Lawmaker: NFL players 'trying to back out' on HGH

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressman accused the NFL Players Association of "trying to back out" of an agreement to start testing for human growth hormone in pro football.

Speaking at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the science behind the testing, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the panel's ranking Democrat, noted Wednesday that nearly two full NFL seasons have passed since the league and the players' union signed a labor deal in August 2011 that set the stage for adding HGH to the sport's drug program.

The NFLPA won't concede the validity of a test that's used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball, and the sides haven't been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse. HGH is a banned substance that is hard to detect and used by athletes for what are believed to be a variety of benefits, whether real or only perceived — such as increasing speed or improving vision.

"They say they need more time ... before doing what they agreed to do. To me, it seems obvious the Players Association is simply running out the clock," Cummings said in his opening statement. "Although they agreed to HGH testing, they are now trying to back out of the contract."

Cummings and committee chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, both said additional hearings are expected.

"It is our hope (to) move these parties closer together," Issa said.

Issa also said there could be a connection between head injuries in football and the use of HGH, "based in part on the strength of the players hitting each other."

The committee did not ask anyone from the league or union to testify Wednesday. Witnesses included Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dick Butkus, U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Chief Science Officer Larry Bowers, and National Institutes of Health Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak.

Bowers told the committee "there is a broad consensus among scientific experts who regularly work in the growth hormone field" that the test is reliable and valid, and that "the chances of an athlete who has not used synthetic growth hormone testing positive are comparable to the chance of that same athlete being struck by lightning during his or her lifetime."

He closed by saying: "I would like to point out that the only people who are still questioning the methodology and validity of the ... test are lawyers, not scientists."

Tabak said many studies vouch for the reliability of HGH testing, even though the naturally occurring hormone and the artificial form are tough to tell apart.

He also pointed out the "serious risks" to athletes who give themselves HGH.

Even once scientific issues are resolved, there will be other matters the league and union need to figure out, including who administers the test and what the appeals process will be. The latter could be of particular import in the aftermath of the decision in the New Orleans Saints' bounty case Tuesday, when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's suspensions of four players were tossed aside by former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

The collective bargaining agreement that ended the NFL lockout 16 months ago included a provision for HGH testing — but only once the NFLPA approved the process.

"First, I applaud the NFL and players for taking a bold and decisive position on HGH in their 10-year agreement. Now let's get on with it," Butkus told the committee. "The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable. It's time to send a clear message that performance-enhancing drugs have no place in sports, especially the NFL."

___

Connect with Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: Why Everyone Is So Certain About Hillary 2016

NEW YORK — The Hillary-in-2016 buzz has hit overdrive, and the political speculation game has gone viral. By ten o’clock Monday, I’d watched a variety of commentators on three cable news programs speculate, guess, opine and bet on the real and imaginary future of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Everyone’s in fear of Hillary,” said one anchor, announcing a “Hillary Watch.”

“Wait, it’s too early,” one female guest advised Hillary. “Don’t believe the hype.”

“There’s no limit to her potential,” crowed a partisan.

“It’s a coronation,” said another, meeting no contradiction.

A few hours of this chatter, and everyone is echoing each other, every segment similar to the one an hour earlier, but we keep listening, just in case something new drops in.

Some try to guess what brave soul in the currently down-at-the-mouth Republican Party would dare to come up against a world heroine like Hillary. (The secretary of state, who is leaving her job in January, has forged an incontestable global position, especially among women, as my latest Female Factor column attests.)

So who would face off against Hillary?

There’s Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who is known as “the good Bush,” a more people savvy and centrist politician than his brother, the former president. There’s Marco Rubio, the great Republican Hispanic hope, who may break ground as the first Latino presidential candidate. But can he beat Hillary? Really?

As for Vice President Joseph Biden, a onetime presidential candidate, few believe he would want to challenge her in a primary (a recent PPP poll said she would receive 58 percent of the vote in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, traditionally the first in the nation, while Mr. Biden trails far behind).

The way many Democrats and pundits see it is this: She declares her candidacy, and the waters part. That’s how far out they’re going on a limb.

