UK: Last Titanic survivor dies at 97

. LONDON, England / BBC News / UK / May 31, 2009 The last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic has died aged 97. Millvina Dean was nine weeks old when the liner sank after hitting an iceberg in the early hours of 15 April 1912, on its maiden voyage from Southampton. Go to source, more photos The disaster resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people in the north Atlantic, largely due to a lack of lifeboats. Miss Dean, who remembered nothing of the fateful journey, died on Sunday at the care home in Hampshire where she lived, two of her friends told the BBC. Her family had been travelling in third class to America, where they hoped to start a new life and open a tobacconist's shop in Kansas City. Miss Dean's mother, Georgetta, and two-year-old brother, Bert, also survived, but her father, Bertram, was among those who perished when the vessel sank. The family returned to Southampton, where Miss Dean went on to spend most of her life. Despite having no memories of the disaster, she always said it had shaped her life, because she should have grown up in the US instead of returning to the UK. Click for BBC video She was fond of saying: "If it hadn't been for the ship going down, I'd be an American." In 1985 the site of the wreck was discovered and, in her 70s, she found herself unexpectedly in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. "I think sometimes they look on me as if I am the Titanic!" she said after a visit to a Titanic convention in America. "Honestly, some of them are quite weird about it." Unimpressed But she never tired of telling her story. "Oh not at all. I like it, because everyone makes such a fuss of me! And I have travelled to so many places because of it, meeting all the people. Oh I wouldn't get tired of it. I'm not the type." But she was unimpressed when divers started to explore the wreck, located 3,000m below the surface of the Atlantic, saying: "I don't believe in people going to see it. I think it's morbid. I think it's horrible." According to BBC South transport correspondent Paul Clifton, she refused to watch James Cameron's epic film of the disaster, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo diCaprio, fearing it would be too upsetting. But in the last years of her life, she began struggling with monthly bills of £3,000 at her care home and had been in danger of losing her room. She began selling some of her Titanic-related mementoes to raise funds, and in April a canvas bag from her rescue was sold at auction for £1,500. It was bought by a man from London who immediately returned it to her. Actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who appeared in the 1998 movie Titanic, also contributed towards her care costs, along with the film's director James Cameron, by donating to the Millvina Fund which was set up by her friends. ____________________________________________ TITANIC IN NUMBERS * 882ft by 92ft, 46,328 tonnes - largest vessel afloat at time * 2,223 passengers and crew left Southampton on 10 April 1912 * Struck iceberg, sank in two hrs 40 mins at 0220 GMT on 15 April * 1,517 killed, 706 survived * Total lifeboat capacity: 1,178 but ship could carry up to 3,547 * Survival rates by ticket class - first: 60%, second: 44%, third: 25%, crew: 24% ____________________________________________ John White, managing director of exhibition company White Star Memories, and organiser of the Millvina Fund campaign said Miss Dean was always "very supportive". She travelled to exhibitions around the country and took the time to sign autographs and write personal messages for adults and children. "She was a lovely supportive lady and very kind-hearted," Mr White told BBC News website. International Titanic Society President Charles Haas, from Randolph, New Jersey, met Miss Dean on numerous occasions and described her as an "effervescent person with a wonderful sense of humour". "It is truly the end of an era," he said. "She was a truly remarkable woman. She had a marvellous approach to life. It is almost as if God gave her the gift and she really took advantage of it." David Lawrence, from the Nomadic Preservation Society, was a friend of Miss Dean and said he was "very sad" to hear the news. "She was very sharp-minded and very sprightly. One of those people who could make a whole room laugh with a story," he said. Youngest passenger Built in Belfast, the White Star Line vessel became infamous for not having enough lifeboats onboard, leading to the deaths of many passengers. Elizabeth Gladys Dean, better known as Millvina, was the Titanic's youngest passenger, born on 2 February 1912. Another baby on board, Barbara Joyce West, was nearly 11 months old when the liner sank. She also survived. Barbara Joyce Dainton, as she became when she married, died in October 2007, leaving Miss Dean the last Titanic survivor. © BBC MMIX

USA: Feeling fuzzy at the 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championships

. LOS ANGELES, California / Los Angeles Times / May 31, 2009 THAT’LL DO: Second place works for Roland Van Den Bremt of Belgium. The world beard championships are part bachelor party and part beauty pageant as men of all ages bond and share grooming tips. By Adam Tschorn The most surprising thing to come out of the 2009 World Beard and Moustache Championships held in Anchorage over Memorial Day weekend was not the Americans' triumph over the long-dominant German competitors, with 11 first-place wins (including the overall champion category) to the Germans' five. Nor was it startling to see 25-year-old Bay Area champ Jack Passion score a repeat victory in the "full beard natural" category with his glossy, flowing set of ginger chin whiskers. No, the most astonishing thing about the event was the way three generations of men with a shared appreciation of facial hair spent four days unselfconsciously sharing grooming tips and kitting themselves out in outlandish garb that included Wild West costumes, Krishna robes, musketeer costumes, and pink suits with fringed hats. Click for Photos Bonding as they went, they accessorized with whale baleen, harpoon guns and whisks. Some knotted flowers into their beards or coaxed their mustaches into wild forms (freestyle mustache winner Keith Haubrich's took the shape of kitchen utensils); others had the help of stylists -- including full-beard freestyle winner David Traver, whose beard was woven into the shape of a snowshoe. The competition itself was a testosterone-fueled mash-up that fell somewhere between bachelor party and beauty pageant. A handful at a time, contestants in 18 categories took to the T-shaped runway in the cavernous Dena'ina Convention Center in downtown Anchorage, flanked by photographers and friends, in front of a panel of judges and a streaming Web camera. Some men vamped and preened, others swaggered. They paraded while nursing beers, smoking cigarettes, carrying painters' palettes or incense burners. Some ended with a deep bow to the audience -- and one did deep-knee bends. All were mindful of the contest's three elements, explained 2009 sideburn/mutton chop world champion Toot Joslin, a swimming pool contractor from Lake Tahoe, Calif. "First is the beard and what you do to it, second is the costume and third is the presentation to the judges. If you're in a military outfit, you might salute them; if it's a cowboy suit, you might mosey." Joslin, who also does Old West re-enactments, competed in full mosey mode, wearing a Stetson, striped riding britches, spurs, canvas vest and a deputy marshal's badge. He's created an entire persona to go with his gargantuan white walrus-tusk sideburns. This level of tonsorial commitment -- and the realization that, as many attendees put it: "You don't choose your beard, your beard chooses you" -- seemed to spark connections. "It's the first time I can remember when seniors and young adults weren't afraid to talk to each other," said Jack Tannatt, 61, a semi-retired Glendale resident who entered the full beard freestyle competition. Continue reading Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

CANADA: Seniors marketplace booming, zooming with products

. KESWICK, Ontario / Georgina Advocate - York Region Media Group / May 30, 2009 By Chris Traber Circus sideshow impresario P.T. Barnum once remarked you'll never go poor underestimating the intelligence of the public. That may be true of the youthful consumer demographic. But, when it comes to the burgeoning seniors market, pitchmen, legitimate or otherwise, have a tougher sell. Seniors are a growing segment, Statistics Canada's A Portrait of Seniors in Canada reports. Between now and 2026, the number of Canadian seniors is projected to increase from 4.3 million to 8.0 million. Their share of the population is expected to increase from 13.2 per cent to 21.2 per cent. Over the next two decades, the number of individuals aged 65 to 74 will almost double, from 2.3 million to about 4.5 million. The share of the total population comprised of these young seniors will almost double to 12 per cent. The number of Canadians aged 85 plus will nearly double as well, rising from about 500,000 in 2006 to about 900,000 in 2026. The financial situation of seniors has improved over the past quarter century. Between 1980 and 2003, the average after tax total income received by senior couples increased by 18 per cent, from $36,300 to $42,800. While marketers are recognizing the potential of the grey segment, they're also cognizant they're also a savvy force to be reckoned with, Newmarket resident and Seneca College creative advertising professor Anthony Kalmut said. Messages targeting the impulsive and free spending 18 to 34 "adventurer" demographic continue, but more speciality advertising agencies focusing on "realistic" seniors are opening shop, he said. "The boomers and zoomers are a growing sector," he said, defining the former as the same as the latter only not as affluent. "We're seeing a trend in specialized (seniors) media. One is Zoomer magazine, advertising upscale travel and investment advice. Online and mobile media too. iPhone, for example, has apps (downloadable applications) for the 45 plus demographic. Seniors are increasingly computer and Internet literate. Meld technology with the wisdom of age and seniors are formidable market segment to impress. "The older consumer wants facts," Mr. Kalmut said. "They demonstrate analysis and a buying strategy. They're more realistic. If they're considering a big ticket item, they look at the investment potential and re-sell value against the liability. They're less impulsive and because most are on fixed income, they want to spend their money well." Thornhill's Baygreen Home Health Care director Madeleine Tadrous has seen her safety and medical products business grow exponentially. "The population is aging and we have more senior customers now," she said. "In fact, it's mostly seniors." Because more elderly people live longer, alone and at home, there's increased interest in health alert and safety products, including systems that summon medical help and assist in mobility, she said. "Seniors are more aware of products available in their market and there's less shame in buying those products. Seniors are not in as much denial." As a purveyor of aids and resources for the elderly, Ms Tadrous has witnessed an upswing in senior-specific products. "There are more products than ever before," she said. "Manufacturers are seeing the population and the opportunity." One visionary entrepreneur is Cachia Electronic Solutions principal Dianne Cachia. The Aurora resident recently acquired the Ontario and Quebec rights to market and sell a new seniors aid. MEM-X is a programmable recording device which provides assistance to people disabled with memory loss caused by old age, brain trauma, dementia, or Alzheimer's disease, she said. The technology enables a caregiver or a senior's children to program reminder voice prompts to be heard at specified times by the owner. The $210, one-button device is available directly and through medical supply and pharmacy outlets. "We have aging parents and it's a concern," she said. "That's how I got interested in this kind of thing. I did a lot of research. The senior market is on the rise and there's a lot of potential." Foremost, MEM-X is designed to be a helpful convenience for the aged with cognitive issues, Ms Cachia said. However, it's also peace of mind for caregivers and the senior's children. Rather than calling six or more times to remind an elderly parent to take medication or any other scheduled task, the unit reminds them in real time. Subject to which reminders are necessary, up to 90 prompts over six weeks can be programmed into the simple, hand held device. The unit is her first foray into the blooming grey product segment. "We're all going to get there before we know it," she said. Copyright 2000-2008 Metroland Media Group Ltd.

