Saturday, May 1st, is the running of the Kentucky Derby. The fastest two minutes in sports, also known as the Run For The Roses, will run tomorrow.
Twenty 3-year-olds will break from the starting gate in the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby. Post time for the Kentucky Derby is 6:24 p.m. EDT. It will be televised nationally by NBC.
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“I have been privileged to know Senator Dale Volker for several years, and many members of this chamber, like me, will miss his camaraderie, unique sense of humor, and absolute devotion to the people of this state.
Senator Volker is one of those rare individuals who will not hesitate to go to battle over the policy matters he is most passionate about, but at the end of the day put down his sword and remain your friend, and a partner in government.
On behalf of the Senate, I thank Senator Volker and his wife Carol for the sacrifice both have made in the name of public service, and wish them the absolute best as they move to their next challenge.”
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Marinaccio’s, on Main Street in Williamsville, has been closed since December. When it reopens under new ownership as Milos, it will feature a full bar and 200-seat banquet room and employ about 100 people.
Nectarios and Raymond Kollidas, through Kollidas Properties LLC, paid $875,000 to buy the high-profile restaurant site at 5877 Main St. from LWH Restaurant, controlled by Paul Marinaccio.
The owners of the Family Tree restaurant in Eggertsville have purchased the shuttered Marinaccio’s Steak & Seafood restaurant in the Village of Williamsville, with plans to reshape its menu and offerings.
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Today at 11:00 am Dale Volker, the GOP mainstay, had called for a new conference. It was speculated that he would announce he would be stepping down after 38 years in Albany and that is exactly what he said. He had served 35 in the State Senate and was facing a tough re-election fight in November.
Volker, the 69 year old former Depwe police officer, told those in attendance that he wanted to spend more time with his family.
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Pope Benedict XVI
The Roman Catholic Church is facing a real epochal shift. There are those who believe the only way to go is to protect bishops and priests facingg off against those who demand more accountability and openness.
Uncomfortably, the crisis also pits the moral legacies of two popes against each other: the towering and modernizing John Paul II, who nonetheless did little about sexual abuse; and his successor, Benedict XVI, who in recent years, at least, has taken the issue of pedophile priests more seriously.
He has had little choice, given the depth of the scandal and the anger it has unleashed. But when supporters defend Benedict, they are implicitly condemning John Paul and how an entire generation of bishops and the Vatican hierarchy acted in response to criminal behavior.
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After learning that their son, Andy, had fragile X syndrome, Katie Clapp and her husband, Dr. Michael Tranfaglia, started the Fraxa Research Foundation to fund research for the condition.
Families that have to deal with the challenges of raising a child suffering with fragile X syndrome know how difficult even the simplest tasks can be. In 2008 the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis ran a small trial of a new drug and the results look promising.
The Novartis trial, which began in 2008 in Europe with data analysis completed this year, was too brief to observe effects on basic intelligence. Instead, researchers measured a range of aberrant behaviors like hyperactivity, repetitive motions, social withdrawal and inappropriate speech. They gave one set of patients the drug and another a placebo, and after a few weeks switched treatments, with both doctors and patients unaware of which pill was which.
The results of the trial were something of a jumble until Novartis scientists noticed that patients who had a particular, undisclosed biological trait improved far more than others. “The bottom line is that we showed clear improvements in behavior,” Dr. Fishman said.
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By MATTHEW PERRONE, AP Business Writer
WASHINGTON – A first-of-a-kind prostate cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to fight the disease received federal approval Thursday, offering an important alternative to more taxing treatments like chemotherapy.
Dendreon Corp.’s Provenge vaccine trains the immune system to fight tumors. It’s called a “vaccine” even though it treats disease rather than prevents it.
Doctors have been trying to develop such a therapy for decades, and Provenge is the first to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
“The big news here is that this is the first immunotherapy to win approval, and I suspect within five to ten years immunotherapies will be a big part of cancer therapy in general,” said Dr. Phil Kantoff, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who helped run the studies of Provenge.
Experimental vaccines to treat other cancers — including the deadly skin disease melanoma and an often fatal childhood tumor called neuroblastoma — are already in late-stage development.