Rampant guesswork — “she’s going to go off the grid” — is totally permissible, and fun. Being on a bandwagon like the one that’s off and roaring for Hillary is de rigueur. Pity the Republican (or clueless Democrat) who dares to suggest that she may not run at all. Buzz killer!

It’s a pretty diverse crew, this political class. There are serious, bespectacled veterans and graying pols and a raft of lilting-voiced, sharp-tongued and clip-talking thirty-somethings whose eyes are on the shining prize, a cable political show of their own. There are familiar bylines from major newspapers and magazines, and Washington authors and Beltway insiders.

Political chatter is an industry all its own. It is Washington’s obsession but it also infects power-mad New York, where politics meets fame, fashion and money.

An addictive parlor game, it’s played in front of millions of political fanatics, like me, who can’t resist tuning in and feasting on the dish. Like sports, politics offers plenty of opportunities to blow hard, to bet on the wrong team and to lose miserably.

But you can’t help playing the game, even when your speculation, usually tinged with certitude, is often dead wrong.

All the talk today about the 2016 election — a veritable thousand lifetimes away in politics — is a little crazy. But for political junkies this is the stuff of life. Not to know the latest on such a riveting and important figure like Hillary Clinton can prove embarrassing, not to say unforgivable, in a place like Washington that breathes that air and drinks that water.

So I’ve got to go. “Andrea Mitchell Reports” is coming on.

Read More..

No. 2 Alabama places 4 on AP All-America team

NEW YORK (AP) — Alabama is No. 1 when it comes to All-Americans.

The second-ranked Crimson Tide placed four players on The Associated Press All-America team released Tuesday. Among them was center Barrett Jones, who became a two-time first-team selection.

No other team had more than one player selected to the first team. The Tide also led with six players chosen to all three teams.

Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Stanford and Florida were second with four players on the three teams, though linebacker Manti Te'o was the only Fighting Irish player to make the first team.

Alabama faces top-ranked Notre Dame in the BCS championship game Jan. 7.

Texas A&M Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel was the first-team quarterback.

Wisconsin running back Montee Ball and Georgia linebacker Jarvis Jones also became two-time All-Americans.

Nine Southeastern Conference players made the first team, more than any other conference. The Pac-12 was second with six players on the first team. No other conference had more than two.

The team was voted on by a panel of 16 AP college football poll voters.

Barrett Jones, a senior who made the All-America team as a tackle last season, was joined on the first team by Alabama teammates guard Chance Warmack, linebacker C.J. Mosley and cornerback Dee Milliner. Offensive tackle D.J. Fluker was picked to the second team and quarterback AJ McCarron was selected to the third team.

Te'o, the Heisman finalists and winner of seven other awards — including the Maxwell, Nagurski and Butkus — is the first Notre Dame defensive player to be an AP All-American since defensive back Shane Walton in 2002.

Manziel is the first freshman to make the first team at quarterback. On Saturday, the redshirt freshman know as Johnny Football became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy.

Manziel set an SEC record with 4,600 total yards to rank second in the nation.

Heisman finalist Collin Klein of Kansas State was the second-team quarterback.

Ball repeated as an All-American, despite a slow start to the season and some early injuries. The senior is seventh in the nation in rushing at 133 yards per game, scored 21 touchdowns, and set the major college football record for career touchdowns. He has 82 going into the Rose Bowl.

Arizona's Ka'Deem Carey, the nation's leading rusher at 146 yards per game, was the other first-team running back.

The receivers were Southern California's Marqise Lee, who leads the nation in catches (112) and was second in yards receiving (1,680), and Baylor's Terrance Williams, who leads in yards with 1,764.

Stanford's Zach Ertz was the tight end.

Joining Jones and Warmack on the offensive line were two junior tackles projected to be high first-round NFL draft picks: Texas A&M's Luke Joeckel and Michigan's Taylor Lewan.

North Carolina's Jonathan Cooper was the other first-team guard.

West Virginia's Tavon Austin was selected as the all-purpose player, a perfect description of the do-it-all speedster.

Austin was primarily a receiver and racked up 1,259 yards through the air. Late in the season, coach Dana Holgorsen used Austin as a running back and against Oklahoma he the senior set a school-record with 344 yards rushing. He finished second in the nation in all-purpose yards with 230 per game, and returned a punt and a kickoff for touchdowns.