SINGAPORE: Made-to-order playmaids

. PENANG, Malaysia / The Malaysia Star / May 30, 2009 INSIGHT DOWN SOUTH By Seah Chiang Nee No contract, no marriage, no legal complications. The woman just moves in as part-time mistress and home minder. Big Brother Chen, can you help me find a boyfriend as soon as possible? This appeal was made to an old acquaintance of mine one recent night by a Chinese immigrant, who was working as a beer promoter. For those unfamiliar with the latest social changes brought about by the influx of mainland Chinese here, the request might sound baffling, but not to my friend. He had heard it several times before. What the middle-age lady wanted was to be introduced to a Singaporean man who was a widower or a divorcee of any age, who could do with a live-in companion. For S$300 a month, she would move in with him as a part-time mistress and home minder. In return she would earn extra money to add to her salary selling beer, as well as free board and lodging that she would otherwise have to spend on herself. It’s mutually beneficial, since the man could have a companion-cum-domestic help at half the cost of a full-time maid (plus levy). No contract, no marriage, no legal complications! It is temporary and no notice of termination is needed. “Just say goodbye and pack your bags’” she said. How widespread such arrangements are is anyone’s guess, but it is believed to be on the rise, particularly in view of the severe downturn when jobs for the ladies are scarce. According to agents importing Chinese workers, the practice has become popular among elderly Singaporeans who are living alone. “These are lonely men whose wife has died or who are divorced, and their married children long gone, so the companionship is as important as the sex,” said one agent. It is useful to eliminate the risk of lonely, vulnerable men being cheated by a foreign spouse. Such cheating cases have been on the rise where the Chinese “wife” disappeared after she had emptied the man’s savings. “Live-in” companionship is the latest practice to emerge from a society that is fast changing under the weight of an influx of foreign immigrants. While it is deemed harmful to the institution of marriage and family, there is, however, a growing acceptance that it does meet a pressing need of lonely old men. “Since no marriage is involved, it doesn’t change Singapore’s family unit because these men live alone,” a retiree rationalised. “At least no one has to be cheated.” The conservatives, however, disagree. “It just panders to the lecherous demands of the men,” said a housewife. This issue of temporary mistresses and marriage scams in Singapore mostly involve Chinese mainlanders because of ethnic familiarity. The tidal wave of arrivals in recent years – especially the women – has brought about tremendous social changes to this small island that are both good and bad. It has added to a vibrancy never experienced before, but it has also created social friction among the locals, including family break-ups. Their number is unknown. According to Tian Fu Club, a clan association formed by the mainlanders here, 300,000-400,000 Chinese have become citizens or permanent residents here. Many are young women who have left families behind in rural China to come for that pot of gold after investing a small fortune in fees to agents to fix them a job or a “student” pass (there are 90,000 of the latter). “These women are tough, determined and they believe that Singapore is rich,” said my friend, who once witnessed an angry exchange between two mainland factory workers. One was furious with her friend for dating a China mainland man. “You are silly. You remember why we left our village to come here; it’s to earn money,” she rebuked her. “How can you waste time with a penny-less ‘Ah Tong’ (slant for Chinese man)?” she wanted to know. “Get a Singaporean.” The vast majority lives a decent, hard-working life and returns home when the time comes, but a minority falls prey to the temptation of easy money. The best pickings can be found among lonely retirees who live alone on their Central Provident Fund retirement savings. The CPF amount, however uninspiring to the locals – is a fortune in most parts of China. For that, a number of women will readily break hearts and families. Worse still, the victim often gets no sympathy among fellow Singaporeans for his “lustful behaviour” chasing after young skirts. One private investigator told the press that his company was getting more requests for help by wives here to investigate husbands who they suspect were keeping a China mistress. On the average of 50 extramarital cases that his firm handled a month in the last two years, 20 would involve a “China student” as the third party. In a recent reported case, one student-mistress lived off a stockbroker like a rich tai-tai for months, before leaving behind large credit card bills, a tearful wife and a broken marriage. I can go on and on with such tales. “They are giving a poor – I must say undeserved — image that Chinese women are home wreckers,” said the agent. “The vast majority works hard to earn an honest living.” Like all capitalistic pursuits here, this practice also stems from balancing supply and demand, which means the men must share the blame. Professor Fu Tan-ming, a social behavioural analyst who is based in Beijing, noted that Chinese women with a history of suffering are more resilient than the men. “They have a stubborn streak in them that propels them forward,” he said. “They would not think twice about packing up their bags to begin life anew thousands of miles away from home. Why? It’s because they know they can survive.” Copyright © 1995-2009 Star Publications (M) Bhd

