Over the past century humans have introduced a large number of chemical substances into the environment. Some are the waste from industrial and agricultural processes. Some have been designed as structural materials and others have been designed to perform various functions such as healing the sick or killing pests and weeds. Obviously some chemicals are useful but many are toxic and their harm to the environment and our health far outweighs their benefit to society. We need to manage the risks better by only using chemicals, which are safe.

Chemicals enter air as emissions and water as effluent. Industrial and motor vehicle emissions of nitrogen and sulphur oxides cause acid rain, which poisons fish and other aquatic organisms in rivers and lakes and affects the ability of soil to support plants. Carbon dioxide causes the greenhouse effect and climate change. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) cause the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere and create the possibility of serious environmental damage from ultraviolet radiation. Chemical fertilisers and nutrients run-off from farms and gardens cause the build up of toxic algae in rivers, making them uninhabitable to aquatic organisms and unpleasant for humans. Some toxic chemicals find their way from landfill waste sites into our groundwater, rivers and oceans and induce genetic changes that compromise the ability of life to reproduce and survive.

The impact of human activities on the environment is complex and affects a chain of interconnecting ecosystems. The extinction of species all along the chain may mean the loss of useful genetic material or life saving cancer drugs or safer alternatives to the dangerous chemicals in use at the moment.

read more: http://www.planetagenda.com/chemicals.htm

A high-profile Sydney doctor who specialises in "anti-ageing" medicine has been found guilty of professional misconduct and could be struck off after an investigation found she inappropriately prescribed steroids, hormones and other drugs.

Dr Julie Epstein, a consultant physician who set up one of the state's first "anti-ageing clinics", was prosecuted by the Health Care Complaints Commission over her treatment of 40 patients at her Moore Park rooms between August 2007 and August 2009.

On Monday the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found Dr Epstein repeatedly prescribed anabolic steroids and human growth hormones "off-label" where there was no proper indication for the prescribing and "without exercising responsible medical judgement".

Some of these patients had a known history of abusing steroids and testosterone, including body builders, bouncers, boxers, a former Mr Universe and a former SAS member who had been injured during service. However Dr Epstein ignored or "turned a blind eye".

The patients also included a hedge fund manager, a 49-year-old man who wanted to "turn back the clock" and an older woman with a history of depression and anorexia. Others were HIV positive or had warning signs for prostate cancer.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/antiageing-doctor-julie-epstein-found-guilty-of-misconduct-20150401-1mcrcv.html

The chatter at the dinner party meandered from the value of chocolate in one’s diet to the toll of disease on the U.S. economy to the merits of uploading people’s memories to a computer versus cryofreezing their bodies. Yet the focus kept returning to one subject: Was death an inevitability — or a solvable problem?

A number of guests were skeptical about achieving immortality. But could science and technology help us live longer, to, say, 150 years? Now that, they agreed, was a worthy goal.

Within a few months, Thiel had written checks to Kenyon and de Grey to accelerate their work. Since then he has doled out millions to other researchers with what he calls “breakout” ideas that defy conventional wisdom.

“If you think you can only do very little and be very incremental, then you’ll work only on very incremental things. It’s self-fulfilling,” Thiel, who is 47 and estimated to be worth $2.2 billion, said in an interview. “It’s those who have an optimism about what can be done that will shape the future.”

He and the tech titans who founded Google, Facebook, eBay, Napster and Netscape are using their billions to rewrite the nation’s science agenda and transform biomedical research. Their objective is to use the tools of technology — the chips, software programs, algorithms and big data they used in creating an information revolution — to understand and upgrade what they consider to be the most complicated piece of machinery in existence: the human body.

red more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/04/04/tech-titans-latest-project-defy-death/?hpid=z2

Gus: I want some of that cash... 

Dr Elliott is a specialist in phage therapy, a relatively little-known alternative to antibiotics that uses highly specific viruses to target bad bacteria and destroy them.

"A bacteria phage is a bacterial virus, so it doesn't affect animal cells or plant cells or anything else," Dr Elliott said. "Its job is simply to infect bacterial cells.

"Instead of using something like an antibiotic or antimicrobial or a disinfectant or something like that, which is not selective at all and knocks out all the good and the bad bacteria, we can use phage just to knock out the bad guys and leave everything else intact."

The results of the alternative therapy on the turtles were so positive it was hoped phage would help overcome the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria in humans as well.

"With anti-microbial resistance being such a major global problem, Western countries are looking at trying to find alternatives to antibiotics or at least something that can reduce the usage of antibiotics," Dr Elliot said.

"For the past 60 years, it's actually been used extensively in human medicine in parts of Europe and particularly for things like MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which is a terrible hospital-acquired disease and pseudomonas in burns patients, and pseudomonas in cystic fibrosis patients.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-09/turtle-therapy-may-help-develop-alternative-to-antibiotics/6381168

YD has already mentioned phage therapy, in the past.