 | | The Daily Reckoning | Thursday, March 22, 2012 |
- A few breathtaking photos from a paradisaical location
- The large and underappreciated world of bacterial infection...
- Plus, Patrick Cox discusses the seriousness of the sickle cell crisis, and how we might be able to solve it...
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|  | | | | Greg Kadajski, checking in from Baltimore, Maryland... | | |  | | Greg Kadajski | As we mentioned on Monday, your intrepid Daily Reckoning editors are doing a bit of “continent hopping” this week. Eric has landed safely in Nicaragua; Joel — after what must've seemed an endless array of layovers and pitstops — has also finally arrived in that same paradisaical locale; and Bill is somewhere in rural Argentina, without want or need of a connection to the Internet, or indeed, the world at large.
So, dear reader, we’re left to hold down the fort here at the Daily Reckoning HQ...while doing our absolute best to mask our jealousy. Not that Baltimore is without its charms (it is, after all, Charm City)... But the greying clouds that currently hover over this city can in no way compare with the photos Eric just sent us.
He’s prepared a sort of “cyber-postcard” for us, displaying a few key spots in and around Rancho Santana. And from what we’ve seen, the views are simply breathtaking.
So today, we invite you to take a small break from the world of finance and the frustrations of the market, and soak up some of the incredible scenery Eric’s been kind enough to relay, below...
| | | A Postcard from Paradise | | |  | | Eric Fry | Dear Daily Reckoning Readers,
Having a nice time in Nicaragua. Wish you were here!
Sincerely,
Eric
P.S. Now we know how Odysseus felt among the lotus-eaters. Joel and I are both here at Rancho Santana to work...and we are. But there’s something about this place that tempts the would-be worker to set aside the tools of his trade and simply do nothing. Sit, relax, chat with friends, drink a beer...and gaze out at the crashing waves.
I snapped the photos below from my breakfast table. I could have snapped a similarly breathtaking photo in the opposite direction...or even of my breakfast — a lobster omelet accompanied by straight-off-the-tree mango and papaya. The espresso is also pretty “legitimate” as the local surf crowd would say. Rancho Santana, in general, is pretty “legit” and it is becoming more so by the day.
What began as a lark about 15 years ago has evolved into a burgeoning beachfront paradise. That’s one reason why 30 Daily Reckoning readers rolled into Rancho Santana yesterday. They arrived to check the place out for themselves, while also learning a bit about ways to invest retirement funds in foreign real estate.
If you missed this particular gathering, don’t despair; our publisher, Addison Wiggin has been organizing fairly frequent gatherings at Rancho Santana. So we’ll keep you posted about upcoming events at “The Ranch.”
In the mean time, please enjoy the following two essays from our resident breakthrough technology maven, Patrick Cox...
| | | | | 10 Million Blind Could Regain Sight |
In the 21st Century, a new dawn of medicine has emerged that could restore the sight of 10 million people worldwide. It’s a medical breakthrough that is unprecedented in human history. In fact, this amazing technology could eventually improve... and extend... every life of every person on earth.
And one tiny California Company, priced under 80 cents per stock, is at the forefront of this revolutionary medical treatment. Click here to get the full details on this explosive penny stock that could significantly advance the field of regenerative medicine — and possibly make you ridiculously rich.
| | |
| | The Daily Reckoning Presents | | Antibiotics, the Next Generation! | | |  | | Patrick Cox | Scientists are very interested in bacteria for a number of reasons. Among the most recent is that they can be used to manufacture various important chemicals, including fuels.
We tend not to think about it, but the single-cell microorganisms categorized as bacteria are the dominant life form on Earth. In some mathematical sense, this is their planet and we just use it.
Their total biomass, after all, is greater than that of all living plants and animals combined. Bacteria inhabit the planet from the highest peaks to the deepest depths of the ocean. There are typically 40 million bacteria in one gram of soil and a million in a milliliter of fresh water. In our bodies, bacteria outnumber human cells 10 to one.
Besides making extremely useful things possible, including Rioja wines, single-malt scotches and the Earth’s biosphere, bacteria can also cause serious problems. Bacterial infection, in fact, may be the single largest killer in America today.
However, we don’t hear about a bacterial plague for several reasons...
One is that some pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or a virus-borne disease, often create the conditions that lead to an opportunistic bacterial infection. So statisticians tend to categorize deaths according to the condition that led to the lethal infection that actually killed the patient.
Also, I suspect that the medical profession doesn’t like to talk about the danger of infections that are often acquired in hospitals, though I may be too cynical.
