buybacks and 15 percent on exploration. By 2007, they were spending 34 percent of their free cash on buybacks — in effect, propping up their share prices — and a mere 6 percent on exploration, according to figures compiled by a team led by Ms. Jaffe and Ronald Soligo of Rice University. As a result, some experts warn that supplies will fall short of the demand over the next decade, perhaps sending prices well above today’s levels.
At a recent conference in Madrid, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of the French company Total, said the world would be hard-pressed to raise supplies beyond 95 million barrels a day by 2020. Only a few years ago, forecasters expected 120 million barrels a day by 2030, a level many analysts now view as unrealistic.
The major companies picked up their capital spending around 2005, although much of the increase has been offset by the soaring cost of development. Exxon, for example, expects to spend about $25 billion annually for the next three years to expand its business, compared with $15 billion a year from 2002 through 2006.
“It’s amazing the difference from the 1970s, where a lot of money went into exploration, development and production of new resources,” said Paul Stevens, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London policy research organization. “It is happening a little bit now, but it is not going to be enough.”
As the power and clout of Western companies erode, the world may become increasingly dependent on government-controlled entities for oil.
While some may be up to the task, like Saudi Aramco, others, like Petróleos de Venezuela, suffer from bureaucratic inefficiencies and political interference.
“We are going to depend on the Venezuelan, the Nigerian or the Iranian oil companies for the future of our oil supplies,” said Bruce Bullock, the director of the energy institute at Southern Methodist University. “This is a troubling trend.”
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells - Los Angeles Times
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells - Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-blood20-2008aug20,0,2760531.story
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Scientists said today that they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The research team outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online in the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.
It would also ensure that patients are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.
"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic stem cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."
Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells that are responsible for making blood in the body, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.
In the new study, researchers were able to make up to 100 billion red blood cells -- enough to fill two or three collection tubes -- from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some of them to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.
Up to 65% of the resulting cells matured to the point at which they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive+.
The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the research team is conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.
Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.
Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars per unit -- far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," Dodd said.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-blood20-2008aug20,0,2760531.story
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Scientists said today that they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The research team outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online in the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.
It would also ensure that patients are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.
"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic stem cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."
Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells that are responsible for making blood in the body, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.
In the new study, researchers were able to make up to 100 billion red blood cells -- enough to fill two or three collection tubes -- from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some of them to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.
Up to 65% of the resulting cells matured to the point at which they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive+.
The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the research team is conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.
Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.
Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars per unit -- far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," Dodd said.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells - Los Angeles Times
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells - Los Angeles Times: "Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Scientists said today that they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The research team outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online in the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.
It would also ensure that patients are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.
"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic stem cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."
Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells that are responsible for making blood in the body, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.
In the new study, researchers were able to make up to 100 billion red blood cells -- enough to fill two or three collection tubes -- from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some of them to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.
Up to 65% of the resulting cells matured to the point at which they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive+.
The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the research team is conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.
Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.
Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars per unit -- far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," Dodd said.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Researchers produce blood in lab from stem cells
The discovery marks a technical advance but has a long way to go before it can be considered an alternative to donor blood.
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
1:07 PM PDT, August 19, 2008
Scientists said today that they have devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using human embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a relic of the past.
But experts cautioned that although it represented a significant technical advance, the new approach required several key improvements before it could be considered a realistic alternative to donor blood.
The research team outlined a four-step process for turning embryonic stem cells into red blood cells capable of carrying as much oxygen as normal blood. The procedure was published online in the journal Blood.
The ability to make blood in the lab would guarantee that hospitals and blood banks have access to an ample supply of all types of blood, including the rare AB-negative and O-negative, the universal donor.
It would also ensure that patients are never at risk of contracting diseases such as hepatitis C or HIV, which can be acquired from donor blood, said Dr. Dan Kaufman, associate director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute, who wasn't involved in the study.
"People don't usually think about these types of cells when they talk about human embryonic stem cell therapy, but it is important," Kaufman said. "There's more infections all the time, and the number of donors is more and more limited."
Researchers have tried to harness the so-called adult stem cells that are responsible for making blood in the body, but their methods were far too inefficient to be put to practical use, experts said.
In the new study, researchers were able to make up to 100 billion red blood cells -- enough to fill two or three collection tubes -- from a single plate of embryonic stem cells.
After allowing the stem cells to begin the earliest stages of embryonic development, the researchers prompted some of them to grow into red blood cells by exposing them to a variety of proteins.
Up to 65% of the resulting cells matured to the point at which they shed their nucleus, which allows them to take on the distinctive doughnut shape of circulating red blood cells, said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology Inc. and the study's senior author. The team, which also included researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., produced blood of types A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive+.
The method was 100 times more efficient than previous efforts, said Eric Bouhassira, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. But most of the cells had embryonic or fetal versions of globin, the compound in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Only a relative handful appeared to contain the adult globin that would be needed by patients, he said.
"Whether they would be good enough for transfusion is very unclear," said Bouhassira, who was not involved in the research.
Lanza said the research team is conducting additional experiments to see whether the stem cells will produce more adult globin if given more time to mature in the lab.
Even with substantial improvements, the method faces another big hurdle.
Roger Dodd, vice president of research and development at the American Red Cross' Holland Laboratory in Rockville, Md., said producing blood in the lab could cost thousands of dollars per unit -- far too expensive to replace the 14 million pints of red blood cells that are transfused every year.