CHINA: Tea with the FT - Bao Tong

. LONDON, England / The Financial Times / Weekend / Columnists / May 30, 2009 By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing When China’s ubiquitous state security agents want to intimidate a dissident or political activist for the first time, they usually come knocking in the middle of the night with an invitation for “a cup of tea”. Once the tea is served in some secret location, the agents explain that if their guest continues publicly to criticise Communist party rule, the likely consequences range from unemployment to long prison sentences or even “disappearance” for them, their family and friends. So it seems somehow fitting that Bao Tong, the most senior Communist party official to be jailed as a consequence of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, should have invited me to tea at his apartment in the west of Beijing. It was 20 years ago next week, on June 3 and 4 1989, that the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of peaceful student protesters and bystanders. As the anniversary of the bloody crackdown approaches, Bao, now 77, remains under house arrest, his apartment watched around the clock and his movements tightly restricted by state security officers. I’d originally invited him for lunch at a restaurant but, as he patiently explained, under the terms of his house arrest it would be more convenient to meet in his home. He greets me at the door with a wry smile, jet-black hair and a lithe frame wrapped in a Princeton University sweatshirt. It is hard to believe that he spent six years of his life doing hard labour during the Cultural Revolution and then, from 1989, another seven years in solitary confinement in the notorious Qincheng political prison. When I mention the sinister-looking men at the entrance to his apartment block who asked me to explain why I’ve come to see him, his face cracks into a sly grin. “I’m contributing to the country by stimulating domestic demand, increasing employment and helping solve the financial crisis,” he says. He speaks Mandarin with the soft consonants of a southerner and the confidence characteristic of a senior party cadre. “You only saw three people down there but if I want to go out I’m followed by three groups – one on foot, one in cars and one on motorbikes. Just think – it takes more than 30 people to keep an eye on me so if the government decided to monitor all 1.3bn people in China we could solve the unemployment problem for the whole world!” While this kind of gallows humour and the satirical use of communist propaganda slogans is common on the anonymous internet, I have never heard a senior Chinese official, even a retired one, talk like this in public. Bao Tong was born in 1932 in Shanghai, where his father was a clerk in an enamel factory. The young Bao was influenced by two uncles, prominent left-wing intellectuals: one became a professor at Oxford University; the other became famous for a hunger strike aimed at convincing the government of the day to fight the Japanese. At high school in Shanghai, Bao met his future wife, Jiang Zongcao, an active member of the communist underground who was kicked out of a string of schools for organising demonstrations. She convinced him to join the Communist party in 1949, the year it came to power following a bloody civil war. Comrade Bao quickly worked his way up through the communist bureaucracy, but then in 1969, during the Cultural Revolution, he was denounced and sent to do hard labour at a re-education farm in Manchuria. After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, many previously persecuted officials were politically rehabilitated and Bao was assigned to senior government positions. During the 1980s, he worked as a top aide to premier Zhao Ziyang, a liberal reformer who helped usher in a period of political and economic openness in the 1980s, and in 1987 was appointed to the Communist party’s central committee. He served as the minister in charge of political reform and as political secretary to the standing committee of the Politburo, the five-man group that ran the country at that time. One of the first things I notice in his spartan, dimly lit apartment is a large photograph on his bookshelf of Zhao. Only two weeks ago, Zhao’s secret memoir, Prisoner of the State, was published in Hong Kong – a rare first-hand account of Chinese elite politics. Over the next hour, Bao gives me his own blow-by-blow account of the secret and increasingly intense power struggle that raged during the seven weeks of upheaval that ended with tanks rolling down the Avenue of Eternal Peace in Beijing. He begins with his verdict: the man who bears full and sole responsibility for ordering the People’s Liberation Army to turn their guns on the people is Deng Xiaoping, the Communist party elder who controlled the leadership from behind the scenes until his death in 1997. Most historians regard Deng as the father of modern China: the architect of its economic reform and opening to the world. But in 1989 his only official title was chairman of the Central Military Commission. “Most of the students weren’t trying to depose Deng Xiaoping; they were hoping he would carry out reforms,” Bao says. “The problem was Deng felt threatened and he called in the troops. This is how the tragedy happened, a true tragedy in Chinese history.” Zhao, explains Bao, felt the students’ demands for democracy and an end to corruption were exactly what the Communist party itself claimed to stand for, and that a conciliatory approach would be the best way to end the protests. This difference of approach ultimately proved critical. But Zhao’s struggle to avoid sending in the troops ended on May 17 1989 when, after a state visit to China by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhao’s colleagues in the Politburo forced him to resign. In the middle of the night on May 18, Zhao made his final, tearful, public appearance in Tiananmen Square, urging students to give up their struggle and return to class. In a famous photograph from that night, Wen Jiabao, now premier of China, can be seen standing next to Zhao as he addresses the demonstrators. Bao won’t be drawn on whether Wen was a Zhao sympathiser, as some historians suggest. “Who knows if he supported Zhao? Only he knows.” His caution reminds me that every word we’re speaking is being recorded and I glance around the room involuntarily, as if I might be able to spot one of the bugs. This line of questioning is not going to do me or my host any good, so I return to 1989 and the days after Zhao’s resignation. “Many people thought Zhao Ziyang was conspiring to launch a coup against Deng Xiaoping,” Bao says. “In fact, he and I did hatch a ‘conspiracy’ [on the day Zhao was forced to resign], which was to sing the praises of Deng Xiaoping.” Zhao believed he could avert a massacre by appealing for calm, explaining to the masses why Deng was in charge, despite holding no formal government or Communist party positions. Bao was implicated – and later punished – for his alliance with the discredited Zhao. I ask if he regrets not having tried to plot a real coup with Zhao at that point. “Some people said Zhao Ziyang could copy Yeltsin and climb up on to a tank, but that,” says Bao, “was impossible: no single soldier would listen to Zhao, they didn’t know him at all. They listened to their officers, the officers listened to the generals and the generals listened to Deng Xiaoping.” As Mao Zedong famously said, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Bao describes the night the old men, women and children of Beijing took thermos flasks to the soldiers and begged them not to enter the city; how ordinary citizens built barricades in the streets to protect the students and how the tanks and troops stormed the city. “The tanks were roaring and the bullets were flying into people’s homes. In my building, the son-in-law of a government minister was killed as he was pouring a cup of tea in his living room.” I look down at the untouched porcelain teacup on the table in front of me. I’ve been so engrossed I haven’t taken one sip and now I’m not sure if it’s my cup or his. Bao’s vivid description belies the fact he was not in Beijing that night and was not able to piece together the whole story until years later, with the help of smuggled western media cuttings. On May 28 1989, Bao himself was arrested and taken to Qincheng, China’s main political prison since the 1950s. There he became number 8901 – the first prisoner to enter Qincheng in the year 1989 – and was put in a 6m by 6m cement cell with only a stiff wooden board propped on two saw horses for a bed. “I lay down on the board and went to sleep. People ask me why I wasn’t terrified. Before that moment I didn’t know when they would come for me, but now I didn’t need to worry any more.” There was no door to his cell but a guard sat at a table propped across the entrance; two soldiers stood to attention behind him. The seated guard’s job was to record the prisoner’s every action in a notebook 24 hours a day, one entry a minute, for seven years. Bao chuckles at the frustrating boredom of the job assigned to his captors – “20.00 hours – prisoner 8901 sleeping; 20.01 hours – prisoner 8901 sleeping; 20.02 hours – prisoner 8901 sleeping and so on.” In 1996 Bao was finally released from prison and placed under house arrest. His jaw tightens slightly as he describes the hardships his family has endured as a result of their relationship. His Princeton-educated son Bao Pu, 42, is a US citizen and the publisher of Zhao’s memoirs in Hong Kong. He is barred from entering China to visit his elderly parents. But it is Bao Tong’s wife who has suffered the most. He describes the day Zhao Ziyang died in 2005. He and his wife wanted to pay their respects, but were blocked by people guarding the door of the lift in their apartment block, threatening them not to go out. “I explained that it was illegal for them to stop me from going.” The men instead shoved his elderly wife to the ground, breaking her hip. She spent more than two months in hospital. “The Chinese Communist party is just like the Mafia,” says Bao. “If the Mafia boss thinks you might betray him, he will just kill you or throw you into prison for as long as he likes. This is not how a political party or a government should behave.” For all he and his family have endured, Bao considers himself lucky, compared to those even now imprisoned for supposed crimes related to the 1989 demonstrations, or to those who died in the crackdown or in the brutal witch-hunt that followed. According to Bao, his tormentors’ niggling fear is that one day this old revolutionary insider might either be rehabilitated and return as a top Communist official or become a figurehead for a new wave of activism. Bao says he still receives a measure of protection from old friends in senior government positions. “I should count myself lucky and express my thanks with the popular slogan: ‘My eternal gratitude to the Communist party and to Chairman Mao!’” It is in this ironic humour that one senses the real threat to the current leaders in China, even two decades after the Tiananmen massacre and 12 years after the death of Deng Xiaoping. Bao mocks their slogans and denigrates their demigods, but he is, after all, one of them. If he were to be allowed to air his views, they fear the whole authoritarian edifice could start to crumble. “China has almost erased the memory of Tiananmen by making it illegal to talk about what happened. But there are miniature Tiananmens in China every day, in counties and villages where people try to show their discontent and the government sends 500 policemen to put them down. This is democracy and law with Chinese characteristics. “The first sentence of the Chinese national anthem goes like this: ‘Arise! All those who refuse to be slaves.’ I believe there will be real democracy in China sooner or later, as long as there are people who want to be treated equally and have their rights respected. “ It will rely on our own efforts, it will depend on when we, the Chinese people, are willing to stand up and protect our own rights. ” The tea is now cold and the table has been set for lunch. Bao’s family is waiting in the other room for me to leave. Even shaking the hand of a foreign journalist could expose them to criticism from the authorities and, after all they’ve been through, I don’t want to be another source of inconvenience. As I leave the lift, I turn my video camera on the security agent sitting at the desk in the lobby. He yells at me to turn it off and I leave the compound in a hurry, 30 pairs of eyes boring a hole in my back. A few days after this interview, Bao Tong was invited on a tour of a scenic reserve in southern China by the Public Security Ministry. According to his son, he left of his own volition in the company of his security agent entourage last Monday and will not return until June 7, when the sensitive anniversary has passed. Jamil Anderlini is the FT’s Beijing correspondent .................................................. Bao Tong’s apartment West Beijing, China Tea No charge .................................................. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

