As Coolant Is Phased Out, Smugglers Reap Large Profits

Nasa Projections of Ozone without the CFC ban

How a Contraband Coolant Entered the United States

On June 26, Carlos Garcia, vice president of the St. Louis-based appliance supplier Marcone, was sentenced to 13 months in prison for his role in the illegal importing of more than $11 million worth of a controlled refrigerant gas called HCFC-22 by Marcone’s Miami branch. Federal laws strictly limit imports of this ozone-depleting gas while its use in this country is being phased out.

MEXICO

DOMINICAN

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DOMINICAN

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CHINA

BRITAIN

FROM BRITAIN

FROM WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

FROM CHINA

The American subsidiary of Harp International, a major refrigerant supplier based near Cardiff, Wales, falsified documents to give the impression that a shipment of HCFC-22 destined for Marcone was recycled and therefore in compliance with EPA import restrictions.

Coolant was manufactured for legitimate export by DuPont at its Louisville, Ky. plant. From there, it was shipped to Texas for packaging and then exported to Mexico. There, smugglers bought it and illegally reimported it into the U.S. via the Dominican Republic.

At least three separate smuggling operations funneled Chinese-made HCFC-22 into the U.S. In one case, shipments were routed through the Dominican Republic, where Mr. Garcia told smugglers how to fake invoices to get the coolant past customs officials. Smugglers later paid him a kickback of $5,120.

Some of the methods used to illegally import HCFC-22

Lung Cancer Study Suggests More-Tailored Treatment

The first large and comprehensive study of the genetics of a common lung cancer finds that more than half the tumors from that cancer have mutations that might be treated by new drugs that are already in the pipeline or that could be easily developed.

For the tens of thousands of patients with that cancer — squamous cell lung cancer — the results are promising because they could foretell a new type of treatment in which drugs are tailored to match the genetic abnormality in each patient, researchers say.

“This is a disease where there are no targeted therapies,” said Dr. Matthew Meyerson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, referring to modern drugs that attack genetic abnormalities. He is a lead author of the paper, with more than 300 authors, being published online in the journal Nature on Sunday. “What we found will change the landscape for squamous cell carcinoma. I think it gives hope to patients,” he said.

The study is part of the Cancer Genome Atlas, a large project by the National Institutes of Health to examine genetic abnormalities in cancer. The study of squamous cell lung cancer is the second genetic analysis of a common cancer, coming on the heels of a study of colon cancer. The work became feasible only in the past few years because of enormous advances in DNA sequencing that allow researchers to scan all the DNA in a cell instead of looking at its 21,000 genes one at a time. The result has been a new appreciation of cancer as a genetic disease, defined by DNA alterations that drive a cancer cell’s growth, instead of a disease of a particular tissue or organ, like breast or prostate or lung.

“The old way of doing clinical trials where patients are only tied together by the organ where there cancer originated, those days are passing,” said Dr. Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president of Pfizer oncology.

Comprehensive molecular portraits of human breast tumours

• The Cancer Genome Atlas Network

Rethinking ‘Junk’ DNA

A large group of scientists has found that so-called junk DNA, which makes up most of the human genome, does much more than previously thought. Related Article »

DISEASE

REGULATION

JUNK DNA

GENES

Errors or mutations in genetic switches can disrupt the network and lead to a range of diseases. The new findings will spur further research and may lead to new drugs and treatments.

The many genetic regulators seem to be arranged in a complex and redundant hierarchy. Scientists are only beginning to map and understand this network, which regulates how cells, organs and tissues behave.

Stretches of DNA around and between genes seemed to do nothing, and were called junk DNA. But now researchers think that the junk DNA contains a large number of tiny genetic switches, controlling how genes function within the cell.

Each human cell contains about 10 feet of DNA, coiled into a dense tangle. But only a very small percentage of DNA encodes genes, which control inherited traits like eye color, blood type and so on.

Error

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Hierarchy of

genetic regulators

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nature.com

ENCODE

Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia

SUZANNE DE LA MONTE's rats were disoriented and confused. Navigating their way around a circular water maze - a common memory test for rodents - they quickly forgot where they were, and couldn't figure out how to locate the hidden, submerged safety platform. Instead, they splashed around aimlessly. "They were demented. They couldn't learn or remember," says de la Monte, a neuropathologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

A closer look at her rats' brains uncovered devastating damage. Areas associated with memory were studded with bright pink plaques, like rocks in a climbing wall, while many neurons, full to bursting point with a toxic protein, were collapsing and crumbling. As they disintegrated, they lost their shape and their connections with other neurons, teetering on the brink of death.