Regardless, some estimates are that bacteria cause, in the US alone, over 14 million skin and soft tissue infections, and 7 million methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) cases, annually. Of those infections, 70% are resistant to at least one antibiotic.
Moreover, resistance is growing due to natural evolutionary mechanisms as well as the misuse and overprescription of antibiotics.
Just a few weeks ago, the world medical community suffered a serious scare when an Indian clinic announced it had a dozen patients with highly contagious tuberculosis resistant to all known antibiotics. A totally untreatable TB could, in fact, easily kill hundreds of millions and send Western economies into a long depression.
Fortunately, the announcement was false. A therapy was found and the epidemic prevented.
Still, the trend lines are clear, and public perception of this threat is growing.
There are companies, however, that continue to make serious progress in the goal of creating new and effective antibiotics that bacteria could not adapt to.
With a $10 billion market that is rapidly growing, the potential rewards are stratospheric. Investors would be wise to pay attention to companies working to create new effective antibiotics...
As concern over the fading effectiveness of antibiotics grows, investor attention will turn to the few companies working on solutions. Now is the time to act... before everyone else does.
Regards,
Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning
| | | | | Patrick Cox’s Technology Profits Confidential Presents... |
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| | | | | Solving the Sickle Cell Crisis
By Patrick Cox | | | The sickle cell trait has its origins in a genetic adaptation common in individuals in which the mosquito-borne disease, malaria, has impacted human life for thousands of years. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, as many as one-third of people carry the gene. It is also found, although less commonly, in populations ringing the Mediterranean, such as North Africa, Spain, Greece and Italy.
Today, the disease is found throughout the world because of migrations from these regions.
Ordinarily, red blood cells have a doughnut-like shape. Individuals with the sickle cell trait, however, also have red blood cells that assume a crescent shape. This sickle cell’s shape confers resistance to the malaria parasite, plasmodium falciparum, which infects red blood cells.
Although the genetic mutation that causes sickle-shaped red blood cells helps people survive in regions plagued by malaria-carrying mosquitoes, it comes at a high price...
In individuals that carry two copies of the gene, for example, anemia is common, since the mutation reduces the ability of red blood cells to transport oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body. This condition is called sickle cell disease (SCD).
However, on a purely physical level, sickle-shaped red blood cells can cause other problems as well. Since they aren’t as round as normal red blood cells, they don’t flow as well through the 60,000 miles of small, serpentine blood vessels that carry life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients to the body.
Normally, the percentage of sickle-shaped cells is low enough that this isn’t a big problem.
When the percentage of affected red blood cells in the body is high enough, however, a vaso-occlusive crisis can occur. When there are too many sickle-shaped red blood cells in the body, they clog in narrow capillaries like logs in a river bend. This occlusion in the blood vessels restricts blood supply to tissues, and can lead to pain and the death of cells in the affected areas.
The early symptoms are an imminent, looming pain in the body, much like the early stages of a flu infection. The pain eventually builds, and patients commonly describe it as being repeatedly hit with a baseball bat in the same place.
Female sufferers describe the pain as worse than childbirth.
In the United States alone, some 90,000 people are affected by SCD. It is most commonly found in people of African or Hispanic ancestry. In the US, 150,000 hospitalizations and ER visits are attributed to an SCD-caused crisis each year.
Patients suffering a crisis are administered intravenous narcotics and kept hydrated. They are monitored until the condition clears and then they are sent home. Typical hospital stays range from four-six days, but they can last up to two weeks. Other than waiting for the clogged blood cells to break down while administering analgesics to deal with the extreme pain, there are no good options to deal with the effects of an acute SCD condition. Extreme cases can cause death.
Even if it doesn’t kill immediately, SCD-caused crisis eventually shortens the life span of otherwise healthy people. Frequent clogging of blood flow can lead to early organ failure and death. A 1994 study, for example, showed the median age of death for SCD sufferers in the US at 42 years for males, and 48 for females.
However, what if there were a way to help blood flow better in patients experiencing this condition? Not only could the duration of a crisis be reduced, but the amount of damage that one could cause would be reduced as well.
Regards,
Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning
Editor’s Note: If there were one person we’d trust to uncover this sort of breakthrough it would be Patrick. We’ve never met anyone who spends as much time researching these themes as he does. We’re talking countless hours immersed in the world’s foremost medical and tech journals. And right now, he’s onto something big... So big, in fact, we had to watch this presentation twice, just to make sure we saw it right. Click here now to see for yourself.
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Here at The Daily Reckoning, we value your questions and comments. If you would like to send us a few thoughts of your own, please address them to your managing editor at joel@dailyreckoning.com
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