JAPAN: Islands of and for the old

. TOKYO, Japan / The Japan Times / Life in Japan / Features / May 30, 2009 JAPAN LITE By Amy Chavez "Rikimatsu-san, I'm cleaning the fishing boat today," I tell the old man as he passes in front of my house on the port. I am referring to the small fishing boat with a heap of green seaweed and shellfish sticking to the bottom of it — stuff you'd usually find on a Japanese dinner plate. But at least I know my boat will never go hungry. I point out to him my intentions today because I am a little embarrassed that I haven't cleaned my boat for a while. I am sure he has noticed the growth of seaweed attached to the bottom, peeking out from underneath as if a dozen fish were doing rhythmic gymnastics with green ribbons. "You never use that boat," he said. "Why don't you get rid of it?" "But of course we use it," I said, thinking he must be joking. Rikimatsu-san is one of my favorite old guys on the island. He is 80 years old now and he gave me the fishing boat, the Fujimaru (named after his wife), five years ago. He taught me how to fish for mamakari, aji, ayu, sardines and tachiuo. He still has a fishing boat of his own, but he rarely uses it. His sight has gone bad and he can't hear very well anymore. But that's not why he doesn't go out fishing. His wife won't let him. "You have so many boats that just sit around here," he complains. He's partly right. It's a bit cold to use the boats in the winter, so we use the ferry. For three to four months of the year none of our boats get used. "And that sailing boat," he says, gesturing to the docks where it is tied up among some derelict fishing boats. "But we have sailing reservations every day till July!" I protest. The sailing season is a very busy time for us. "And that fishing boat," he says, pointing to our bigger 6.3-meter boat. "We just went to Awashima and back on that boat last weekend." "You never use your boats. You ought to get rid of them," he says, waving his hand in disgust. He mounts his bicycle and rides away. I was dismayed. For a few seconds anyway. Welcome to senility! And the island seems to be going through quite a bout of it recently. Last autumn, one of the old people complained that the neighbor, a classical pianist, played her piano too loud. Another person brought up the fact that my neighbor's potted flower garden wasn't actually on her own property but was flowing over into a national park, so she should remove the garden. So, she did. Everyone is getting older. And everyone is going crazy. With Japan having one of the highest aging populations in the world, the Inland Sea islands are turning into the world's largest chain of old folks' homes. On our island of 664 people, most of whom are over 60 years old, the island doctor prescribes talking to the sea and convening with the tides for most ailments. Japanese people often move back home to take care of their aging parents, but no one comes back to the islands. The elderly must fend for themselves. And most of them do it pretty well. It has occurred to me that the islands may be a modern form of obasute-yama, the mountains of Japanese folklore where old people were taken to "live out" their dying days alone with nature. Perhaps the islands have become obasute-shima. But I think most old people would be happy to come here: fresh seafood every day, electric obaa-chan carts, cool sea breezes and beautiful sunsets. Makes you want to age a little faster, doesn't it? Perhaps we should take out the Shiraishi lighthouse and instead erect a Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your retirees huddled in nursing homes. . ." These people may be old, they may be crazy, but they'll never give up their island. This is the place that allows them to continue living on their own. The other day an old woman wandered into the ferry port office. She had lost her way home. The ferry port manager called her by name, came out of his office to calm her down, then took her by the arm and walked her home. I feel glad that these older people live on a small island where they can still get by on their own. Because even if they can't fend for themselves, there's always someone else who can fend for them. (C) The Japan Times Click for more about Amy Chavez

USA: Seniors stay healthier when they live with spouse

. NEW YORK, NY / Reuters / Health / May 29, 2009 By Joene Hendry Elderly, community-dwelling men and women appear more likely to obtain preventive health care when they live with their spouse, as opposed to living alone or with an adult child, researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health. Still, "colorectal cancer screening, routine dental check-up, and influenza vaccination remain well below national targets according to the Centers for Disease Control's Healthy People 2010," report Drs. Denys Lau of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and James Kirby with the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality in Rockville, Maryland. Their findings call attention to elders' underuse of preventive health care screenings, the researchers say. Moreover, Lau told Reuters Health, the findings of this study suggest that "healthcare providers should not assume that elderly patients living with their adult offspring will have adequate family resources to obtain preventive services." Lau and Kirby assessed medical expenditure information from 2002 to 2005 for 13,038 community-dwelling men and women at least 65 years old. Most (94 percent) reported needing help with at least one activity of daily living. Seventy-five percent reported having at least one chronic health condition such as angina, asthma, coronary heart disease, diabetes, emphysema, high blood pressure, or had a previous heart attack or stroke. Overall, 52 percent lived only with their spouse, 38 percent lived alone, 5 percent lived with adult offspring and another 5 percent lived with their spouse and adult offspring. Those living only with their spouse were more likely than those in other living arrangements to obtain influenza vaccinations, cholesterol screenings, colorectal cancer screenings, routine physical check-ups, and routine dental care. Living arrangements did not alter elders' screenings for high blood pressure, however. Factoring in the employment and disability status of adult offspring offered no explanation as to why living with adult offspring "had no benefits to elderly persons in terms of accessing timely preventive care," Lau said. The two researchers call for additional investigations of barriers to the utilization preventive health care by the elderly, and increased education about the benefits of obtaining such care. SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, July 2009. © Thomson Reuters 2009

GERMANY: Police arrest drug dealing 81-year-old granny

. BERLIN, Germany / The Local / News / May 29, 2009 Police in Nuremberg on Friday said they have arrested an 81-year-old woman for dealing heroin with her son – supposedly because her pension wasn’t enough to make ends meet. The disabled woman is accused of buying up to 500 grammes of the drug on several occasions since July 2008 before selling it to her customers. The authorities believe she made tens of thousands of euros this way, working with her 53-year-old son. “According to her, she lived from this income because her small pension wasn’t enough,” police said in a statement. Her son was arrested last September following an investigation into the drug dealing of a 63-year-old man from Rhineland-Palatinate. But police only recently had enough evidence to take the elderly lady into custody as well. Source:The Local (news@thelocal.de)

USA: Videos Help Prepare for End-of-Life Care, Shows Study

. NEW YORK, NY / TIME / Health & Science / Wellness / May 29, 2009 By Eben Harrell Image Source / Corbis The debilitating effects of advanced dementia — how it destroys communication, basic muscle control, even the ability to swallow — are difficult to describe in words. Often, it's not until the condition is witnessed up close that it can really be understood. That is the theory behind a new study by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital and other institutions in which aging participants were asked to decide what kind of end-of-life care they would choose should they develop advanced dementia. The study, published Thursday in the British Medical Journal, involved 200 healthy 65-year-olds, who were divided into two groups: one was given a verbal description of the symptoms of advanced dementia; the other listened to the same description but also watched a two-minute video of an elderly woman with the condition being cared for in a nursing home by her two daughters. "Tell us, Ma, how many daughters do you have?" the children ask. "One? Two? You don't know?" (The entire video can be seen here.) The patients were given three options for the type of care they would prefer if they were to develop advanced dementia — a progressive, fatal, neurological condition that often follows years of Alzheimer's disease or a series of strokes, and kills patients three to six years on average after the onset of symptoms. Typical options for end-of-life care include prolonging life at all cost, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and mechanical ventilation; limited care, including admission into the hospital and the use of antibiotics, but not resuscitation; and comfort care, including treatment only to relieve symptoms, but not prolong life. Among the patients who received only the verbal narrative, 64% chose comfort care, 19% chose limited care and 14% chose life prolonging care (3% were uncertain). Among the patients who also saw the video, 86% chose comfort care, 9% chose limited care, 4% chose life prolonging care, and 1% was uncertain. Perhaps more crucially, says the study's lead author Angelo Volandes of Massachusetts General Hospital, when participants were contacted six weeks later, only 6% of patients who saw the video had changed their preference for care, compared with 29% of those who did not see the video. People who saw the video also scored higher on health literacy tests, given by the researchers to judge knowledge of advanced dementia. "The results suggest that patients who watched the video had a better understanding of the disease and felt more secure in their decision. We felt those results were promising, as the goal for end-of-life decisions is to make sure [the patients] are informed," Volandes says. Volandes believes that using images and videos of advanced dementia could be particularly helpful for educating populations that have traditionally low levels of health literacy in the U.S., including African Americans and the elderly. Previous studies have suggested that minorities typically opt for more aggressive end-of-life care than their Caucasian counterparts — "but what we've found in this study is that health literacy is the driving force in this discrepancy, not culture," says Volandes. Projections indicate that more than 13 million patients in the U.S. will develop dementia by 2050. Elizabeth Gould, director of quality care programs at the Alzheimer's Association said that early detection of mental decline and advance planning for end-of-life care is crucial for dementia patients because of the disease's degenerative nature. The organization, which provided funding for the new study, "finds the results of the study interesting and hopes to learn more about the role multimedia can play through future studies," she said. Volandes points out that even though many people have seen portrayals of dementia in movies and TV shows, those images tend to be airbrushed versions of the truth. The video used in the study — which shows two daughters talking to and then feeding their mother — was meant to provide a reality check. Even so, he says, the full "clinical reality" of the condition — such as bladder and bowel incontinence — was withheld. "We wanted it to be honest but not overly emotive or visceral," he says. Volandes's team has also prepared videos of patients suffering from heart failure, late-stage cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — other leading causes of death in America. These will be used in a series of future studies: "We want to show what real disease looks like. We want to make sure we are on the same page when we use words like "CPR" and "dementia" with patients. End-of-life conversations are important, but so is making sure they are communicated in a clear and meaningful way." © 2009 Time Inc.

