Trio win Nobel Chemistry Prize for DNA repair work

Yahoo – AFP, Pia Ohlin, 7 Oct 2015

Nobel Chemistry Prize 2015 co-winners (L-R) Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, Paul

 Modrich of the US and Turkish-American Aziz Sancar (AFP Photo/Justin

Tallis / Megan Morr / Max Eng)

Stockholm (AFP) - Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich of the United States and Aziz Sancar, a Turkish-American, won the 2015 Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for work on how cells repair damaged DNA.

The three opened a dazzling frontier in medicine by unveiling how the body repairs DNA mutations that can cause sickness and contribute to ageing, the Nobel jury said.

"Their systematic work has made a decisive contribution to the understanding of how the living cell functions, as well as providing knowledge about the molecular causes of several hereditary diseases and about mechanisms behind both cancer development and ageing," the panel said.

The three co-winners of the Nobel Chemistry

 Prize opened a dazzling frontier in medicine 

by unveiling how the body repairs DNA

mutations that can cause sickness and

contribute to ageing, the judging panel says

(AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

DNA -- deoxyribonucleic acid -- is the chemical code for making and sustaining life.

Cells divide, or replicate, billions of times through our lifetime.

Molecular machines seek to copy the code perfectly, but random slipups in their work can cause the daughter cells to die or malfunction. DNA can also be damaged by strong sunlight and other environmental factors.

But there is a swarm of proteins -- a molecular repair kit -- designed to monitor the process. It proof-reads the code and repairs damage.

The three were lauded for mapping these processes, starting with Lindahl, who identified so-called repair enzymes -- the basics in the toolbox.

Eternal life?

Sancar discovered the mechanisms used by cells to fix damage by ultraviolet radiation. Modrich laid bare a complex DNA-mending process called mismatch repair.

"The basic research carried out by the 2015 Nobel laureates in chemistry has not only deepened our knowledge of how we function, but could also lead to the development of lifesaving treatments," the Nobel committee said.

With cells able to repair themselves, one could ponder the dizzying possibility that humans could go on living forever.

"No, I don't believe in eternal life," Lindahl, who is based in Britain, told reporters by telephone at the prize announcement.

He said scientists were increasingly turning their attention away from curing diseases such as cancer and instead looking for chronic treatments.

"We are getting away a little bit (from) trying to find a cure for everything, and convert diseases to something we can live with," he said.

"It's difficult to cure diabetes but we have good ways of treating diabetic patients, and I think with regard to DNA damage that will be an increasingly important aspect."

DNA repair researcher Nora Goosen of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands told AFP scientists were looking at targeted attacks on cancer.

She said the same mechanism by which cells repair DNA damage can also make them resist the effects of chemotherapy. By understanding how the cell repair system works, doctors hope they will one day be able to instruct cancerous cells not to fight against treatment, thus making chemotherapy more effective, she explained.

Other scientists heaped praise on Lindahl for his pioneering work.

They included Britain's prestigious Royal Society, of which he is a fellow, and British biochemist Sir Tim Hunt, who was a co-winner of the 2001 Nobel for cell duplication.

Chose studies over football

"This is wonderful news!" Hunt told the Science Media Centre (SMC) in London. "Tomas was my boss for almost 20 years, a real scientists' scientist... (a) richly-deserved prize."

It is the seventh time DNA research has been honoured with a Nobel prize. The first was in 1962, for the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Lindahl, Modrich and Sancar share the prize sum of eight million Swedish kronor (around $950,000 or 855,000 euros).

Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, emeritus director of Cancer Research UK, at Clare

 Hall Laboratory in Potters Bar after he was jointly awarded the Nobel Chemistry

Prize on October 7, 2016 (AFP Photo/Justin Tallis)

Lindahl, 77, is the emeritus director of Cancer Research UK at Clare Hall Laboratory in Britain.

Modrich was born in 1946 and grew up in a small town in northern New Mexico, which instilled in him a love of the natural world.

"There was huge biological diversity around me," he said in a statement on Duke University, where he is a professor of biochemistry.

"Within five miles, the ecology can change dramatically -- it was very thought provoking."

In 1963, his father, who was the local high school biology teacher, gave him very important advice, he recalled: "You should learn about this DNA stuff."

Sancar, 69, was meanwhile born in the small Turkish town of Savur. He could have become a professional football player -- Turkey's national junior team courted him to become their goalkeeper -- but he chose to focus on his academic studies instead.