"It's a rather ambitious goal," Dodd said.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery - WSJ.com
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery - WSJ.com: "Stem Cells and Breast Surgery
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008; Page A12
Yokohama, Japan
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008; Page A12
Yokohama, Japan
Researchers around the world are seeking ways to regenerate damaged hearts, spines and skin with stem cells. At an operating table here recently, Kotaro Yoshimura leaned over a 51-year-old woman and put stem cells to use for a different purpose: cosmetic breast surgery.
[popular procedure]
Dr. Yoshimura jabbed the underside of the woman's left breast with a thick, long needle, drawing it in and out. At his side, an assistant slowly cranked the handle of a canister filled with an orange-colored mixture, pumping it into the needle through a tube. The substance was a fat concoction from the woman's own body -- which had been processed in an adjoining laboratory to fortify the stem cells it contained. Then it was injected into the patient to enlarge her breasts.
The combination of fat and stem cells -- used to either make breasts larger or repair them after cancer surgery -- has become one of the hottest, and most controversial, corners of cosmetic medicine. Breast surgeries that rely on a person's own fat are being performed in Japan and Europe and are hurtling toward the U.S., where some surgeons are already experimenting.
The "genie is out of the bottle," says Grant Carlson, a plastic surgeon and surgical oncologist at Emory University in Atlanta. He worries that commercialization of the procedure is moving too fast, before data are collected about long-term consequences.
This is uncharted territory for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates products and devices but not procedures. However, the FDA says fat augmented with stem cells creates a "biologic product" that would require regulatory approval.
The surgery relies on an old idea: the use of human fat to make a woman's breasts larger. Attempts to use fat transplantations in such a way date back more than a century, but they usually failed because most of the fat grafted onto the breast died, turning into hard lumps or calcifications. The concept has long been frowned upon in the U.S., although fat transfer has been used with limited success in other parts of the body.
Now, surgeons are returning to the idea, spurred by the discovery over a decade ago that fat contains a rich supply of cells similar to the stem cells found in bone marrow.
Using Fat as a Cosmetic Tool
A stem cell is a cell from which other types of cells develop. The theory behind the new procedures is that fat may be processed or handled in a way that allows fragile stem cells to create a blood supply for the transplant that helps the fat survive. During a single operation, fat is siphoned from a woman's thigh or abdomen and then processed using various techniques. The fat is injected back into the breasts. Because the patient is the donor, there is no risk of tissue rejection.
Harvesting stem cells from fat doesn't present the ethical issues that arise when stem cells are retrieved from human embryos. In fact, fat is routinely discarded by plastic surgeons after liposuction, one of the most popular cosmetic procedures. Research is increasingly looking into the therapeutic potential of adult stem cells taken from blood, bone marrow or fat.
The possibility of creating soft, natural-looking breasts has incited interest among cosmetic surgeons. Artificial implants, filled with saline or silicone gel, can rupture, and some say they don't look natural. A small San Diego company, Cytori Therapeutics Inc., says it has invented a machine that combines fat with a mixture of stem cells and other regenerative cells. The device is being used by some hospitals in Europe and Japan. Cytori is sponsoring human tests in Europe and talking to the FDA about similar efforts in the U.S.
Some doctors worry the fat, when reinjected in the breast, could calcify and interfere with mammographic cancer screening. Another concern is that fat injections could increase the risk of breast cancer, because certain anticancer drugs work in postmenopausal women by inhibiting the production of estrogen, a hormone in fat tissue.
Regardless, some U.S. surgeons are showing before-and-after pictures of breasts they have enlarged, reshaped or repaired using fat grafting. There is no proven technique, but some surgeons say they have been encouraged to experiment after successfully grafting fat to other parts of the body, including faces and hands.
Jafar Koupaie, a cosmetic surgeon in Brookline, Mass., says he performed breast surgeries on two women April 1, using a Korean cell-processing device. He says he is using a patient's own cells and isn't adding anything from outside the human body. One of the patients, he says, was his wife.
The FDA says it has only sketchy details about Dr. Koupaie's procedure. "If you're mixing stem cells with fat cells, that requires FDA approval," said Karen Riley, an agency spokeswoman. When told of the FDA's comment, Dr. Koupaie said, "If they want more information, they can come and see we put only the patient's fat into the machine."
Sydney Coleman, a New York plastic surgeon, published a breast study last year about fat grafting in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, a medical journal. He has been grafting fat to the breast, without adding a stem-cell mixture, for many years, although other doctors have had difficulty adopting his technique. Cytori has begun working with plastic surgeons in Japan, Israel, Italy and France who are using its device.
Even the medical establishment is revisiting the issue: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery's research arm is funding a breast-augmentation study. Patients are being recruited at ClinicalTrials.gov.
The cost of fat-grafting procedures for cosmetic breast surgery ranges widely, from $15,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the surgeon and clinic.
Fat transplantation "has moved into center stage from the backroom," says Scott Spear, a plastic surgeon at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who is conducting the study. He says he hopes it will validate the safety and efficacy of fat grafting in the breast. But Dr. Spear says the study won't answer a key question: how much the processing of fat-derived stem cells contributes to the success of the surgery. It is possible that the transplanted fat alone contains enough stem cells to do the job, he says.
So far, neither Cytori nor Dr. Yoshimura -- who uses his own, manual process to supplement stem cells in fat -- has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that bolstering fat with more stem cells improves graft survival, Dr. Spear says. Dr. Yoshimura and Cytori, who are working separately, both say their studies are promising but agree more research is needed.