UK: Mary, 100, reveals the secret of longevity - Sunshine

. HALIFAX, England / Halifax Evening Courier / News / May 29, 2009 Celebrating her 100th birthday: Mary Bowen By Joe Shute MARY Bowen is beaming with pride after celebrating her 100th birthday. And she says the secret of her long life is sunshine. Not that she ever saw much of it in Halifax. Mrs Bowen, of Threadneedle Court, King Cross, Halifax, has been globetrotting for much of her life and even now is a member of the Halifax Aachen Society. She said: "I love travelling and it has certainly helped keep me young. I have been on some memorable trips to the Caribbean and across Europe. I'm very proud to have reached 100 and I've really enjoyed myself celebrating it as well." Mrs Bowen, who has spent 97 years in Halifax, and used to live with her husband George Bowen in Northowram, celebrated with a party for around 30 friends and family. The group enjoyed a buffet, cake and a glass of sherry, with Mrs Bowen's letter of congratulations from the Queen taking pride of place on the table. John Sayer, a support worker at Threadneedle Court, said: "Mary is in such fantastic shape and it is a real landmark for her. We are all very proud." ©2009 Johnston Press Digital Publishing

UK: Routine aspirin benefits queried

. LONDON, England / BBC News / Health / May 29, 2009 Advice about aspirin use has been conflicting Low-dose aspirin should not routinely be used to prevent heart attacks and strokes, contrary to official guidance, say UK researchers. Analysis of data from over 100,000 clinical trial participants found the risk of harm largely cancelled out the benefits of taking the drug. Only those who have already had a heart attack or stroke should be advised to take a daily aspirin, they found. The study should help clarify a "confusing" issue, a leading GP said. The NHS drugs watchdog, the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), has not made a ruling in this area. But experts in the UK, US and Europe recommend aspirin for people who have not already had a heart attack or stroke, but are at high risk of cardiovascular disease because of factors such as age, blood pressure and cholesterol level.

"We don't have good evidence that, for healthy people, the benefits of long-term aspirin exceed the risks by an appropriate margin" - Professor Colin Baigent, study leader

This strategy, known as primary prevention, is based on the result of studies looking at predicted risks and benefits in this population. But the latest research provides clearer evidence because it is based on data from individuals, the researchers said. They looked at heart attacks and strokes and major bleeds - a potential side effect of aspirin - in six primary prevention trials, involving 95,000 people at low to average risk and 16 trials involving 17,000 people at high risk - because they had already had a heart attack or stroke. Use of aspirin in the lower-risk group was found to reduce non-fatal heart attacks by around a fifth, with no difference in the risk of stroke or deaths from vascular causes. But it also increased the risk of internal bleeding by around a third. Balance However, in those patients who had already had a heart attack or stroke and were at risk of having another, the benefits clearly outweighed the chance of adverse events, the researchers said. Study leader Professor Colin Baigent from the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford, UK, said drug safety was vital when making recommendations that affected tens of millions of healthy people. "We don't have good evidence that, for healthy people, the benefits of long-term aspirin exceed the risks by an appropriate margin." He added: "I think the guideline groups will find it useful to have the data analysed in that way." Professor Steve Field, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the issue had been confusing for GPs and patients. "There is no definitive guidance and it makes it bewildering when you have a series of papers which then hint it would be beneficial to take aspirin." He added that many patients would buy aspirin over the counter - either on the advice of their GP or under their own steam - because it was cheap. "This important study does suggest people shouldn't take aspirin unless indicated by disease." Ellen Mason, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation said: "It is better for doctors to weigh up the benefit and risk of prescribing aspirin on an individual basis, rather than develop a blanket guideline suggesting everyone at risk of heart disease is routinely given aspirin." © BBC MMIX

UK: Call for elderly to help shape health services

. GLASGOW, Scotland / The Herald / Society / May 29, 2009 By Stephen Naysmith, Society Editor Whatever the problems faced by older people in Scotland, a sense of powerlessness can only make them worse. But professionals can sometimes be part of the problem. Now a new centre based at Glasgow Caledonian University will give older people the chance to improve they way they are cared for by the NHS, local authorities and care homes directly. Today the university will launch Europe's first Joanna Briggs Institute Aged Care Collaborating Centre, which will draw on best practice from around the world to improve the care of older people. The Joanna Briggs Institute is an international not-for-profit research and development organisation which aims to give healthcare professionals in nursing, midwifery, medicine and allied health the best advice on evidence-based practice. The institute has more than 54 centres and groups working in 90 countries, but the Scottish centre will be the first in Europe to specialise in older people's issues. Hearing is an example of the area in which it might have an impact, according to centre director and professor of gerontological nursing, Dr Debbie Tolson. She said research carried out by the charity RNID had revealed contradictions between older people's views and those of professionals about the best way of tackling hearing loss. "Hearing difficulty is one of the most common age related problems. Older people said we want information before we go and see a specialist and we are happy to work in groups'. But professionals thought that too much choice might make older people confused, which is quite insulting, or that consultations needed to be one on one, which services couldn't afford." The result can be frustration on both sides, Dr Tolson explains. "If we are not asking the right questions, we won't be investing in the solutions which are wanted by older people." The aim of the Scottish Centre for Evidence Based Care of Older People is to support research in a wide range of areas such as nutrition, falls, dementia and infection control to deliver better patient care. Using its international links, the centre will support the NHS, local authorities and care homes by drawing on best- practice from around the world to improve care for older people. The university will work with NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, Care Commission Scotland, Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS board, Forth Valley NHS Board and HealthQwest, as well as care providers and older people themselves, to support research and ensure it is translated into higher standards for patients. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland is paying for all its NHS staff to join the collaborating centre. Meanwhile the centre will work directly with older people and indirectly through organisations such as Alzheimer's Scotland, to ensure their perspectives are central to its work. Professor Alan Pearson, executive director of the Joanna Briggs Institute, and Penny Bond, of NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, will be among the speakers at today's launch event. Prof Pearson said: "I am delighted that this important new Joanna Briggs collaborating centre is reaching out to older people themselves. It will have a unique opportunity to play an important role in improving the care and the quality of life of older people as well as in the education of students." Glasgow Caledonian University's Dr Tolson said the recognition by the Joanna Briggs Institute was a fantastic accolade for Scotland and added: "We want practitioners to work with us and learn with us to help us shape care for older people around the world." For more, email D.Tolson@gcal.ac.uk Copyright © 2009 Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited

CHINA: Chinese men don't age well

. SINGAPORE / The Straits Times / May 29, 2009 By Theresa Tan & Ang Yiying CHINESE men do not have it when it comes to ageing. A new study has found seven in 10 elderly Chinese men do not age well. The study also found that men who are better educated, physically active, eat a proper diet and have religious or spiritual beliefs tend to age better. Associate Professor Ng Tze Pin, of the department of psychological medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS)), said: 'What's very interesting is that those who have some religious or spiritual belief tend to age more successfully. Spiritual help seems to be a source of emotional and mental support.' The other factors, he explained, are fairly predictable in that exercise and good nutrition keep one healthy; and better educated seniors tend to be more resourceful in areas such as seeking medical help. So what is considered ageing well? Prof Ng - who presented the study of about 1,300 Chinese men aged 65 and older at a symposium titled Healthcare Challenges For An Ageing Population - said there are four factors that pertain to positive ageing. They are: good physical health and the ability to function independently; being mentally alert and emotionally well; engaged socially; and being able to say they are highly satisfied with life. However, the number of men who score on all four criteria is small because many are in poor physical health, he said. About half of those surveyed said they are not in good health. And for many, ill-health affects their quality of life. Because of their ailments, for example, some men feel that they are no longer able to move about independently. Mr Lim Boon Heng, the minister in charge of ageing issues and guest of honour at the symposium, urged Singaporeans to exercise regularly, sharing that he has signed up for a gym membership with two other friends. 'It is tough for a person to change his lifestyle if his family and friends don't do so. Some mornings I wake up and go to the gym because my friends are there.' However, three quarters of the population do not work out on a regular basis, he said, and the challenge is to convince people to do so as a healthier population would mean a lower rate of chronic diseases and disabilities. Helping people stay healthy for as long as possible and helping the sick get proper care are two challenges facing Singapore's rapidly ageing population, he pointed out.[rc] Copyright © 2008 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co.

JAPAN: 80 day care firms receive warnings

. TOKYO, Japan / The Japan Times / Kyodo News / May 29, 2009 Local governments have instructed 80 unauthorized day care facilities for the elderly to improve their conditions, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Thursday. The 80 facilities in Tokyo and 13 other prefectures were deemed substandard for being too crowded and lacking qualified night staff and wheelchair access. The welfare ministry issued a notice Thursday to 47 prefectural governments asking them to tell unauthorized day care facilities to register with local authorities. The ministry told the prefectures to study the possibility of fining facilities that do not comply. A welfare law was revised in 2006 to force day care facilities to register, but some are unwilling to do so to evade government surveillance. (C) The Japan Times

USA: Such great heights

. TORONTO, Ontario / CBC News / Arts & Entertainment / May 28, 2009 FILM REVIEW The Pixar film Up is smart, eye-popping and, above all, moving By Katrina Onstad, CBC News Carl Fredricksen (right) takes off with Russell and Doug the Dog in the new 3-D animated Pixar feature Up. (Disney/Pixar) It turns out one of the best movies in recent memory to broach the subject of old age is a kid's cartoon about balloons. Of course, it isn't just any kid's movie when it comes with the Pixar stamp, and Up follows the signature course of the world's most ambitious animation studio: a small thing – be he scaled or robotic – undergoes trauma, goes a-wandering and rouses to a stirring, self-affirming conclusion. The odd choice in Up is that the thing in question is not a cuddly Nemo or a huggable Wall-E, but an old man named Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) with an enormous, rectangular Havarti-head and two wild eyebrows that make Andy Rooney look groomed.

