Stephen C Schimpff's Blog – January 2012 Archive (2)

Some 80% of healthcare costs go to just a few very serious complex chronic diseases including the likes of diabetes and heart failure. But these are all largely preventable with lifestyle adjustments. Unfortunately, we Americans are an over fed (on non-nutritious diets), under exercised, chronically stressed population with 20% of us still smoking. One third of us are frankly obese and another one third are overweight. 

Health care costs could plummet if we could only become a health…

A decade ago there was much hope and hype for gene therapy. Then came the death of Jesse Gelsinger , an 18 year old, as a result of uncontrolled infection from the viral vector used to insert the gene change. That led to a near total stop of gene therapy clinical trials and the development of multiple new regulations, especially multiple levels of extensive reviews. 

Now some new developments are coming to fruition and there is some legitimate reason for enthusiasm that gene therapy…