'Natural Looking Forever'
Dr. Yoshimura says he began testing his technique in patients in 2003. He has performed about 200 operations, mostly on Japanese women, but also on some from the U.S. and Canada. He operates on Saturdays out of the luxurious, wood-paneled Cellport Clinic in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama.
The clinic, which includes a cell-processing laboratory, was built two years ago at a cost of $26 million by Japan's Biomaster Inc. The venture-capital-backed company's chairman, Ryuji Kuwana, says he is talking with potential partners about constructing similar clinics outside Japan.
Dr. Yoshimura, who calls his operation "cell-assisted lipotransfer," starts with a liposuction procedure to obtain fat, typically from a woman's thigh. He divides the fat in two: Half is processed through a centrifuge, yielding a concentrated stem-cell mixture that is then recombined with the other half. The cell-supplemented graft is delivered through a syringe at four injection sites into the breast. The surgery takes three to four hours, he says.
Like other surgeons who perform fat-transfer procedures, he can't predict exactly how much of a graft will survive, but says most of the tissue volume stabilizes within three months. Dr. Yoshimura says his average graft survival rate is 54%. That makes it difficult to give a woman an augmentation of more than one bra-cup size, from an "A" to a "B," for instance. But the procedure can be repeated. A handful of Dr. Yoshimura's patients have returned for a second augmentation surgery. One Canadian woman says she paid about $20,000 for the first operation and $15,000 for the second.
Such surgeries are also being done at two other clinics in Japan, the Seishin Cosmetic Clinic in Tokyo and Kyushu Central Hospital in Fukuoka. Surgeons at both places process stem cells using the machine developed by Cytori.
By automating the cell-processing procedure at bedside during a surgery, Cytori hopes to make fat transplantation easier, faster and more predictable. It says it is aiming for a total procedure time of about one hour with new machines developed with its partner, Olympus Corp., the Japanese maker of cameras and medical equipment.
To tout its procedure, the Seishin clinic recently ran pictures of a bikini-clad woman showing how her natural bust was augmented by surgery. Speaking through a translator, the woman, Erika Igarashi, said in an interview she was unhappy about her flat chest and began researching Internet sites last fall. She found the Seishin clinic and volunteered. After a consultation, she stopped dieting to have enough body fat for the operation, which was performed Nov. 7. Ms. Igarashi said she didn't pay for the procedure.
When she woke up, she says, "I looked down and saw big breasts." She felt pain in her thighs where fat was harvested and her breasts initially felt "hard and heavy." Now, more than nine months later, her breasts are a bit smaller, but the size has stabilized, she says. Her new form gives her "lots of confidence," she says, adding she can wear "a greater variety of clothing," including low-cut dresses. The 22-year-old university graduate works part-time in a nightclub and is looking for a job in the cosmetics industry.
Cytori says it has invested about $100 million in researching and developing its device, which looks like a portable dishwasher and is priced between $75,000 and $100,000.
With commercialization moving ahead in Japan and Europe, Cytori is now taking aim at the U.S. It hopes the FDA will allow it to begin human tests with its device next year to reconstruct breasts damaged by cancer surgery. It has also retained Dr. Coleman, the New York surgeon, as a consultant. Cytori hopes its device will eventually be used to regenerate tissue for treating cardiovascular disease, orthopedic damage, gastrointestinal disorders and pelvic health conditions.
Write to Rhonda L. Rundle at rhonda.rundle@wsj.com
[stem cells]
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008; Page A12
Yokohama, Japan
Stem Cells and Breast Surgery
New Procedure Uses Fat to Augment Women,
but Some Are Wary of Effects
By RHONDA L. RUNDLE
August 19, 2008; Page A12
Yokohama, Japan
Researchers around the world are seeking ways to regenerate damaged hearts, spines and skin with stem cells. At an operating table here recently, Kotaro Yoshimura leaned over a 51-year-old woman and put stem cells to use for a different purpose: cosmetic breast surgery.
[popular procedure]
Dr. Yoshimura jabbed the underside of the woman's left breast with a thick, long needle, drawing it in and out. At his side, an assistant slowly cranked the handle of a canister filled with an orange-colored mixture, pumping it into the needle through a tube. The substance was a fat concoction from the woman's own body -- which had been processed in an adjoining laboratory to fortify the stem cells it contained. Then it was injected into the patient to enlarge her breasts.
The combination of fat and stem cells -- used to either make breasts larger or repair them after cancer surgery -- has become one of the hottest, and most controversial, corners of cosmetic medicine. Breast surgeries that rely on a person's own fat are being performed in Japan and Europe and are hurtling toward the U.S., where some surgeons are already experimenting.
The "genie is out of the bottle," says Grant Carlson, a plastic surgeon and surgical oncologist at Emory University in Atlanta. He worries that commercialization of the procedure is moving too fast, before data are collected about long-term consequences.
This is uncharted territory for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates products and devices but not procedures. However, the FDA says fat augmented with stem cells creates a "biologic product" that would require regulatory approval.
The surgery relies on an old idea: the use of human fat to make a woman's breasts larger. Attempts to use fat transplantations in such a way date back more than a century, but they usually failed because most of the fat grafted onto the breast died, turning into hard lumps or calcifications. The concept has long been frowned upon in the U.S., although fat transfer has been used with limited success in other parts of the body.
Now, surgeons are returning to the idea, spurred by the discovery over a decade ago that fat contains a rich supply of cells similar to the stem cells found in bone marrow.