After working as a doctor in the countryside, he resumed his biochemistry studies at the age of 27, and then went to the University of Texas in Dallas.

He is now a professor of biochemistry and biochemics at University of North Carolina in the US.

He told the Nobel Foundation he was stunned by his win.

"I wasn't expecting it at all. I was very surprised."

The Nobel awards week continues with the announcements for the two most closely-watched prizes: on Thursday the winner of the literature prize will be announced, followed by the peace prize on Friday.

The economics prize wraps up this year's Nobel season on Monday.

Related Articles:

Russian scientists find new way to repair DNA that may cure Alzheimer’s


"The Quantum Factor" – Apr 10, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Galaxies, Universe, Intelligent design, Benevolent design, Aliens, Nikola Tesla (Quantum energy), Inter-Planetary Travel, DNA, Genes, Stem Cells, Cells, Rejuvenation, Shift of Human Consciousness, Spontaneous Remission, Religion, Dictators, Africa, China, Nuclear Power, Sustainable Development, Animals, Global Unity.. etc.) - (Text Version)

"... DNA is a Dynamic Molecule, not a static one.

Humanity is stuck in the 3D portion of their biological thinking. In your 3-D life, you simply accept the chemistry you're given. You act as though the three percent gene producing part is all there is. You believe it is a chemical protocol that is unchangeable and simply "you." You don't see it for the way it's designed. It's dynamic and always has been. It's not set, but will continue to simply repeat what it does unless there is another quantum influence on it.

Therefore you live with the 3 percent as though it were all there is, and since it just "came with your body" and seems to control everything, you never talk to it. Many of you come in with pre-dispositions based upon the karma which is put upon you from your past lives. You don't come in clean [without karmic energy]. Instead, you arrive with pre-dispositions, fears and phobias. Some are positive. Perhaps you come in as a prodigy continuing your last life... the 8-year-old who can paint like a master and do brushstrokes that take 30 years to develop. What does that tell you about what must be in the DNA?

Perhaps you come in as the composer, the pianist, the prodigy, the violinist, just waiting until your hands can go on the fingerboard or can reach up and fret the notes. Perhaps you come in knowing how to play the piano, just waiting for your hands to get big enough to do what you used to do... without any lessons. How do you explain that, dear ones? The answer is that all this is contained in the dynamic quantum instruction sets of your DNA... the part you never talk to it.

Cell Division - a static process?

Let me take you to the cellular division process. We've said this before, but you need to hear this to understand how it works. A cell is ready to divide. The Human body is designed to rejuvenate... all tissue. You've been told that there's some tissue that does not rejuvenate, but that is incorrect. It all rejuvenates at different speeds at different times and in different ways. It rejuvenates. So now you know that the Human body is designed to live a long time. Unfortunately, the energy that you have created on this planet and what you've gone through, has beat it up. You don't live much more than 80 years. That was not the design.

The Biblical personalities were sometimes prophets and sometimes masters and sometimes just there... and lived for hundreds of years. Did they really? Or perhaps this is that just a metaphor? Did they get that right in the Bible without a error in transcription? I'm going to tell you the truth. It's very accurate. Thousands of years ago you lived a very long time, Lemurian. If you knew your lifespan, you'd gasp. But not anymore. Instructions have been given over time to DNA, literally, by the energy of the planet... en energy that you have created through consciousness.

A cell divides. Right before it divides, it needs the blueprint to clone itself. The blueprint is available from the stem cell. The stem cell gets its information from the quantum part of the DNA, which has never changed since you were born. It's remained static, since nothing has ever changed it... and the fact that you don't believe it's changeable and have just accepted aging. There's not a conscious effort to do anything with it, and it just lays there like it always did.

The diving cell "talks" to the stem cell and says, "Do the same thing you always did? Change anything?" And the stem cell talks to the cell that is dividing, saying, "Make another one just the same." Then you rejuvenate just like the last one, accepting everything you received when you were born. ..."

Australian court rules cancer gene patent invalid

Yahoo – AFP, Madeleine Coorey, 7 Oct 2015

People pass through 'The Field of Women' at the Domain in Sydney, on 

National Breast Cancer Day (AFP Photo/Greg Wood)

Sydney (AFP) - An Australian cancer survivor on Wednesday triumphed in a landmark challenge against biotech companies, with the country's top court ruling they could not patent a gene linked to breast cancer.