Tulane's Cairo Santos was the All-American kicker after making all 21 of his field goal attempts.

On the defensive side, Te'o and Mosley were joined at linebacker by the other two-time All-American. Jones followed-up his sensational sophomore season with 12.5 sacks and 22.5 tackles for loss.

Another SEC pass rusher highlighted the defensive line.

South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney had 13.5 sacks, tied for the most in the nation, playing in only 11 games.

Florida State Bjoern Werner was the other end. He also had 13 sacks.

At defensive tackle was a pair of Pac-12 players: Utah's Star Lotulelei and Arizona State's Will Sutton, who was the conference defensive player of the year.

In the secondary, Jordan Poyer of Oregon State, who had seven interceptions, was the cornerback opposite Milliner.

Fresno State safety Phillip Thomas was voted to the first team after leading the nation with eight interceptions, including three returned for touchdown. Florida's Matt Elam was the other safety.

The punter was Ryan Allen, who won his second straight Ray Guy Award last week.

___

Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphdrussoap

Read More..

Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

Read More..

DealBook: 3 Men Arrested in Rate-Rigging Inquiry

10:24 a.m. | Updated LONDON – British authorities made the first arrests in the global investigation into interest-rate manipulation, an inquiry that has ensnared the world’s biggest banks.

The Serious Fraud Office of Britain said on Tuesday that it had arrested three people in connection with rate rigging. The three men, who are aged between 33 and 47 and are British citizens, were taken into custody by police in early morning raids at their houses on the outskirts of London.

One of the people is Thomas Hayes, a 33-year-old former trader at Citigroup and UBS, according to people with knowledge of the matter. At least one of the other two men worked for R P Martin, a British brokerage firm that previously surfaced in the Canadian investigation into rate manipulation, another person briefed on the matter said.

British criminal authorities typically make arrests at the early stages of an inquiry, and the actions do not necessarily mean the individuals will be charged with any wrongdoing. A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment. A UBS spokesman declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Hayes could not immediately be identified.

The arrests mark a new phase of the sprawling rate-rigging inquiry.

Regulators around the world are investigating more than a dozen big banks that help set benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such benchmark rates are used to determine the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars of financial products, including credit cards, student loans and mortgages.

In June, the British bank Barclays agreed to pay $450 million to settle charges that some of its traders attempted to manipulate Libor to bolster profits. Authorities also accused Barclays of submitting low rates to deflect concerns about its health during the financial crisis. The scandal prompted the resignations of top bank officials, including the chief executive, Robert E. Diamond Jr.

Libor Explained

Regulators are now pursuing a number of criminal and civil cases.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is talks with authorities. The bank said it would likely disclose fines before its next earnings report in February.

The Swiss bank UBS is close to finalizing a settlement deal with American and British authorities. The bank is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase its profit. When American authorities announce their case against UBS in the coming days, Mr. Hayes is expected to figure prominently, one of the officials said.

Mr. Hayes built his reputation as a trader at UBS. He worked at the Swiss bank from about 2006 to 2009, before departing for Citigroup.

But his career at Citi was short-lived. In 2010, the bank suspended him after he approached a London trading desk about improperly influencing the Yen-denominated Libor rates, a person briefed on the matter said. He was fired in September 2010, and the bank reported his suspected actions to authorities.

UBS also implicated Mr. Hayes to authorities, according to another person briefed on the matter. The Swiss bank discovered that Mr. Hayes worked with traders at other banks to influence rates, according to officials and court documents.

Mr. Hayes emerged in court documents this year filed by Canadian authorities. The documents — collected by Canada’s Competition Bureau, the country’s anti-trust authority – highlight an alleged scheme in which Mr. Hayes and other traders colluded to push Yen Libor rates up and down. The Canadian investigation, which spans conduct from 2007 to 2010, also referenced traders at JPMorgan Chase HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The traders, the documents said, at times corresponded via instant messages on Bloomberg machines. While the flurry of activity took place outside Canada, the trading affected financial contracts in the country that were pegged to Yen Libor.

“Traders at participants banks communicated with each other their desire to see a higher or lower Yen Libor to aid their trading positions,” the Canadian documents said.