Using Fat as a Cosmetic Tool
A stem cell is a cell from which other types of cells develop. The theory behind the new procedures is that fat may be processed or handled in a way that allows fragile stem cells to create a blood supply for the transplant that helps the fat survive. During a single operation, fat is siphoned from a woman's thigh or abdomen and then processed using various techniques. The fat is injected back into the breasts. Because the patient is the donor, there is no risk of tissue rejection.
Harvesting stem cells from fat doesn't present the ethical issues that arise when stem cells are retrieved from human embryos. In fact, fat is routinely discarded by plastic surgeons after liposuction, one of the most popular cosmetic procedures. Research is increasingly looking into the therapeutic potential of adult stem cells taken from blood, bone marrow or fat.
The possibility of creating soft, natural-looking breasts has incited interest among cosmetic surgeons. Artificial implants, filled with saline or silicone gel, can rupture, and some say they don't look natural. A small San Diego company, Cytori Therapeutics Inc., says it has invented a machine that combines fat with a mixture of stem cells and other regenerative cells. The device is being used by some hospitals in Europe and Japan. Cytori is sponsoring human tests in Europe and talking to the FDA about similar efforts in the U.S.
Some doctors worry the fat, when reinjected in the breast, could calcify and interfere with mammographic cancer screening. Another concern is that fat injections could increase the risk of breast cancer, because certain anticancer drugs work in postmenopausal women by inhibiting the production of estrogen, a hormone in fat tissue.
Regardless, some U.S. surgeons are showing before-and-after pictures of breasts they have enlarged, reshaped or repaired using fat grafting. There is no proven technique, but some surgeons say they have been encouraged to experiment after successfully grafting fat to other parts of the body, including faces and hands.
Jafar Koupaie, a cosmetic surgeon in Brookline, Mass., says he performed breast surgeries on two women April 1, using a Korean cell-processing device. He says he is using a patient's own cells and isn't adding anything from outside the human body. One of the patients, he says, was his wife.
The FDA says it has only sketchy details about Dr. Koupaie's procedure. "If you're mixing stem cells with fat cells, that requires FDA approval," said Karen Riley, an agency spokeswoman. When told of the FDA's comment, Dr. Koupaie said, "If they want more information, they can come and see we put only the patient's fat into the machine."
Sydney Coleman, a New York plastic surgeon, published a breast study last year about fat grafting in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, a medical journal. He has been grafting fat to the breast, without adding a stem-cell mixture, for many years, although other doctors have had difficulty adopting his technique. Cytori has begun working with plastic surgeons in Japan, Israel, Italy and France who are using its device.
Even the medical establishment is revisiting the issue: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery's research arm is funding a breast-augmentation study. Patients are being recruited at ClinicalTrials.gov.
The cost of fat-grafting procedures for cosmetic breast surgery ranges widely, from $15,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the surgeon and clinic.
Fat transplantation "has moved into center stage from the backroom," says Scott Spear, a plastic surgeon at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who is conducting the study. He says he hopes it will validate the safety and efficacy of fat grafting in the breast. But Dr. Spear says the study won't answer a key question: how much the processing of fat-derived stem cells contributes to the success of the surgery. It is possible that the transplanted fat alone contains enough stem cells to do the job, he says.
So far, neither Cytori nor Dr. Yoshimura -- who uses his own, manual process to supplement stem cells in fat -- has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that bolstering fat with more stem cells improves graft survival, Dr. Spear says. Dr. Yoshimura and Cytori, who are working separately, both say their studies are promising but agree more research is needed.
'Natural Looking Forever'
Dr. Yoshimura says he began testing his technique in patients in 2003. He has performed about 200 operations, mostly on Japanese women, but also on some from the U.S. and Canada. He operates on Saturdays out of the luxurious, wood-paneled Cellport Clinic in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama.
The clinic, which includes a cell-processing laboratory, was built two years ago at a cost of $26 million by Japan's Biomaster Inc. The venture-capital-backed company's chairman, Ryuji Kuwana, says he is talking with potential partners about constructing similar clinics outside Japan.
Dr. Yoshimura, who calls his operation "cell-assisted lipotransfer," starts with a liposuction procedure to obtain fat, typically from a woman's thigh. He divides the fat in two: Half is processed through a centrifuge, yielding a concentrated stem-cell mixture that is then recombined with the other half. The cell-supplemented graft is delivered through a syringe at four injection sites into the breast. The surgery takes three to four hours, he says.
Like other surgeons who perform fat-transfer procedures, he can't predict exactly how much of a graft will survive, but says most of the tissue volume stabilizes within three months. Dr. Yoshimura says his average graft survival rate is 54%. That makes it difficult to give a woman an augmentation of more than one bra-cup size, from an "A" to a "B," for instance. But the procedure can be repeated. A handful of Dr. Yoshimura's patients have returned for a second augmentation surgery. One Canadian woman says she paid about $20,000 for the first operation and $15,000 for the second.
Such surgeries are also being done at two other clinics in Japan, the Seishin Cosmetic Clinic in Tokyo and Kyushu Central Hospital in Fukuoka. Surgeons at both places process stem cells using the machine developed by Cytori.
By automating the cell-processing procedure at bedside during a surgery, Cytori hopes to make fat transplantation easier, faster and more predictable. It says it is aiming for a total procedure time of about one hour with new machines developed with its partner, Olympus Corp., the Japanese maker of cameras and medical equipment.
To tout its procedure, the Seishin clinic recently ran pictures of a bikini-clad woman showing how her natural bust was augmented by surgery. Speaking through a translator, the woman, Erika Igarashi, said in an interview she was unhappy about her flat chest and began researching Internet sites last fall. She found the Seishin clinic and volunteered. After a consultation, she stopped dieting to have enough body fat for the operation, which was performed Nov. 7. Ms. Igarashi said she didn't pay for the procedure.