It turns out one of the best movies in recent memory to broach the subject of old age is a kid's cartoon about balloons.

The film opens with Carl as a little boy in a movie theatre. (Pixar is nothing if not deeply in touch with its inner child — particularly its inner child in rapture in a darkened theatre.) He's watching newsreel footage of Charles Muntz, a Lindbergh-like explorer who gets around in a blimp. As Muntz scales mountains and traverses oceans, Carl's small face – made of the same basic rectangle-head-circle-nose geometry as his aged self – explodes with awe and wonder. The range of expression is striking, rendered in animation a bit different than in previous Pixar films. Everything feels more tactile, a little less cute and more foreboding — Carl is in the real world, but not of it, which may be a pretty good visual metaphor for the isolation of old age. The fleshiness of his head brings to mind Duane Hanson's resin sculptures – the ordinary become extraordinary – as well as the kind of finger-indenting texture of a Cabbage Patch doll. Up looks great, especially in 3-D. There aren't many aggressively or literally in-your-face 3-D shots, but a crispness that suits the story, which is really that of Carl's late-coming clarity about what his marriage actually meant. On his way home from the theatre, young Carl meets a fellow Muntz aficionado, a girl named Ellie, who starts off as a gap-toothed tomboy (inspiring more awe and wonder in Carl), and then, in a quick flash forward, becomes his wife. From here, the pair's life together unfolds in a wordless montage, simple and direct. In less than five minutes, a wedding gives way to a life of love located in small moments feeding birds and watching the shape of clouds shift, side by side. While still young, sad news arrives that the couple can't have children, a moment depicted only by the slump of a cartoon body in a doctor's office, shot from outside the door. Something in that silent image said more than any poetic dialogue could have, a cartoon capture of the way profound moments sometimes feel like movies happening to someone else. Ellie and a young Carl in a scene from the new Pixar feature Up. (Disney/Pixar) The montage ends with Ellie's death (as in all great children's stories, devastating loss comes early and hard), and Carl alone in the house they built together. Their neighbourhood is being consumed by a strip-mauling – sushi and lofts – and the house is surrounded on all sides by screaming diggers and cranes, much as in the classic children's book The Little House. Carl can't take it anymore, unmooring his home and setting it aloft in the sky with an enormous flock of helium balloons. People in their glass towers point and cheer at this manifest freedom floating past their windows: Carl escapes on behalf of city drones everywhere. Carl's goal is to get to South America and drop the house atop Paradise Falls, the place Ellie always dreamed of visiting. But a little boy has somehow attached himself to the porch, and Carl finds himself with sidekick. Russell (Jordan Nagai) is an overly excitable kid in a kind of Cub Scout uniform looking for his merit badge in "assisting the elderly." An Asian-American kid with the same round, universal nose (he resembles the overly hefty citizens of the space ship in Wall-E), he's a cheerful, clueless sweetheart, too innocent to recognize he's as much of an outsider as Carl. Click to visit Pixar Animation Films You know where this is going: Who will rescue who? Once on land, the ranks of grumpy Carl and the lonely little boy are filled out by an enormous rainbow-coloured bird called Kevin and Doug the Dog. Muntz, who's gone a little Kurtz up in the jungle, has trained a dog army to communicate their thoughts through high-tech collars. I, for one, couldn't get enough of this running joke (clearly written by a cat person) about the galumphing simplicity of the canine world view, where every thought is interrupted by cries of: SQUIRREL! Human question: Wanna fetch the ball? Dog answer: Oh, I would! Very much so! I will bring it back to you and you will like me! Muntz wants those dogs to bring him the Kevin-bird for his collection. Voiced by Christopher Plummer, Muntz has his own quest narrative to enact. He's seeking a comeback, but, poignantly, his type is long obsolete. Pixar knows its sentimentality portions well: never too much, never too little. Up may be a formulaic summer blockbuster put out there by that behemoth Disney, but it never feels cynical. The artistry is too caring, and its heart too afloat. Up opens across Canada on May 29. Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca. Copyright © CBC 2009

USA: Researchers find "safer" way to make stem-like cells

. WASHINGTON, DC / Reuters / Health / May 28, 2009 By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor U.S. researchers said on Thursday they had come up with the safest way yet to make stem-like cells using a patient's ordinary skin cells, this time by using pure human proteins. The team at Harvard University and Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology Inc said their technique involves soaking cells in human proteins that turn back the clock biologically, making the cells behave like powerful embryonic stem cells. Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell sees almost immediate commercial applications. "After a few more flight tests -- in order to assure everything is working properly -- it should be ready for commercial use," Lanza said by e-mail. He said the company would seek Food and Drug Administration permission to test the cells in people by next year -- a process unlikely to be quick, especially with a brand-new technology such as this one. Stem cells are the body's master cells, giving rise to all the tissues, organs and blood. Embryonic stem cells are considered the most powerful kind, as each one is pluripotent, with the potential to morph into any type of tissue. Doctors hope to someday use them to transform medicine, for instance, by regenerating the cells destroyed in type 1 diabetes or regrowing eye cells to reverse blindness. But embryonic cells require the use of an embryo or cloning technology, and several countries, including the United States, limit funding for such experiments. Several teams of scientists have homed in on four genes that can turn back the clock in ordinary cells, making them look and act like embryonic stem cells. These so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, could in theory be made using a patient's own skin, allowing grow-your-own transplants with no risk of rejection. DIFFICULT WORK Getting these genes into the cells is not easy, however. The first attempts used retroviruses, which integrate their own genetic material into the cells they infect. Others used loops of genetic material called plasmids or other genetically engineered molecules to reformat the cells. And another team used the proteins made by the four genes and valproic acid to reprogram cells, but Lanza said these methods all have drawbacks. His team, working with Kwang-Soo Kim of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and a team at CHA Stem Cell Institute in South Korea used a peptide, a protein fragment, to drag the human proteins into the cells. "These have been around for a long time," Lanza said. "The AIDS virus uses the peptide to get into the cells it infects," he said. Using cells from the foreskins of newborn boys -- a common laboratory technique -- they showed they could transform the cells into iPS cells. They regrew them into a variety of mature new cell types, they reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell. "This method eliminates the risks associated with genetic and chemical manipulation, and provides for the first time a potentially safe source of iPS cells for translation into the clinic," Lanza said. "This is the ultimate stem cell solution -- you just add some proteins to a few skin cells and voila! Patient-specific stem cells!" One question that is not clear is who owns the technology. Lanza said many groups have tried to patent the various steps in the process and it is not yet clear whose patents will prevail. Editing by Anthony Boadle © Thomson Reuters 2009.

UK: Myths dispelled on age-related Alzheimer’s

. CAMBRIDGE, England / University of Cambridge / May 28, 2009 Having the brain changes of Alzheimer’s disease is not necessarily associated with dementia in very elderly people, according to a new study. Emphasis on diagnostic indicators developed on the younger old may lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment in the older population. Scientists studied 456 brains donated to the Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing Study from people aged 69 to 103 at time of death. The research paper, Age, Neuropathology, and Dementia, will appear in The New England Journal of Medicine. They studied the effect of age on the relationship between neuropathological features and dementia. This study followed a representative sample of more than 18,000 people since the 1980s. Researchers observed that although the relationship between cerebral atrophy and dementia persisted into the older age group (about 95 years), the strength of the association between the pathological features of Alzheimer's disease and clinical dementia diminished after age 75. Research into Alzheimer's disease is generally focused on younger old people, whereas studies involving very old people report weakened relationships between the features of Alzheimer's and dementia. Professor Carol Brayne, Director of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, said the evidence pointed towards a more complex relationship between brain function and brain pathology than is usually assumed in dementia research. "We wanted to see whether the pathology that is associated with dementia is different in older people. In the age group at greatest risk, having dementia by the time of death is much more loosely related to the usual suspects in terms of neuropathology than it is at younger ages. This means that approaches to early detection using markers for those usual suspects could, in future, lead to considerable overtreatment, expense and potential harm to individuals who would have died without ever developing dementia in life." "The paper suggests we need to be cautious about assuming that the presence of particular biomarkers means that someone will inevitably develop dementia in these age groups." Professor Paul Ince, Head of Pathology at the University of Sheffield, said: "We need to look at measures of pathology that are not presently part of the conventional protocols used for evaluating brain disease in dementia. "A major strategy in dementia research has to be towards delaying the onset of dependency. If we could push back the age of onset by five years on average we would prevent a huge amount of the medical and social burden of dementia." The study included research partners from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Institute of Public Health, Cambridge University; Academic Unit of Pathology, Sheffield University; MRC Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Public Health, University of Liverpool, University of Newcastle, University of Nottingham and the University of Oxford. © University of Cambridge