The traders also relied on middlemen at brokerage firms “to use their influence” on other banks that set Libor, according to the documents. The brokers included employees at R P Martin, a person briefed on the matter said.

Under British law, Mr. Hayes and the other men can be held for 24 hours. The authorities can then apply for an extension if they need more time for questioning.

The Serious Fraud Office started a criminal investigation into Libor manipulation in July, in response to the furor over the rate-rigging scandal at Barclays. The criminal investigations by the British authorities and their counterparts at the Justice Department parallel similar civil inquiries by international authorities, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Services Authority, the British regulator.

The arrests come as the agency tries to repair it reputation. In April, the new director of the Serious Fraud Office, David Green, pledged overhaul the office after a series of mistakes by the organization.

Legal professionals say the appointment is a step toward rejuvenating the agency, which has lacked significant firepower to police London’s financial services section. The Serious Fraud Office has been given extra resources by the British government to pursue a criminal investigation related to Libor.

“The S.F.O. works incredibly slowly,” said a defense lawyer representing individuals implicated in the Libor inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “It’s not surprising that people have been arrested. But how long it will take to lead to criminal charges is another matter.”

Azam Ahmed contributed reporting.

Read More..

Chávez Put Party Unity Before Another Cancer Surgery

LA PAZ, Bolivia — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has flown repeatedly to Cuba this year for cancer treatments, but the flight that took him back to Caracas on Friday may have been the most meaningful of all.

Mr. Chávez postponed emergency cancer surgery to return home, meet with his inner circle and announce on television on Saturday, for the first time, that he had picked the man he wanted to lead his socialist revolution when he is gone — something he seemed to suggest might come sooner than his millions of followers would hope.

He flew to Cuba again on Monday to prepare for surgery, news agencies reported. 

Mr. Chávez could well recover and remain a potent force, but on Saturday night he seemed intent on smoothing over factions within his party and solidifying support for the man he chose to succeed him, Vice President Nicolás Maduro.

Mr. Chávez, 58, spoke the word “unity” several times during Saturday’s somber, symbolically weighted appearance. To his left sat Mr. Maduro, and behind both of them viewers could see a bust of Mr. Chávez’s hero, the South American independence leader Simón Bolívar (who never realized his dream of unifying a fractious continent).

Mr. Chávez, a charismatic and polarizing leader who has crafted his own brand of socialist revolution in this oil-rich country, has been vague about the nature of his illness since it was first disclosed in June last year. Since then, he has had at least two operations, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Yet he said on Saturday that doctors had once again found malignant cells, necessitating a new operation.

The fact that he chose to go home to put his political house in order and clear up the long-unresolved line of succession — rather than write about it on Twitter or report it by calling in to a government television show, as he so often has done with lesser policy decisions during his many medical absences — suggests that his doctors have told him that the news is not good.

“This is a huge passing of the torch,” said Javier Corrales, a political science professor at Amherst College.

Even if Mr. Chávez makes a strong recovery after his surgery, Mr. Corrales said, “there’s no question we are in the transition stage, and that’s always incredibly uncertain.”

Mr. Chávez, who has been president for nearly 14 years, was re-elected in October to another six years. His new term is to begin on Jan. 10.

But if he dies or cannot continue to govern before then, the Constitution states that the vice president, Mr. Maduro, would become president and finish out the last days of the current term.

If Mr. Chávez is unable to begin his new term, or if he leaves office within the first four years, then new elections would be called, according to the Constitution.

In that case, Mr. Chávez said on Saturday that he wanted Mr. Maduro to be his party’s candidate, and he asked his supporters to elect him.

“I ask it from my heart,” he said.

New elections could open the way for a new run by Henrique Capriles Radonski, a young state governor who opposed Mr. Chávez in October. Mr. Capriles received 44 percent of the vote and 6.5 million votes, far more than any previous candidate against Mr. Chávez.

But Mr. Capriles is now running a difficult race for re-election as governor of Miranda, which includes part of Caracas, the captial, and one of the country’s most populous states. The election is on Sunday.