When she woke up, she says, "I looked down and saw big breasts." She felt pain in her thighs where fat was harvested and her breasts initially felt "hard and heavy." Now, more than nine months later, her breasts are a bit smaller, but the size has stabilized, she says. Her new form gives her "lots of confidence," she says, adding she can wear "a greater variety of clothing," including low-cut dresses. The 22-year-old university graduate works part-time in a nightclub and is looking for a job in the cosmetics industry.
Cytori says it has invested about $100 million in researching and developing its device, which looks like a portable dishwasher and is priced between $75,000 and $100,000.
With commercialization moving ahead in Japan and Europe, Cytori is now taking aim at the U.S. It hopes the FDA will allow it to begin human tests with its device next year to reconstruct breasts damaged by cancer surgery. It has also retained Dr. Coleman, the New York surgeon, as a consultant. Cytori hopes its device will eventually be used to regenerate tissue for treating cardiovascular disease, orthopedic damage, gastrointestinal disorders and pelvic health conditions.
Write to Rhonda L. Rundle at rhonda.rundle@wsj.com
[stem cells]
Why we love 'America's Outrageous War Economy' - MarketWatch
Why we love 'America's Outrageous War Economy' - MarketWatch
'America's Outrageous War Economy!'
Pentagon can't find $2.3 trillion, wasting trillions on 'national defense'
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:27 p.m. EDT Aug. 18, 2008
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, America's economy is a war economy. Not a "manufacturing" economy. Not an "agricultural" economy. Nor a "service" economy. Not even a "consumer" economy.
Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let's get honest and officially call it "America's Outrageous War Economy." Admit it: we secretly love our war economy. And that's the answer to Jim Grant's thought-provoking question last month in the Wall Street Journal -- "Why No Outrage?"
Focus on funds, ETFs
MarketWatch offers complete coverage of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. Highlights:
• Tools to fix your 401(k)
• Small-cap funds are big winners
• Top ETFs get small
• Advisers see U.S. market gains
• Funds that deserve gold medals
Get our free Mutual Funds weekly
There really is only one answer: Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war. We love "America's Outrageous War Economy."
Americans passively zone out playing video war games. We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart's dark comedic news and Ben Stiller's new war spoof "Tropic Thunder" ... all the while silently, by default, we're cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand "America's Outrageous War Economy," a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction.
*
Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world's total military budgets?
*
Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily?
*
Why do we shake our collective heads "yes" when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a "war president;" and his party's presidential candidate chants "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," as if "war" is a celebrity hit song?
*
Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky "supplemental appropriations" that are more crooked than Enron's off-balance-sheet deals?
*
Why have Washington's 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists?
*
And why earlier this year did our "support-our-troops" "war president" resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon's warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding "America's Outrageous War Economy?" Why? Because we secretly love war!
We've lost our moral compass: The contrast between today's leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both.
Today it's the opposite: Too often our leaders' main goal is not public service but a ticket to building a personal fortune in the new "America's Outrageous War Economy," often by simply becoming a high-priced lobbyist.
Ultimately, the price of our greed may be the fulfillment of Kevin Phillips' warning in "Wealth and Democracy:" "Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out."
'National defense' a propaganda slogan selling a war economy?
But wait, you ask: Isn't our $1.4 trillion war budget essential for "national defense" and "homeland security?" Don't we have to protect ourselves?
Sorry folks, but our leaders have degraded those honored principles to advertising slogans. They're little more than flag-waving excuses used by neocon war hawks to disguise the buildup of private fortunes in "America's Outrageous War Economy."
America may be a ticking time bomb, but we are threatened more by enemies within than external terrorists, by ideological fanatics on the left and the right. Most of all, we are under attack by our elected leaders who are motivated more by pure greed than ideology. They terrorize us, brainwashing us into passively letting them steal our money to finance "America's Outrageous War Economy," the ultimate "black hole" of corruption and trickle-up economics.
You think I'm kidding? I'm maybe too harsh? Sorry but others are far more brutal. Listen to the ideologies and realities eating at America's soul.
1. Our toxic 'war within' is threatening America's soul
How powerful is the Pentagon's war machine? Trillions in dollars. But worse yet: Their mindset is now locked deep in our DNA, in our collective conscience, in America's soul. Our love of war is enshrined in the writings of neocon war hawks like Norman Podoretz, who warns the Iraq War was the launching of "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism," a reminder that we could be occupying Iraq for a hundred years. His WW IV also reminded us of the coming apocalyptic end-of-days "war of civilizations" predicted by religious leaders in both Christian and Islamic worlds two years ago.
In contrast, this ideology has been challenged in works like Craig Unger's "American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America -- and Still Imperil Our Future."
Unfortunately, neither threat can be dismissed as "all in our minds" nor as merely ideological rhetoric. Trillions of tax dollars are in fact being spent to keep the Pentagon war machine aggressively planning and expanding wars decades in advance, including spending billions on propaganda brainwashing naïve Americans into co-signing "America's Outrageous War Economy." Yes, they really love war, but that "love" is toxic for America's soul.
2. America's war economy financed on blank checks to greedy
Read Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes' "$3 Trillion War." They show how our government's deceitful leaders are secretly hiding the real long-term costs of the Iraq War, which was originally sold to the American taxpayer with a $50 billion price tag and funded out of oil revenues.
But add in all the lifetime veterans' health benefits, equipment placement costs, increased homeland security and interest on new federal debt, and suddenly taxpayers got a $3 trillion war tab!