Such changes are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, and yet they arose in surprising circumstances. De la Monte had interfered with the way the rats' brains respond to insulin. The hormone is most famous for controlling blood sugar levels, but it also plays a key role in brain signalling. When de la Monte disrupted its path to the rats' neurons, the result was dementia.

Poor sensitivity to insulin is typically associated with type 2 diabetes, in which liver, fat and muscle cells fail to respond to the hormone. But results such as de la Monte's have led some researchers to wonder whether Alzheimer's may sometimes be another version of diabetes - one that hits the brain. Some have even renamed it "type 3 diabetes".

But certain dishes may offer some protection against these effects. Rats consuming high-fructose corn syrup water alongside omega-3-fatty acids from flaxseed oil seemed to escape the cognitive problems the other group encountered (Journal of Physiology, vol 590, p 2485). Omega-3 acids are also found in oily fish.

There is also some tentative evidence that certain compounds called flavonoids, found in tea, red wine and dark chocolate, can reduce the risk of dementia. All of which may explain why the Mediterranean diet is associated with less cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. This diet is known to be rich in fish and vegetable oils, non-starchy vegetables, low glycaemic fruits, less added sugar and a moderate helping of wine (Current Alzheimer Research, vol 8, p 520).

NEJM

Effect of Inhaled Glucocorticoids in Childhood on Adult Height

Mean adult height was 1.2 cm lower (95% confidence interval [CI], −1.9 to −0.5) in the budesonide group than in the placebo group (P=0.001) and was 0.2 cm lower (95% CI, −0.9 to 0.5) in the nedocromil group than in the placebo group (P=0.61). A larger daily dose of inhaled glucocorticoid in the first 2 years was associated with a lower adult height (−0.1 cm for each microgram per kilogram of body weight) (P=0.007). The reduction in adult height in the budesonide group as compared with the placebo group was similar to that seen after 2 years of treatment (−1.3 cm; 95% CI, −1.7 to −0.9). During the first 2 years, decreased growth velocity in the budesonide group occurred primarily in prepubertal participants.

CONCLUSIONS

The initial decrease in attained height associated with the use of inhaled glucocorticoids in prepubertal children persisted as a reduction in adult height, although the decrease was not progressive or cumulative.

Early Marijuana Use Linked to I.Q. Loss

People in a study who began smoking marijuana as teenagers and continued to use it heavily for decades lost a few I.Q. points along the way, while those who started in adulthood did not, researchers reported on Monday.

The findings, from a study tracking people’s habits from childhood through middle age, suggest that the developing teenage brain is especially vulnerable to drug use, the authors concluded. The research appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new report draws on periodic interviews with 1,037 people tracked from birth to age 38, who talked about how often they smoked marijuana and whether it was causing any problems.

“Adolescent-onset cannabis users showed significant I.Q. declines, and more persistent use was associated with greater declines,” said the lead author, Madeline H. Meier, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University.

The study participants who used marijuana heavily from high school through age 38 scored 8 points lower on an I.Q. test than they had when originally tested, as 13-year-olds. I.Q. scores are usually very stable, and those who did not use marijuana or started as adults showed no real change, averaging about 100.

“We know that there are developmental changes occurring in the teen years and up through the early 20s, and the brain may be especially vulnerable during this time,” Dr. Meier said

German Drug Maker Apologizes to Victims of Thalidomide

Decades of campaigning by victims of thalidomide, amorning sickness drug, have taken a new turn, with the first apology in 50 years to the victims and their families by the drug’s German manufacturer — and an incensed rejection of the apology as too little and too late from many of those it was intended to placate.

The apology was issued Friday by Harald Stock, chief executive of the Grünenthal Group, a family-owned pharmaceutical company that marketed the drug in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was withdrawn in 1961 after it was linked to birth defects, including shortened arms and legs, and in some cases no limbs at all, that campaigners say affected 10,000 babies around the world, mostly in Australia, Canada, Europe and Japan.

Mechanism of Thalidomide effects on the Limbs