USA: Doctor and Patient - Talking Frankly at the End of Life

. NEW YORK, Ny / The New York Times / Health / May 28, 2009 Dana Neely/Getty By Pauline W. Chen, M.D. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking, writing and speaking about end-of-life care, but this issue recently became quite personal for me. My mother-in-law died two weeks ago. A ringer in her youth for Donna Reed, with Rita Hayworth legs, my mother-in-law possessed a dazzling memory and a designer’s flair, and she loved to surround herself with family and friends (“where the action is,” she used to say). She spent most of her 86 years following her husband across the country, teaching art in the schools where he taught. But wherever they landed, she managed always to make new friends. Lots of friends. When one of her sons passed away, she and my father-in-law received more than six hundred letters of condolence. But by the time my mother-in-law died 14 days ago, her social circle had shrunk considerably. She had been battling rheumatoid arthritis for almost 50 years, a series of debilitating strokes for 10, and the ulcers on her legs that would not heal would, in the final year of her life, necessitate an above-the-knee amputation. Over the last few months, unable to hold a pen to write and too weak to speak into a phone, my mother-in-law saw her social life whither away. Her once expansive world was reduced to the square footage accessible by wheelchair and amenable to the trappings of all the medical equipment she needed. In the days since her death, I have often thought about the many conversations my mother-in-law and the family had with the doctors and nurses about the dying process. There was the initial discussion over two months ago that she was likely to die soon and would benefit from hospice, and then there were also the many daily conversations about her comfort, about what she wanted and what she did not. While I have become over the last few years a voice in the movement to improve end-of-life care in this country, these kinds of conversations with patients and their families still hit hard. As a close friend of mine once said, “One of the scariest things in the world is to look someone in the eye and tell them they are dying.” But in my practice I do try to tell patients they are dying because I believe in my heart that it is worse when clinicians don’t. Nonetheless, every doctor comes to these conversations with some anxiety. It is hard not to feel as if you have failed your patients and their families, to wonder if taking out an inch more of bowel when removing the colon cancer, starting with a different antibiotic, or ordering a different diagnostic test might have somehow changed the course of events. And then there is the conversation itself. “Death” and “dying” are words that can echo in a room long after they are said. Hopes can be shattered in an instant. Patients and families may feel abandoned. It is hard as a doctor not to wonder: Am I doing more harm than good? One particular study came back to me during these last few weeks, a study that attempted to answer just this question. Published last fall in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the study examined how end-of-life care discussions with terminal patients affected their quality of life and that of their caregivers. Over the course of almost six years, Professor Holly Prigerson, director of the Center for Psycho-oncology and Palliative Care Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and her colleagues interviewed more than 300 terminal patients, asking them if their doctors had ever discussed care at the end of life. After these patients died, the investigators analyzed the type of medical care received prior to death, then interviewed the patients’ caregivers six months later to assess how they were adjusting to their loss. What Dr. Prigerson and her co-investigators found was that those patients who had had discussions with their physicians were more likely to have better quality of life at the end of their lives. These patients were not more depressed or more worried as a result of these discussions, and they tended to receive less aggressive medical care and earlier hospice referrals. Moreover, their caregivers fared better and suffered from significantly less depression six months after the patient’s death than caregivers whose loved ones had received more aggressive care. I spoke to the lead author of the study and one of the investigators, Dr. Alexi Wright, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber. “There is almost an assumption a priori that these end-of-life discussions will cause harm, so doctors are afraid to have them,” Dr. Wright said. “Patients then fail to realize that their time is limited, and they don’t make the kind of choices they would if they did know.” I asked Dr. Wright if telling patients that they were dying might take away hope. “In trying to emphasize only the positive, we can end up with a misguided sense of hope,” Dr. Wright responded. “I think it’s really important to define hope more broadly. Hope is in the life we live, in our families. When I meet patients with incurable cancer, I hope they live as long as they can and with the best quality of life they can have. But I know from the outset that they will die from their disease, so hope is helping them to live as long as and the best that they can.” Dr. Wright also emphasized the need to have several discussions about end-of-life care choices. “These conversations are not a one shot deal, but often need to happen repeatedly, as patient preferences about end-of-life care change and their disease states can change,” she explained. “It’s possible, too, that a patient might be in denial or may not be ready to hear such news and wouldn’t remember a discussion. But at the end of the day what’s important is what the patient remembers ” Individuals can differ markedly in the amount of information they want to know, and conversations should be tailored accordingly. “About 20 percent of patients don’t want to know prognostic information,” Dr. Wright said. “But if patients have feelings about the kind of care they want, they should bring it up with their physicians. You want to be treated by a physician who you feel really understands and respects your values.” That sense of understanding can have a cascading benefit for survivors. “As doctors we tend to focus on the patient, the person sitting before us. We need to think about the legacy of our treatments and the potential to help families cope with inevitable loss.” The loss of my mother-in-law hangs heavy in our house. There are moments when my husband is silent and I know that he, like me, is thinking about her life and her last days. Those last days were not always perfect. There was the clinician whose well-meaning but overly enthusiastic pronouncements that my mother-in-law was “actively dying” left all of us more exasperated than comforted. And she suffered for a few days from a side effect of morphine. But in the end, the ongoing discussion and interactions with the doctors and nurses about her desires and her dislikes gave my mother-in-law not only comfort but also a sense of still being part of the conversation, part of “the action,” part of life. And those discussions also gave my husband and his sister opportunities. They sat with their mother and read to her. They fed her when she was hungry and put cool towels to her face when she was hot. My sister-in-law even organized one last social event, a “Spring Fling,” for her mother. The children, grandchildren and two great-grandchildren from across the country filled the room with the kind of lively conversation and laughter my mother-in-law had always loved. I remember that she glowed that day. Her cheeks, once pale, were flushed pink, and her voice, usually barely audible, rang clear. She smiled, she laughed and she kissed all of us as we leaned over her bed. After all the festivities had come to an end, my husband and sister-in-law left the room to escort everyone out. I saw my mother-in-law look up toward the sky after they left, opening her mouth as if to speak. I walked closer and heard her say softly to herself, “I am so happy.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