3. America's war economy has no idea where its money goes
Read Portfolio magazine's special report "The Pentagon's $1 Trillion Problem." The Pentagon's 2007 budget of $440 billion included $16 billion to operate and upgrade its financial system. Unfortunately "the defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems [but] still has no idea where its money goes."
And it gets worse: Back "in 2000, Defense's inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries." Yikes, our war machine has no records for $2.3 trillion! How can we trust anything they say?
4. America's war economy is totally 'unmanageable'
For decades Washington has been waving that "national defense" flag, to force the public into supporting "America's Outrageous War Economy." Read John Alic's "Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much."
A former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment staffer, he explains why weapon systems cost the Pentagon so much, "why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic and why some of those weapons don't work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars," and how "the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable." Yes, the Pentagon wastes trillions planning its wars well in advance.
Comments? Tell us: What will it take to wake up America, get citizens, investors, anybody mad at "America's Outrageous War Economy?"
Why don't you rebel? Will the outrage come too late ... after this massive war bubble explodes in our faces? End of Story
'America's Outrageous War Economy!'
Pentagon can't find $2.3 trillion, wasting trillions on 'national defense'
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:27 p.m. EDT Aug. 18, 2008
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, America's economy is a war economy. Not a "manufacturing" economy. Not an "agricultural" economy. Nor a "service" economy. Not even a "consumer" economy.
Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let's get honest and officially call it "America's Outrageous War Economy." Admit it: we secretly love our war economy. And that's the answer to Jim Grant's thought-provoking question last month in the Wall Street Journal -- "Why No Outrage?"
Focus on funds, ETFs
MarketWatch offers complete coverage of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. Highlights:
• Tools to fix your 401(k)
• Small-cap funds are big winners
• Top ETFs get small
• Advisers see U.S. market gains
• Funds that deserve gold medals
Get our free Mutual Funds weekly
There really is only one answer: Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war. We love "America's Outrageous War Economy."
Americans passively zone out playing video war games. We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart's dark comedic news and Ben Stiller's new war spoof "Tropic Thunder" ... all the while silently, by default, we're cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand "America's Outrageous War Economy," a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction.
*
Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world's total military budgets?
*
Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily?
*
Why do we shake our collective heads "yes" when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a "war president;" and his party's presidential candidate chants "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," as if "war" is a celebrity hit song?
*
Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky "supplemental appropriations" that are more crooked than Enron's off-balance-sheet deals?
*
Why have Washington's 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists?
*
And why earlier this year did our "support-our-troops" "war president" resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon's warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding "America's Outrageous War Economy?" Why? Because we secretly love war!
We've lost our moral compass: The contrast between today's leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both.
Today it's the opposite: Too often our leaders' main goal is not public service but a ticket to building a personal fortune in the new "America's Outrageous War Economy," often by simply becoming a high-priced lobbyist.
Ultimately, the price of our greed may be the fulfillment of Kevin Phillips' warning in "Wealth and Democracy:" "Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out."
'National defense' a propaganda slogan selling a war economy?
But wait, you ask: Isn't our $1.4 trillion war budget essential for "national defense" and "homeland security?" Don't we have to protect ourselves?
Sorry folks, but our leaders have degraded those honored principles to advertising slogans. They're little more than flag-waving excuses used by neocon war hawks to disguise the buildup of private fortunes in "America's Outrageous War Economy."
America may be a ticking time bomb, but we are threatened more by enemies within than external terrorists, by ideological fanatics on the left and the right. Most of all, we are under attack by our elected leaders who are motivated more by pure greed than ideology. They terrorize us, brainwashing us into passively letting them steal our money to finance "America's Outrageous War Economy," the ultimate "black hole" of corruption and trickle-up economics.
You think I'm kidding? I'm maybe too harsh? Sorry but others are far more brutal. Listen to the ideologies and realities eating at America's soul.
1. Our toxic 'war within' is threatening America's soul
How powerful is the Pentagon's war machine? Trillions in dollars. But worse yet: Their mindset is now locked deep in our DNA, in our collective conscience, in America's soul. Our love of war is enshrined in the writings of neocon war hawks like Norman Podoretz, who warns the Iraq War was the launching of "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism," a reminder that we could be occupying Iraq for a hundred years. His WW IV also reminded us of the coming apocalyptic end-of-days "war of civilizations" predicted by religious leaders in both Christian and Islamic worlds two years ago.
In contrast, this ideology has been challenged in works like Craig Unger's "American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America -- and Still Imperil Our Future."
Unfortunately, neither threat can be dismissed as "all in our minds" nor as merely ideological rhetoric. Trillions of tax dollars are in fact being spent to keep the Pentagon war machine aggressively planning and expanding wars decades in advance, including spending billions on propaganda brainwashing naïve Americans into co-signing "America's Outrageous War Economy." Yes, they really love war, but that "love" is toxic for America's soul.
2. America's war economy financed on blank checks to greedy
Read Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes' "$3 Trillion War." They show how our government's deceitful leaders are secretly hiding the real long-term costs of the Iraq War, which was originally sold to the American taxpayer with a $50 billion price tag and funded out of oil revenues.
But add in all the lifetime veterans' health benefits, equipment placement costs, increased homeland security and interest on new federal debt, and suddenly taxpayers got a $3 trillion war tab!
3. America's war economy has no idea where its money goes
Read Portfolio magazine's special report "The Pentagon's $1 Trillion Problem." The Pentagon's 2007 budget of $440 billion included $16 billion to operate and upgrade its financial system. Unfortunately "the defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems [but] still has no idea where its money goes."