Yvonne D'Arcy took her case to the High Court of Australia, arguing that the so-called breast cancer gene BRCA1 -- the mutation famously carried by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie -- was a naturally occurring substance.

Breast cancer is the leading cancer killer of women aged 20-59 worldwide, and supporters of the case had argued that patenting a gene could stymie medical research and testing.

The so-called breast cancer gene BRCA1 was

 the mutation famously carried by Hollywood 

star Angelina Jolie (pictured in April 2015)

(AFP Photo/Jemal Countess)

"I screamed. I was just excited to know that we had it seven-nil our way," an ecstatic D'Arcy, a 69-year-old breast cancer survivor, said of the court's unanimous decision.

"For all those people who do have the genetic footprint for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, any cancer basically, it's a win for them because they are forewarned," she said, adding that she expected testing would become cheaper and more available.

The High Court found that while isolating the gene required human activity, that was not enough to classify it as a manufactured product and so make it patentable.

"While the invention claimed might be, in a formal sense, a product of human action, it was the existence of the information stored in the relevant sequences that was an essential element of the invention," the judges said.

D'Arcy's case was previously dismissed by Australia's Federal Court, which ruled in favour of the two medical research companies that hold the patent -- US-based Myriad Genetics and Melbourne-based Genetic Technologies Ltd.

But the High Court agreed in February to hear an appeal and Darcy conceded that taking on the US corporation had appeared an uneven contest.

"It was a David and Goliath test," she admitted.

"I'm only a little person -- but it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

The arguments used in the Australian case were similar to those applied in the United States, where the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the isolation of BRCA1 itself was not enough to render genes patentable.

Experts said the Australian decision could impact access to genetic testing, medical research and treatments in the country.

"We have been waiting almost 30 years for a decision of this nature, on the issue of whether isolated DNA sequences are patentable subject matter," said Dianne Nicol, director of the Centre for Law and Genetics at the University of Tasmania.

Carriers of the BRCA1 mutation, in which the BRCA stands for BReast CAncer susceptibility, have a much higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer than those women without it.

Breast cancer claims some 458,000 lives every year, with around 1.38 million new cases recorded annually, according to the UN's World Health Organisation.

A tour group of young children walk out of the US Supreme Court, on

June 10, 2013 in Washington, DC (Getty Images/AFP/File, Mark Wilson)

Related Article:

Human DNA not patentable: US Supreme Court

California Governor Jerry Brown signs assisted suicide bill

Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation to let terminally ill people take their own lives in California. It will become the fifth US state to allow dying patients to use doctor-prescribed drugs to end their lives.

Deutsche Welle, 6 Oct 2015

Death with dignity

Physician-assisted suicide will become legal in California in 2016 under a bill signed into law on Monday by Governor Jerry Brown. The 77-year-old Democrat and lifelong Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian said he had acted after discussing the issue with many people, including two of his own doctors. The South African archbishop and rights icon Desmond Tutu had spoken out in favor of it.

"I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain," Brown said in a statement released Monday. "I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill."

Brown said he wouldn't deny those comforts to others. The law cannot take effect until 90 days after the California legislature's special session on health care formally ends, effectively delaying its implementation until at least mid-2016.

'A gentle death'

A version of the bill failed earlier this year despite publicity surrounding Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old with brain cancer who left California for Oregon in 2014 to legally end her life. Her mother, Debbie Ziegler, testified in committee hearings and carried a large picture of her daughter.

Maynard had pleaded that terminally ill people shouldn't have to "leave their home and community for peace of mind, to escape suffering and to plan for a gentle death."

#BrittanyMaynard Legislative Testimony-My right 2 death with dignity @ 29 #DeathWithDignity https://t.co/778UtJRJL5 pic.twitter.com/51ZigLcrQf

— AbigailAdamsBrigade (@AdamsBrigade) 6 oktober 2015

The Catholic Church and other groups alleged that the measure would legalize premature suicide and put terminally ill patients at risk for coerced death. However, the bill includes requirements that patients submit multiple written requests for the medication, that two doctors approve it if the patient has less than six months to live, that patients physically take the medication themselves and that two witnesses observe the death.