He is being challenged by a former vice president, Elías Jaua, and the government and Mr. Chávez’s socialist party have made it a priority to defeat Mr. Capriles, hoping that it will weaken him politically and remove him as a threat.

“If Capriles loses, there will be a battle in the opposition, a struggle for power, and the leaders will call for a change,” said Luis Vicente León, a pollster close to the opposition.

Some polls taken earlier this year showed that Mr. Capriles could beat Mr. Maduro if they ran against each other.

But Mr. León said conditions had changed with Mr. Chávez’s endorsement of Mr. Maduro. If Mr. Chávez were to die or become too ill to continue in office, it could give Mr. Maduro’s candidacy an emotional boost, he said.

But Mr. Maduro, 50, will have difficulties of his own in having to rein in factions within Mr. Chávez’s party. That could include the military and former military officers to whom Mr. Chávez has given a major role in his government.

For the time being, Venezuelans can look forward to more uncertainty.

The country has been obsessed with Mr. Chávez’s illness since it was first revealed. It has been the source of endless speculation and conspiracy theories. Some people even insist that he is not sick and has invented the illness to throw his opponents off guard. His fiercest opponents see his cancer as a sign of hope that his days as president are numbered; his supporters insist that he will recover, and they condemn such grim speculation as necrophilia.

But the last announcement of his need for another surgery, coupled with his call to rally behind Mr. Maduro, takes the nervous focus on Mr. Chávez’s cancer and what it means for the country’s future to a new level.

Several hundred supporters of Mr. Chávez congregated on Sunday in Bolívar Plaza in central Caracas in what was an uncharacteristically subdued gathering, by the standards of his followers. But also on display was their quasi-religious connection with the president — and the refusal among many to acknowledge his mortality.

“He is going to overcome this difficult time,” said Israel Pérez, 32, a law student. “He will be with us forever.”

Nonetheless, would he support Mr. Maduro as Mr. Chávez’s replacement?

“Venezuelans would support any proposal the president asks them to,” Mr. Pérez said.

Andrew Rosati contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.

Read More..

RIM teases BlackBerry 10 launch with image of first BB10 smartphone

Read More..

AP Source: NHL cancels games through Dec. 30

NEW YORK (AP) — A person familiar with the decision says the NHL has canceled all games through Dec. 30.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement isn't expected to be made until later Monday afternoon. There had already been 422 regular-season games lost because of the ongoing lockout, and the latest cuts will claim 104 more. The NHL also has canceled the New Year's Day Winter Classic and the All-Star game.

The cancellation of just 16 more days of the season could perhaps signal there is hope of a deal to begin play in early January. Negotiations between the league and the players' association broke off last week, but NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said on Sunday that the sides are trying to restart talks this week.

Read More..

A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and about seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, said her parents, Kari and Tom. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers were presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases. “I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, the director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Pennsylvania team and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the university’s campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, the president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results held up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also eventually be used against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but they did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the 11th hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick.

Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

In patients with lasting remissions after the treatment, the altered T-cells persist in the bloodstream, though in smaller numbers than when they were fighting the disease. Some patients have had the cells for years.

Dr. Michel Sadelain, who conducts similar studies at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, said: “These T-cells are living drugs. With a pill, you take it, it’s eliminated from your body and you have to take it again.” But T-cells, he said, “could potentially be given only once, maybe only once or twice or three times.”

The Pennsylvania researchers said they were surprised to find any big drug company interested in their work, because a new batch of T-cells must be created for each patient — a far cry from the familiar commercial strategy of developing products like Viagra or cholesterol medicines, in which millions of people take the same drug.

Read More..

Fed Likely to Sustain Bond-Buying Program to Stimulate Growth

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is widely expected to announce on Wednesday that it will continue buying Treasury securities to stimulate growth in the new year.

The Fed’s public declaration in September that it would buy bonds until the outlook for the labor market “improved substantially” has cleared away much of the uncertainty and controversy that usually precedes such announcements.

The economic recovery remains lackluster and millions are looking for work. But while some analysts question the central bank’s ability to improve the situation, few doubt that the Fed, under its chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, is determined to keep trying.