And it gets worse: Back "in 2000, Defense's inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries." Yikes, our war machine has no records for $2.3 trillion! How can we trust anything they say?
4. America's war economy is totally 'unmanageable'
For decades Washington has been waving that "national defense" flag, to force the public into supporting "America's Outrageous War Economy." Read John Alic's "Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much."
A former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment staffer, he explains why weapon systems cost the Pentagon so much, "why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic and why some of those weapons don't work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars," and how "the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable." Yes, the Pentagon wastes trillions planning its wars well in advance.
Comments? Tell us: What will it take to wake up America, get citizens, investors, anybody mad at "America's Outrageous War Economy?"
Why don't you rebel? Will the outrage come too late ... after this massive war bubble explodes in our faces? End of Story
Tycoon Finds Opportunity In China Property Slump - WSJ.com
Tycoon Finds Opportunity In China Property Slump - WSJ.com: "Tycoon Finds Opportunity
In China Property Slump
By JONATHAN CHENG
August 19, 2008; Page C1
Tycoon Finds Opportunity
In China Property Slump
By JONATHAN CHENG
August 19, 2008; Page C1
CHONGQING, China -- Hong Kong property tycoon Vincent Lo made his name and fortune riding China's real-estate boom. These days, with China's property market in the dumps, he sees opportunity.
[photo]
Vincent Lo expects his bet on the Ruiqi Building in Chongqing, shown here in its partially finished state, to be profitable.
Mr. Lo's newest investment vehicle, China Central Properties Ltd., has spent roughly $700 million in the past year acquiring at least a dozen big real-estate projects left unfinished by cash-strapped developers. He predicts even more opportunities over the next year as China's commercial real-estate market struggles through one of its most difficult patches in the past decade. Other big-name investors who see the same favorable situation are investing billions in distressed real estate.
"Last year, when the market was hot, everyone thought they could make a pot of gold. But this year, they see that isn't true," the 60-year-old Mr. Lo says. "This shaking out is going to move the industry in the right direction."
One of his latest projects is the Ruiqi Building, an office, luxury-apartment and retail complex in the middle of the fast-growing central Chinese city of Chongqing. CCP bought the half-completed, building of approximately 925,000 square feet in July of 2007 for 413.7 million yuan (US$60 million). When the project goes to market in the fall of 2009, he expects a significant profit.
Since China's real-estate market began to slow late last year, Mr. Lo and a growing number of foreign funds and cash-rich domestic developers are finding opportunities all around. Many are coming at the expense of China's estimated 50,000 small developers, which borrowed heavily last year to purchase land. Now, many are folding or seeking aid as the overall market sputters and some cities in China's southern provinces see outright slumps.
[illustration]
A rendering of the Ruiqi Building.
In part, the slowdown is the result of Beijing's efforts to rein in torrid growth, a development that has made lenders stingier. Property brokerage DTZ estimates that bank loans to the industry will fall by about 25% this year to 880 billion yuan compared with last year.
Meanwhile, drooping domestic stock markets have eliminated another source of funds, with the amount raised by initial public offerings for property firms down by more than 80% in the first half of this year to US$569.8 million compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters.
So far, China's overall real-estate slowdown pales compared with the slump in the U.S., as continued urbanization fuels China's appetite for apartments, offices and shopping centers. But the young, freewheeling market also has been prone to sharp jumps and sudden slowdowns.
China's larger and better-positioned players and outside investors have been pouncing. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. plans to invest more than $1 billion in Asian real estate over the next three years. Office developer Soho China spent about 5.5 billion yuan, or half of a US$1.65 billion war chest from its IPO last year, to scoop up a 5.2 million-square-foot piece of distressed property in central Beijing on the cheap from a developer that was deeply in debt.
Soho China Chief Executive Zhang Xin says the company set up a department last year to take calls from small developers trying to unload projects. "The phone's been ringing off the hook."
Charles Lam, regional managing director for Prudential Financial real-estate arm Pramerica, says prime properties in key second-tier cities that were unattainable last year are now on the table, and even boasting favorable terms -- from flexible deal structures to discounts of as much as 30% from peak valuations.
[Vincent Lo]
Mr. Lo isn't the biggest player dealing in problem properties, but he is the best-known in China and closely watched as a sign of the next hot thing.
The son of a Hong Kong property tycoon, he struck out on his own in 1971 to set up a construction and property-development company called Shui On Holdings. China opened itself to foreign investment in the late 1970s, and soon after Mr. Lo joined the first wave of Hong Kong developers to enter the mainland, joining with a rising political star named Han Zheng to open a hotel in Shanghai at a time when few overseas investors were willing to pour money into the country.
In 1997, his friendship with Mr. Han, who is now Shanghai's mayor, helped him secure the downtown Shanghai site that hosted the Chinese Communist Party's first meeting in 1921 and develop it into Xintiandi -- literally, "New Heaven and Earth" -- a cluster of ritzy retail, dining, office and residential space in a throwback setting that combines al fresco dining with traditional Chinese architecture. The project made Mr. Lo a celebrity across China -- where uninspiring Soviet architecture once dominated -- and earned him a reputation as "King of Connections."
Mr. Lo says China Central Properties, which raised about US$300 million last year in its IPO on London's Alternative Investment Market, typically seeks return on capital of 25%, including construction costs, from the troubled projects it buys. Because they are in various stages of completion, they also offer a shorter time horizon than a typical new project.