The bill's advocates had tried for decades to persuade California to legalize the practice as a way to help end-stage cancer sufferers and other patients to die with less pain and suffering. Since 1992, similar measures had failed several times in the legislature or the ballot box before the current bill passed the State Assembly, 44-35, and Senate, 23-14, last month. As presently written, the law will expire after 10 years unless extended, a compromise with lawmakers who had worried that insurance companies might target low-income Californians, the elderly and people with disabilities to save costs.

At least two dozen states introduced right-to-die legislation this year, though the measures have stalled in several. Doctors in the states of Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana can already prescribe life-ending drugs.

Over the summer, Germany's parliament opened debate on physician-assisted suicide, but the movement to allow more access to life-ending options has come up against language in the constitution.

mkg/cmk (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)

Chinese herbal expert among Nobel medicine prize winners

Yahoo – AFP, Pia Ohlin, 5 Oct 2015

The portraits of the winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize 2015 (L-R) Irish-born

 William Campbell, Satoshi Omura of Japan and China's Youyou Tu are displayed

 on a screen during a press conference of the Nobel Committee (AFP Photo/

Jonathan Nackstrand)

A trio of scientists earned the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for unlocking revolutionary treatments for malaria and roundworm, helping to roll back two parasitic diseases that blight millions of lives.

Tu Youyou of China won half of the award for her work on artemisinin, an anti-malarial drug based on ancient Chinese herbal medicine, the Nobel jury announced.

She is the first Chinese woman national to win a Nobel prize in science, and only the 12th woman to win the medicine prize among the 210 laureates honoured since 1901.

Irish-born William Campbell and Satoshi Omura of Japan shared the other half for an anti-roundworm treatment dubbed avermectin, derived from soil-dwelling bacteria.

"These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the Nobel committee said.

Tu Youyou, who helped discover the therapeutic treasures of artemisinin in lab

 work at the height of China's Cultural Revolution, was honoured with the 2015

Nobel Prize for Medicine (AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

"The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable."

Tu, 84, has been chief professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 2000.

She conducted research in the 1970s, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution, that led to the discovery of artemisinin, a drug that has slashed the number of malaria deaths.

Traditional medicine

The treatment is based on traditional medicine -- a herb called sweet wormwood or Artemisia annua.

Artemisinin-based drugs are now the standard combination for treating malaria since the mosquito-transferred Plasmodium parasite developed resistance to other drug types like chloroquine.

Irish-born scientist William Campbell was praised for helping to develop a new

 therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites (AFP Photo/Jonathan

Nackstrand)

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were about 198 million malaria infections in 2013 and 584,000 deaths -- most of them African children.

Social media users in China saw the award as a source of national pride for the country.

"Nobel Prize, good. More international achievements recognised globally represent China's rise," read one post on Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

The other half of the prize honoured Omura and Campbell for "a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases," the Nobel statement said.

Registered drugs derived from avermectin "have radically lowered" the incidence of river blindness and elephantiasis, both caused by parasitic worms, it added.

River blindness

River blindness, also known as onchocerciasis, is caused by a worm transmitted to humans through the bites of infected blackflies. Its symptoms include disfiguring skin conditions and visual impairment, including permanent blindness.

More than 99 percent of those affected by it live in Africa.

Elephantiasis, or lymphatic filariasis, is a mosquito-borne infection which causes grotesque and disfiguring swelling of the limbs.

Japanese scientist Satoshi Omura was praised for developing Avermectin, 

a drug that radically lowered the incidence of River Blindness and Lymphatic

Filariasis (AFP Photo/Jonathan Nackstrand)

Omura, a microbiologist, isolated new strains of a group of bacteria called Streptomyces, and successfully cultured them in the lab.

Campbell, a research fellow emeritus at Drew University in New Jersey in the United States, was born in Ramelton in County Donegal in northwest Ireland.

His role was to show that a component from one of Omura's cultures was active against parasites -- this became avermectin.

Campbell, who made his discovery while working for pharmaceutical group Merck, thought he might be the victim of a prank when the committee called to tell him he had won.

"You must be kidding!" the 85-year-old told the Nobel Foundation.

"First thing I did was to ask for a way to verify that this could be genuine because it just seemed impossible," he said, adding that he only believed it after checking the Nobel website.

"I humbly accept the prize," 80-year-old Omura, a professor emeritus at Kitasato University, said in an interview with the Nobel Foundation.