Indeed, while Fed officials continue to warn that a failure to avert scheduled tax increases and spending cuts next year would overwhelm their efforts and plunge the economy back into recession, they have also said that even if Congress and the White House negotiate a compromise, the Fed’s efforts would continue.

“I am not prepared to say we are remotely close to substantial improvement on the employment front,” Dennis P. Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said in a recent speech. “I expect that continued aggressive use of balance sheet monetary tools will be appropriate and justified by economic conditions for some time, even if fiscal cliff issues are properly addressed.”

The remarks were particularly significant because Mr. Lockhart is among the moderate members of the Federal Open Market Committee whose support Mr. Bernanke invested months in winning before starting the new policy.

With the direction of policy clearly set, debate has turned to the details. The Fed, whose policy-making committee is meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, still must determine what to buy and how much to spend, and officials continue to debate the best way to describe when the agency is likely to stop buying.

In making those decisions, the Fed must balance its conviction that buying bonds reduces borrowing costs for businesses and consumers against concerns the purchases might disrupt financial markets or inhibit its control of inflation.

Analysts say the immediate answer is likely to be more of the same. The Fed currently buys $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion of Treasury securities a month. Officials highlighted that $85 billion figure in September, and have indicated since that it remained their rough target.

“It would be odd for them to disappoint the expectations that they have created themselves,” Kris Dawsey of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to clients predicting that the Fed would maintain both the dollar amount and the division. Other analysts have suggested the Fed might slightly decrease the total amount of purchases, to $80 billion, or increase the share of mortgage securities.

The Fed is unlikely to announce a new timetable this week, analysts said. The committee has said that it does not plan to raise interest rates before the middle of 2015, and that it will stop buying bonds before it starts raising rates.

Many officials on the 12-member committee — perhaps even the majority — would prefer to substitute economic objectives for guidance set by the calendar. The Fed’s ability to reduce borrowing costs derives in part from persuading investors that interest rates will remain low. Telling investors how the economic situation must change in order to warrant a change in policy could be more convincing, and therefore more potent, than simply publishing an estimated endpoint, these officials say.

But an account of the committee’s previous meeting, in late October, showed that officials remained divided about which economic objectives to use.

The most vocal proponent of focusing on economic goals, Charles L. Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said last month that the Fed should declare its intent to keep short-term interest rates near zero until the unemployment rate fell below 6.5 percent, provided that the rate of inflation did not exceed 2.5 percent.

“I believe we have the ability to go even further in reassuring financial markets and the general public that policy will stay appropriately accommodative,” Mr. Evans said in advocating the change during a speech in Toronto.

Other officials have misgivings about placing such emphasis on any single economic indicator, or on the unemployment rate in particular.

The discussions are moving slowly, in part because it is not clear the changes being contemplated would have significant benefits. The targets the Fed is considering closely resemble its own past practice, meaning the new thresholds would tend to reinforce rather than shift expectations.

Lou Crandall, chief economist at the research firm Wrightson ICAP, noted in a recent analysis that the unemployment rate exceeded 7 percent in the mid-1980s and again in the early 1990s, and in both cases the Fed waited until the rate fell well into the 6 percent range before it began to raise interest rates.

The relative complacency of Fed officials also reflects their judgment that the mortgage-bond purchases announced in September are working. Average interest rates on 30-year mortgages are at the lowest levels on record, averaging 3.35 percent in November, according to Freddie Mac’s regular survey.

“This is solid evidence that our policy has been and continues to be effective — though it is certainly not all-powerful in current circumstances,” William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said last week.

To continue the companion purchases of Treasury securities, the Fed will need to change its approach. It is now buying long-term securities with proceeds from the sale of short-term securities, but it is running out of inventory to sell.

The most likely alternative is to create money by crediting the accounts of banks that sell bonds to the Fed, the same method now being used to buy mortgage bonds and also to finance earlier rounds of the Fed’s so-called quantitative easing.

The Fed has repeatedly overestimated the health of the economy and the impact of its efforts. This time, officials have promised to maintain their efforts even as the economy shows signs of improvement. But they are once again sounding notes of cautious optimism about the coming year — if Washington does not interfere.

A budget deal reducing deficits in the long term, Mr. Bernanke said in November, “could help make the new year a very good one for the American economy.”

Read More..