CCP represents Mr. Lo's bet that China's real-estate slowdown is temporary rather than a sign of systemic trouble.
CCP finished yesterday at 65.25 British pence ($1.22) down 35% from the 100 pence it fetched on its June 8, 2007, listing, as part of a broader market slump. But Mr. Lo sees the overall trends of urbanization, strong economic growth and higher disposable income overcoming market difficulties. "I'm happy about the outlook for the market," he says.
"Consolidation will take place over the next one or two years," he says. "We will see some bigger developers expanding."
Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com
In China Property Slump
By JONATHAN CHENG
August 19, 2008; Page C1
Tycoon Finds Opportunity
In China Property Slump
By JONATHAN CHENG
August 19, 2008; Page C1
CHONGQING, China -- Hong Kong property tycoon Vincent Lo made his name and fortune riding China's real-estate boom. These days, with China's property market in the dumps, he sees opportunity.
[photo]
Vincent Lo expects his bet on the Ruiqi Building in Chongqing, shown here in its partially finished state, to be profitable.
Mr. Lo's newest investment vehicle, China Central Properties Ltd., has spent roughly $700 million in the past year acquiring at least a dozen big real-estate projects left unfinished by cash-strapped developers. He predicts even more opportunities over the next year as China's commercial real-estate market struggles through one of its most difficult patches in the past decade. Other big-name investors who see the same favorable situation are investing billions in distressed real estate.
"Last year, when the market was hot, everyone thought they could make a pot of gold. But this year, they see that isn't true," the 60-year-old Mr. Lo says. "This shaking out is going to move the industry in the right direction."
One of his latest projects is the Ruiqi Building, an office, luxury-apartment and retail complex in the middle of the fast-growing central Chinese city of Chongqing. CCP bought the half-completed, building of approximately 925,000 square feet in July of 2007 for 413.7 million yuan (US$60 million). When the project goes to market in the fall of 2009, he expects a significant profit.
Since China's real-estate market began to slow late last year, Mr. Lo and a growing number of foreign funds and cash-rich domestic developers are finding opportunities all around. Many are coming at the expense of China's estimated 50,000 small developers, which borrowed heavily last year to purchase land. Now, many are folding or seeking aid as the overall market sputters and some cities in China's southern provinces see outright slumps.
[illustration]
A rendering of the Ruiqi Building.
In part, the slowdown is the result of Beijing's efforts to rein in torrid growth, a development that has made lenders stingier. Property brokerage DTZ estimates that bank loans to the industry will fall by about 25% this year to 880 billion yuan compared with last year.
Meanwhile, drooping domestic stock markets have eliminated another source of funds, with the amount raised by initial public offerings for property firms down by more than 80% in the first half of this year to US$569.8 million compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters.
So far, China's overall real-estate slowdown pales compared with the slump in the U.S., as continued urbanization fuels China's appetite for apartments, offices and shopping centers. But the young, freewheeling market also has been prone to sharp jumps and sudden slowdowns.
China's larger and better-positioned players and outside investors have been pouncing. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. plans to invest more than $1 billion in Asian real estate over the next three years. Office developer Soho China spent about 5.5 billion yuan, or half of a US$1.65 billion war chest from its IPO last year, to scoop up a 5.2 million-square-foot piece of distressed property in central Beijing on the cheap from a developer that was deeply in debt.
Soho China Chief Executive Zhang Xin says the company set up a department last year to take calls from small developers trying to unload projects. "The phone's been ringing off the hook."
Charles Lam, regional managing director for Prudential Financial real-estate arm Pramerica, says prime properties in key second-tier cities that were unattainable last year are now on the table, and even boasting favorable terms -- from flexible deal structures to discounts of as much as 30% from peak valuations.
[Vincent Lo]
Mr. Lo isn't the biggest player dealing in problem properties, but he is the best-known in China and closely watched as a sign of the next hot thing.
The son of a Hong Kong property tycoon, he struck out on his own in 1971 to set up a construction and property-development company called Shui On Holdings. China opened itself to foreign investment in the late 1970s, and soon after Mr. Lo joined the first wave of Hong Kong developers to enter the mainland, joining with a rising political star named Han Zheng to open a hotel in Shanghai at a time when few overseas investors were willing to pour money into the country.
In 1997, his friendship with Mr. Han, who is now Shanghai's mayor, helped him secure the downtown Shanghai site that hosted the Chinese Communist Party's first meeting in 1921 and develop it into Xintiandi -- literally, "New Heaven and Earth" -- a cluster of ritzy retail, dining, office and residential space in a throwback setting that combines al fresco dining with traditional Chinese architecture. The project made Mr. Lo a celebrity across China -- where uninspiring Soviet architecture once dominated -- and earned him a reputation as "King of Connections."
Mr. Lo says China Central Properties, which raised about US$300 million last year in its IPO on London's Alternative Investment Market, typically seeks return on capital of 25%, including construction costs, from the troubled projects it buys. Because they are in various stages of completion, they also offer a shorter time horizon than a typical new project.
CCP represents Mr. Lo's bet that China's real-estate slowdown is temporary rather than a sign of systemic trouble.
CCP finished yesterday at 65.25 British pence ($1.22) down 35% from the 100 pence it fetched on its June 8, 2007, listing, as part of a broader market slump. But Mr. Lo sees the overall trends of urbanization, strong economic growth and higher disposable income overcoming market difficulties. "I'm happy about the outlook for the market," he says.
"Consolidation will take place over the next one or two years," he says. "We will see some bigger developers expanding."
Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)