He thanked the "many, many researchers" who had contributed to his findings, saying he was "very, very lucky".

Satoshi Omura, professor of Kitasato University,

 reacts as he is congratulated by students after

 winning the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine, while 

attending a press conference at the Kitasato

 campus in Tokyo on October 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/

Yoshikazu Tsuno)

Juleen Zierath, the head of the Nobel committee, said she believed Swedish scientist and philanthropist Alfred Nobel -- who created the awards in his 1895 will, to be given to those who "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" -- would have been pleased with this year's choice of laureates.

'Saving lives'

"I think we have examples here that have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. These therapies, they save lives, they prevent disability, and they prevent the spread of infection. And they also improve the life, the well-being of individuals and economic growth. So I think this is a great example. Nobel would have been happy," she told the Nobel Foundation.

This year's Nobel laureates will share the prize of eight million Swedish kronor (about $950,000 or 855,000 euros).

The Nobel awards week continues with the announcement of the prize for physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

The peace prize will be awarded in Oslo on Friday, with the economics prize wrapping up the Nobel season next Monday.

The laureates will receive their prizes at formal ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel.

Chinese herbal expert among #Nobel medicine prize winners http://t.co/z2Hk81ydCY pic.twitter.com/WxkeWY5Ndz

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) 5 oktober 2015

Related Article:

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  The Biggest Filter that Hinders Truth is Your Biased Knowledge

The biggest filter of humanity, the one that keeps Humans from actual truth, believe it or not, is called knowledge. We speak of that which humanity perceives currently as knowledge. That which you do not know is, therefore, future knowledge. Now, every single scientist understands the difference - every single one - for they know what is coming is going to teach them what they don't know yet. This is part of the scientific process. Even so, they take what they know, or think they know, and completely let it temper the experiments for what they don't know. They base the future on what they know or believe, even though they know better!

A medical doctor will look in the past and he'll remember being taught about a time when humans would report to the barbershop for healing. That's when they would actually bleed people for healing. By the way, that's the reason for the barber pole having the red stripe on it - it's the tradition of barbers doing the bleeding. So back then, you went to get healed in the barbershop by being bled! This, of course, led to many deaths because there was no understanding of germs, sterilization or today's common sense. Doctors know this, and they laugh at how far you all have come from this. So doctors absolutely know that what is coming will someday be actually laughable, yet they are also absolutely and completely closed to what it might be. They just think it will be an advancement of what they currently know.  ….”

“..  Medicine - Where It's Going

I want to show you some other areas to consider. There are several categories that we'd like to talk about, but they're not in a specific order except for the last one. So let's talk about medicine. What is future medicine going to look like?

The most elegant predictions of medicine fall short of what's really coming. What you have today is a high-tech approach to designer chemistry. Now, since the body is made up of chemistry, it makes sense to look at this chemistry and work with it. It makes total sense to discover how it reacts to disease and then design cures with more chemistry. It's absolutely normal what you have done, but it's going to reach an end very soon. Because the future of medicine is physics, dear ones, not chemistry.

You're going to start understanding and developing new medical physics. You will discover that medi-physics is going to literally speak to cellular structure and give it instructions, without one chemical involved. There's always a reaction to chemistry, isn't there? There's always a side effect. When you push one thing, something else reacts, doesn't it? How do you like it so far? Your most elegant chemical designs, the ones that are helping with the worst diseases on the planet, all have side effects - and some of those side effects are death! I say to you, how do you like it so far?

Does it really seem elegant to you? Or perhaps it's just a more sophisticated way of bleeding in the barbershop? Dear ones, that's how you're going to look at it someday! You're going to slap your heads and say, "Remember the day when we did everything with chemistry and drugs?"

Right now, these kinds of changes have already started in several areas. There are discoveries being made that are healing some of the most heart-breaking diseases you have. I reveal one, because it's not a secret. I will always give you information that is either being worked on or has been postulated through free choice on this planet. That is the guideline of channelling. We can't give it to you. You've got to develop it yourself. However, we can put you in an energy that has a faster discovery potential - that is to say, discoveries become more obvious.

Alzheimer's is heart breaking. There are millions on this planet who develop this condition, more all the time. You're living longer and a plaque-like material that literally obfuscates your memory within the brain is becoming more common. It clings to certain parts of your brain, encrusting and restricting it, imprisoning the Human's ability to remember and eventually process information at all. The result is death, slow death. It's caused by your environment, a fact which will be discovered eventually. Your long-lived Ancients didn't have it.