Currently doctors treat cancer by surgically removing tumors, attacking them with chemotherapy drugs or blasting them with radiation. Provenge offers an important fourth approach by directing the body’s natural defense mechanisms against the disease.
The treatment is intended for prostate cancer that has spread elsewhere in the body and is not responding to hormone therapy.
Medical specialists hailed the approval as an important milestone, but stressed it will serve as an addition to current medical practice, not a replacement.
“This is just one step in a new pathway for treating patients,” said Dr. Simon Hall, chairman of urology at Mt. Sinai Hospital. “We have to make them realize this isn’t a cure, it’s very variable.”
Company studies showed that taking Provenge added four months to the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer.
That may not sound like a lot, but it is longer than the three months afforded by Taxotere, the only chemotherapy approved for men in this situation. Doctors hope for even greater benefit if they give the drug earlier in the course of the disease.
Dendreon said Thursday the drug will cost $93,000 per patient.
The approval marks a remarkable turnaround for Seattle-based Dendreon, whose shares plummeted three years ago when the FDA delayed a decision on the therapy, asking for more proof of safety and effectiveness. That delay came despite an expert panel’s recommendation for approval.
Dendreon shares jumped 19 percent to new highs ahead of the news, rising to an all-time high of $47.32. The company spent more than 15 years developing and testing Provenge.
Analysts expect the product to reach blockbuster sales status — over $1 billion — by 2016, as the company expands production capacity.
Each regimen of Provenge must to tailored to the immune system of the patient using a time-consuming formulation process.
Doctors collect special blood cells from each patient that help the immune system recognize cancer as a threat. The cells are mixed with a protein found on most prostate cancer cells and another substance to rev up the immune system. The resulting “vaccine” is given back to the patient as three infusions two weeks apart.
Initially, Dendreon will identify Provenge patients through the 50 medical centers that helped test the drug. But researchers have been told the company will only be able to provide vaccines for a few patients at each site per month.
“There are going to be a lot of patients that want it and there will be limited resources as they are getting this up and running,” said Dr. Deborah Bradley of Duke University School of Medicine
About 192,000 new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in 2009, and 27,000 men died of the disease, according to the FDA. Prostate cancer most often affects older men.
Side effects of Provenge are relatively mild, such as chills, fatigue, fever, and headache. By comparison, side effects of chemotherapy typically include hair loss, nausea, anemia and diarrhea.
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The truth is that some of our most famous advice-dispensing professionals are just like many other celebrities in Hollywood—not always what they seem.
Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil McGraw, the nation’s most visible proponent of “getting real” about problems, does have a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a master’s degree in experimental psychology, and a PhD in clinical psychology, but what he doesn’t have is a license to practice those healing arts. McGraw started in private practice, but after just a few years, he became embroiled in a mini-scandal involving a young female employee (who was also his patient), who alleged that they had conducted an “inappropriate relationship.” McGraw never admitted any wrongdoing, but the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists levied some serious penalties against the doctor, including court-ordered counseling, a public letter of apology, and ethics classes. Soon after, McGraw quit counseling altogether to start a firm advising witnesses in litigation. After Oprah Winfrey hired his company when Texas beef producers sued her, she began inviting him onto her show as a relationship and life-strategy expert, and eventually helped him get his own show in 2002. He never applied for a license in California, and in 2006, he retired his license to practice in Texas as well; he has remained unlicensed ever since. Despite conducting on-camera interventions and encouraging people to face their problems, he has always maintained that his business is to entertain, not provide any sort of therapy or counseling.
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This image provided was by the Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, Colo.
How far can we take things? I become very weary of listening to and reading about groups that demand something be changed because they see it as crossing a line about some spearation of church and state thing.
A religious watchdog group says a cross and motto on the emblem of an Army hospital in Colorado violate the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state and should be removed.
The emblem had been approved by the Army Institute of Heraldry and has been in use since 1969.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation asked the Army this week to change the emblem of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs.
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The Amherst Town Board is seriously talking about cutting all strings with our town museum. The museum would have to be self-supporting, using any legal methods they could imagine to raise money to stay afloat.
It seems the town board no longer feels any need for a Recreation Board. They are discussing dissolving it.
Time Warner has been talking about stopping the televising of the Monday night Town Board meetings because of the huge drop in public attendance .
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