CHINA: A Grandfather’s Legacy

. JAKARTA, Indonesia / The Jakarta Post / Life & Times / May 28, 2009 By Maureen Fan in Beijing I am standing at a desk in the Xuhui District Housing Bureau with a photograph of an old document, in search of my past. Two middle-aged bureaucrats sit behind desks, one scowling and the other eating a takeout lunch with chopsticks. The house at 1292 Huaihai Road was the last building that Robert Fan owned before he left China in 1949, just as the Communists took power. (Photo: Maureen Fan, Washington Post) “We’d like to know what the procedure is for getting back the house that belonged to her grandfather,” my interpreter tells them. I look just like them, and for a moment they can’t understand why someone else is speaking for me. But the Chinese my mother taught me was Cantonese, which turns out to be the wrong Chinese. After some prodding, the scowling man pulls out a weathered ledger that says a real estate agent named Zhang controlled the property after 1958, authorizing the government to rent it out. When I insist that my father and uncle know no such person, and that the family couldn’t have rented out the house in the 1950s, the bureaucrat grows irritated. “What do you know?” he says coolly. “You’re only the third generation.” The history of a country changes, but often the buildings do not. They continue to stand, mute witnesses to the narrative around them. Those who control them, manage them or live in them fill them with meaning, and that’s what they stand for, until history changes again and they represent something else. I come from a family of architects, and so the buildings matter to us. My grandfather was one of Shanghai’s most prominent architects and designed the Nanking Theater, now the Shanghai Concert Hall; the Rialto, Astor and Majestic movie theaters; the YMCA building on Xizhang Road South; university buildings and private residences; and the Railway and Health ministries in Nanjing. But the buildings that drew me most were the ones my family once lived in — in particular, the house at 1292 Huaihai Road, the last house my grandfather Robert Fan (or Fan Wenzhao) owned before he left China in 1949, just as the Communists took power. He and my grandmother lived here with their four children, including my father, and a handful of servants. I first visited this house in 1986, just after college, and again in 2002. I stand before it now, trying to read the history of my family in its sprawl. My father and mother are also architects, retired from their San Francisco practice. I was raised in suburbia with only an academic understanding of China until I came back in 2005 to study Mandarin and work as a correspondent for The Washington Post. I go in. The house is three stories, pale yellow, with flaking green trim and rusty scaffolding that juts haphazardly from the facade. The front porch is a tailor shop; along one side, a tiny storefront sells cheap shoes and socks. I walk tentatively up the steps, into a labyrinth of dark rooms. The air smells like old wood and dust, mingled with the cooking of 10 families that occupy every inch of the place, from basement to attic. Mice dart between the loose electrical cables and portable stoves lining the dingy hallways. There’s a toilet next to the kitchen sink, a curtain drawn around it to provide a modicum of privacy. On the second floor, I find an elderly man in an unheated room crammed with detritus: plastic bags, coat hangers, stacks of dried food. He wears a stained aqua windbreaker and a brown knitted cap against the cold. “Come in. Sit down,” he smiles. I explain that my grandfather once owned this house. From a drawer the man fishes out a limp photocopy of a 2002 ruling issued by the People’s Court, Xuhui District, listing my grandmother Fan Xiao Baolian as the “property owner of house No. 1292 in mid-Huaihai Road.” “It is not clear where the property owner went,” the People’s Court declared. But I know the property owners went from a life of luxury in this spacious house to renting a small two-bedroom apartment in Hong Kong, still a British colony in 1949. Their children, in search of degrees and passports to help end their statelessness, scattered to the United States. I was drawn to my grandfather’s buildings because I hoped I could pull some kind of meaning from them. He died in Hong Kong when I was a teenager, too young or ignorant to extract stories about why he left China. From my father, I got only the barest details in between his understandable rants against the Communist Party. “Mao Zedong was not just against capitalists. He took away freedom of speech. He launched the Cultural Revolution. He killed two and a half million of his own people,” my father said in one of his many tirades. “Not being for Western dancing, that’s fine. But he burned Confucius’s books and destroyed Chinese culture. He called America a paper tiger when America was way ahead. He was an uneducated hypocrite, and he took away the best years of my life.” In Shanghai, my grandfather spoke English at home, counted foreigners among his friends and kept Mies van der Rohe chairs in his living room. He took his children to see the Marx Brothers or Tarzan in theaters he designed. They were the privileged minority, preparing their children for jobs as doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers while Shanghai’s poorer citizens died of starvation in the streets. If my father was bitter about Mao, I cannot fathom what my grandfather must have felt. He always believed in being open to trends outside of China. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1921, thanks to scholarship funds made available by the Americans, and returned heavily influenced by Paul Philippe Cret, dean of the Beaux-Arts tradition. He began by incorporating both Chinese and Western elements, such as the YMCA building with its upturned eaves and large windows. But after a 1935 tour of Europe, he began to criticize the “Chinese style” and fully embrace modern Western-style architecture, as in his 1941 design of Shanghai’s Majestic Theater. This wasn’t so surprising when Shanghai was known as a cosmopolitan, international center of trade. But when Mao promised to nationalize private property and redistribute wealth less than a decade later, the future of anyone with Western attitudes was doomed. Yet many Western buildings outlasted those whims of policy, surviving the wrenching change that China has undergone over the past 50 years. In 2003, the neoclassical Shanghai Concert Hall built by my grandfather and architect Zhao Chen was lifted off the ground and moved 66.1 meters, to allow space for an elevated roadway nearby, at a cost of $20 million. One man responsible for saving it is Wu Jiang, 49, vice president of Tongji University, who disagrees with the argument that such buildings should be torn down because they are a reminder of China’s shameful colonial subjugation. “History cannot be changed or blotted out,” Wu told me. “We should respect ourselves. No matter whether they are beautiful or not, those buildings represent your past.” In 1989, Shanghai had a list of 62 protected historic buildings. Today, thanks to him, it has more than 2,130. Wu’s grandfather, also a Western-trained architect, had worked for my grandfather. Wu’s father, a civil engineer, was ruined by the Cultural Revolution, which reduced him to an impoverished existence in the countryside and made him a stranger to his son, Wu said. As he spoke, I thought, “I could have been Wu.” “Every family like us has similar stories,” Wu said. “A lot of families were totally destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. But if you survived, you had a much better life. People like me were sent to university.” If you survived. Just when I was feeling lucky for having been born in the United States, Wu explained why he turned down chances to emigrate. “Chinese people have a different cultural background. Here, you are with your own culture,” he said. “My grandfather told me an architect needs to stay in his own culture. I argued that some Chinese architects like I.M. Pei are famous in the United States. But my grandfather said no, no, no, he’s not a Chinese at all.” My father had just entered St. John’s University in Shanghai when the Communists defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. Under the Communists, the university was dismantled. The Harvard-trained founder and dean of the school of architecture, Henry Wang, was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, reportedly turned in by his own students for being too Western. By 1952, a xenophobic mentality had taken hold. Citizens were forced to shout slogans against “imperialistic capitalists.” My father had to confess at “study sessions” that his mind was poisoned because he came from a capitalist family. He and his friends were questioned for frequenting cafes and eating Western food. Other Chinese deemed too friendly with foreigners were persecuted so much that they chose suicide. When my father finally received an exit permit to visit my grandfather, he told none of his friends. He packed a knapsack with a sweater, a book and a few essentials and climbed onto a train with my grandmother, leaving behind his younger brother, then 19, and all their belongings. His two sisters had already gotten out. What did that feel like, I often asked my father. “That was a long time ago,” was his stock answer. In China, I came to see, there is no dwelling on misfortune. No whining. No hand-wringing. There’s even a term for it: “to eat bitterness.” But I wanted to know. Pressed, my father finally said, “Of course, I didn’t feel good, but I knew Grandpa would get him out.” My uncle got his exit visa about six months later, but the family couldn’t have known that that was certain. China was well into its third decade of a reform policy, begun by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, when my father finally returned to Shanghai in 2002. After 50 years, he had finally been worn down by the arguments of friends. One, from a prominent Shanghai banking family that had lost everything when they fled, told him she had made peace with her own bitter memories by focusing on the improvements the Communists delivered. The Communists had installed a state-run economy and cradle-to-grave job security in exchange for political loyalty. They promised to end the appalling corruption of the Nationalists but they soon substituted their own abuses of power, collectivizing farmland, sparking famines and subjecting citizens to brutal political campaigns that led to the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. That campaign of terror against the educated and merchant classes is still felt today in the “lost” generation it produced. But at least people were no longer dying in the streets, the friend said. Had he stayed, my father would have belonged to that generation. Instead, he attended graduate school, raised a family in California and never looked back. Our family visited my grandfather in Hong Kong, but we never talked about China. The 2002 trip did not change my father’s views. But it seemed to jar his stoic pattern of not thinking or talking about the past. One day last year, I was visiting my father in San Francisco. He began talking about Wang, the revered former St. John’s dean who had studied under Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school, and returned to China in hopes of starting a school in the same modern tradition. Instead, Wang found himself trying not to use English and having to criticize students for reading too many Western magazines. Wang and his wife were both placed under house arrest. They died shortly afterward, my father said, beginning to cough violently. I looked up to see that my father was actually crying. “Thank God Grandpa sent me to Harvard,” he said. In his view, my grandfather’s foresight had saved both their lives and my father’s career. When I tell him Xuhui District Housing officials say it’s impossible to get the house on Huaihai Road back because there is no policy or procedure for dealing with pre-1949 houses, my father says he doesn’t care. Another home designed by my grandfather means more to him: a larger building on Yongfu Road that my father remembers as the “Bauhaus house,” for its angular lines and turreted, rectangular windows and where he lived from 1932 until 1941. It is in the lines of this house that I can see my grandfather’s hopes and ambitions. This house is boxy and square from the outside, absent decorative detail and almost industrial in style. The windows are galvanized steel, once painted black but now red with rust. Inside, the stairway landings are geometric half circles. This is my grandfather, trained in the Beaux-Arts but following the modern International movement that came into fashion after he returned from the United States. At a time when most Shanghai voices urged a focus on traditional Chinese design, I see him rejecting decoration that serves no purpose, applying that foreign mantra “form follows function.” I imagine him poring through American architectural magazines, not unlike students in China today, studying the latest Western trends. I picture him lecturing colleagues and apprentices on paying attention to the competition and not looking inward, as China did for so many years. I can see the cost of doing so in the jumbled lives of the many tenants in the house on Huaihai Road. But that house seems to no longer have any real meaning for my family. Instead, it is the house on Yongfu Road that tells me the most. It reminds me that China once looked forward and outward, and is doing so again today, faster than it has ever done before. Maureen Fan is Beijing Bureau Chief for The Washington Post Copyright 2009 The Jakarta Globe

UK: Life As A Carer

. LONDON, England / The Guardian / Society / Joe Public Blog / May 28, 2008 Bushra Tahir cares for her husband, her mother and her sister. This is her story. 'The demand of my caring role is huge.' Posted by Bushra Tahir, from London I have been a carer for my husband for the last 27 years – he has had a heart disorder since the age of 42, had heart bypass in 1995 and then a severe stroke in 2005. Since my Dad died in 2001, I have also cared for my mother and my sister who has learning disabilities. The demand of my caring role is huge. I eventually had to give up my self-employed job and survive on carer's allowance which is £50 a week, well below the minimum wage. It is not easy to go through social services, and it is often a real mission to approach them. Over the years I have managed to get help from them with great difficulty. . Recently government has introduced a new method of helping people through Direct Payments – where councils give people a lump sum and allow carers to hire their own choice of help. This will help people hire help within their own culture, faith and language. When this service was introduced it was very poor, now we have insisted that the local council consult carers and service users to allow us to express our views. We are constantly trying to get better local services, but I think we need good support from central government too. Carers do save taxpayers lots of money; if I put all the people I look after in care homes it would cost a huge amount. Carers should be recognised and be given financial and moral support. As a carer you lose your identity and personality, you do not have time for yourself and you lose your friends. My family are my loved ones; I do not want to put them into a care home. I don't want to entrust them to a stranger. This is an appeal from an emotional helpless carer. I hope the message will get through and that the government will help carers out there. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009