It's going to be cured with physics. Your science is starting to find out that the plaque-like substance has a resonance that allows it to be weakened with sound. High-frequency sound, tuned to a certain frequency and amplitude, will cause the sheaths to weaken, dissolve, and come off. There's a lot of research to do yet, but it's a Eureka! moment - realizing that physics alone, without chemistry, can change the structure of biology. This is with no side effects whatsoever. It's coming, it's coming.

There are those working with fresh umbilical cord stem cells right now who are using pure physics to guide the stem cells to a specific destination in the body in order to repair failing systems. Dear ones, the future of health and healing is not through better chemistry, yet medicine is still waiting for better pills! Did you connect the dots and realize that all biology is physics based? There is magnetics, leverage, the energy of consciousness, electricity and much more within cellular structure. With physics alone, you can "tune in" to disease and destroy it! You can fine-tune your system with cooperative resonances and extend life with benevolent, physical assistance. Sixteen years ago, I told you this when I spoke of the Temple of Rejuvenation. I described the super-cooling needed to do it and the temperatures needed to work with it (-55C). This is physics!

Now, the false expectation of greater chemistry for the future is totally caused from the filter of knowledge. What you have and know then gives you your expectation of what is going to take place. It literally blocks you from seeing some of the potentials that you may have.  ….”

Family doctors reach agreement with health insurers

DutchNews, October 5, 2015

Health insurers will interfer less in the care offered by family doctors and will stop offering financial incentives to use particular treatments. 

This is the result of an agreement reached on Monday by doctors, insurers, the health ministry and health organisations. 

Family doctors have been very unhappy about the contracts they are being asked to sign by health insurance companies. 

No alternative

Doctors have to sign contracts with health insurers to ensure their patients are covered for treatment. But many say insurance companies are unwilling to negotiate while others sign the deals because they feel they have no alternative, a survey in January by the doctors’ association LHV found.

Since 2006, health insurers have been tasked by the health ministry with bringing down the cost of health care.  As a result, contracts with family doctors have included rewards being coupled to the prescribing of specific anti-depressants, regardless of what suits the patient.

Some family doctors are also being rewarded for using research labs with which the health insurer has a contract. 

Many doctors were furious about these contracts, seeing them as moving patient care from the surgery to the insurer. 

Major changes

The new agreement brings in three important and major changes. Family doctors will have more equality with insurers and more flexibility in what treatments they can offer.

In addition, bureaucracy will be decreased by scrapping unnecessary administration, and a less time-consuming method for checking the quality of doctors will be introduced.

‘Health insurers will again trust the expertise of the family doctor,’ doctors’ association LHV chairwoman Ella Kalsbeek told the NRC. ‘That is very important. It will give doctors more time for what is most important: care of the patient,’

Nineteen EU countries seek GMO opt-out

Nineteen EU member states have requested to opt-out of producing genetically modified crops, effectively banning their cultivation. Germany requested a partial opt-out that would allow research into the biotechnology.

Deutsche Welle, 4 Oct 2015

More than half of all EU member states met an October 3 deadline requesting the abilityto opt-out of the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMO), the European Commission reported on Sunday.

European Commission spokesman Enrico Brivio said on Sunday that 17 of the member states requested to fully opt-out of GMO cultivation, while Belgium and Britain asked that the opt-out mechanism be reserved for only part of their country's respective territories.

Meanwhile, Germany requested a partial opt-out that would still allow GMO research.

The full opt-out requests were made by Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia.

The move allows the countries to ban GMO even if the EU provides approval for their cultivation, according to a law signed earlier this year.

The EU has solely approved the cultivation of one GMO, namely Monsanto's GM maize MON 810. However, eight applications submitted to the EU for review are currently pending.

The EU let countries opt out of #GMO crops in their soil- they did. http://t.co/njLZOEAA8X #monsanto pic.twitter.com/jwtHjacuhV

— Greenpeace (@Greenpeace) 2 oktober 2015

The cultivation of GMO in Europe has been widely divisive subject, with environmentalists saying that it would damage biodiversity.

Agricultural biotechnology companies, such as Monsanto, have rebuked such criticism as scientifically baseless.

The more you know: #GMOs explained in 60 seconds: https://t.co/yc9MjhEHoD #video #education

— Monsanto Europe (@MonsantoEurope) 2 oktober 2015

Brivio noted that the number of requests showed that the new law providing opt-outs at a member-state level offers "a necessary legal framework to a complex issue."

Companies are provided one month to comment on the requests.

ls/sms (Reuters, dpa)

Related Articles:

Scotland to ban genetically modified crops

Monsanto drops Syngenta takeover bid

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  Health

Normal good health is turning to simple physics for some of the simplest things. New kinds of foods are being grown with new physics, not chemistry. These will be physic-foods [Kryon name] that are not genetically altered or chemically altered, but benevolently enhanced by physics! This causes a new kind of super growth that can feed the planet in a way it's never been fed before. It will create food that is resistant to absolutely everything - insects, bacteria and disease - all through physics. Who thought of that? What you're expecting in the future regarding health is based upon the past. The big filter of past knowledge keeps you from thinking out of the box. You don't know what you don't know.  ….”

Oklahoma governor stays man's execution over lethal injection procedures

The US state of Oklahoma was about to execute a man after the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal. Minutes before the execution, the state's governor intervened to assess the legality of the execution method.

Deutsche Welle, 1 October 2015

Oklahoma's governor granted a last-minute stay of execution to an inmate convicted of hiring a hit man to murder his former employer Barry van Treese, a motel owner. The state said that it needed time to determine if its death penalty procedures complied with court orders.

Lawyers for Richard Glossip, 52, had argued for a stay, saying they had evidence pointing to his innocence, but were turned down by the US Supreme Court minutes before the scheduled start of the execution at 3 pm local time (20:00 UTC).

Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, said the state corrections department needed time to address questions raised on Wednesday about Oklahoma's execution procedures and the chemicals used for lethal injections. Glossip's execution was moved to November 6. The state has been closely monitoring its execution methods after a botched execution last year.

I have issued a 37 day stay for Richard Glossip while the state addresses questions about its execution protocol http://t.co/t3LVhjNn7z

— Governor Mary Fallin (@GovMaryFallin) September 30, 2015

Fallin said that she had ordered the delay over questions regarding potassium acetate, the last drug in the three-drug protocol used on Oklahoma's death row. Spokesman Alex Weintz explained that the Corrections Department routinely received the lethal drugs on the day of the execution. Prison officials had not realize they were sent potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride until the drugs were delivered.

A prominent case

Glossip, 52, had been scheduled to die Wednesday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, 200 kilometres east of state capital Oklahoma City. He would have been the second inmate put to death on Wednesday in the United States after Georgia executed its first woman in seven decades, Kelly Gissendaner .

But his case has kept courts across the nation busy: Glossip's initial conviction was overturned, but he was convicted again in a 2004 retrial, which saw him sentenced to death. The actual killer in the case, Justin Sneed, has been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Sneed had agreed to a plea bargain by pleading guilty and testifying against Glossip.

Death Row inmate Richard Glossip
said he was grateful for receiving the
37-day stay while the method of execution
in Oklahoma was due to be reassessed

Glossip's case made headlines in June when his challenge of the execution method came before the US Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 against Glossip and two other death row inmates. Their lawyers argued that the use of Midazolam, a drug meant to induce unconsciousness, violated the US constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Midazolam was first used in an execution in 2014 after two other drugs used to sedate inmates became difficult to procure following an embargo from EU drug companies to supply drugs for the procedure.

Glossip's execution already has been delayed twice, once when the US Supreme Court decided to take up his drug challenge, and again two weeks ago to allow Oklahoma courts time to review claims of new evidence that ultimately were rejected.

Pope Francis had personally appealed for clemency in Glossip's case.

Capital punishment still a key social issue

Three more inmates were scheduled to be executed in the coming week in Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri. The overall number of executions in the United States has declined in recent years. The 35 executions carried out in 2014 were the lowest total in two decades.

Thirty-one of the 50 states, plus the federal government and military, retain the option of capital punishment for certain crimes, according to the non-governmental Death Penalty Information Centre, which opposes the practice.

ss/bw (Reuters, AFP, dpa)

The US state of Virginia has executed a prison inmate by lethal injection. More details here http://t.co/QoPsJ02QMc pic.twitter.com/TemYW2nWzQ

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) October 2, 2015

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