US Catholics Pursuing Sainthood for Native American Visionary Nicholas Black Elk

Last month, U.S. Catholic bishops voted unanimously to pursue sainthood for Oglala Lakota healer and visionary Nicholas Black Elk, who is credited with bringing hundreds of Native Americans to the Catholic faith. It is the realization of a dream for Catholic Lakota on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, among them, some of Black Elk’s descendants.

But not everyone one supports the move, mindful of the Church’s role in the historic suppression of indigenous cultures.

Background

Most of what is known about Black Elk is derived from an autobiography dictated to writer John Neihart in 1932, “Black Elk Speaks.”

He was born in present-day Wyoming in December, 1863, according to the Lakota calendar, and given the name of Hehaka Sapa, literally, “Black Elk.”

Black Elk grew up during the period of American settler expansion into the West and the U.S. government’s forced removal of Native Americans onto reservations. During this time, missionaries from various Christian denominations flocked to reservations in order to “save” Native souls. Catholic priests of the Jesuit order — called “black robes” by Lakota — established a mission at Pine Ridge.

Black Elk’s childhood was punctuated by religious visions which led him to later serve as a wichasha wakan, a traditional healer and spiritual leader. Black Elk announced his vocation in 1881, but after the U.S. government banned many Native American religious practices, he was forced to go underground.

“The Jesuits could tolerate Lakota spirituality and practice, but they did not like the healing ceremonies,” said Damian M. Costello, author of Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism. “They saw them as calling in spirits in an inappropriate way.”

In 1904, Costello explained, a Jesuit priest angrily interrupted Black Elk while he was performing a healing ceremony.

“In the aftermath of that, Black Elk was invited to Holy Rosary Mission, and he stayed there, learned about the faith and was eventually baptized,” he said.

Black Elk took the Christian name of Nicholas, after the 4th century healer, St. Nicholas. For the next 40 years, he served as a Church catechist, or lay cleric, and is said to have brought more than 400 Native Americans to the Catholic faith.

The road to sainthood

The movement to have him declared a saint began in March 2016, when some of Black Elk’s descendants presented a formal petition to Rapid City, South Dakota, Bishop Robert D. Gruss.

Gruss formally opened the case for sainthood on October 21 during a Mass at Pine Ridge’s Holy Rosary Church.

“Our task now is to continue to gather more information, testimony about his life, and to pray that he is found worthy to have his cause moved forward,” Gruss said.

The canonization process involves three steps: First is the declaration of a person’s heroic virtues, after which the church declares the person “venerable.” Second is beatification, after which the person is called “blessed.” Third is canonization, sainthood.

Petitioners must show evidence of two miracles occurring before and after beautification.

Bill White, a Lakota Catholic, will serve as the postulator for Black Elk’s cause. His job is to gather evidence to present to Rome.

“I believe God spoke to Black Elk at a very early age, and it isn’t likely that this was a message that just came from his village,” White said. “The message that we must all live in peace and harmony, it was such a Christian concept that it had to have come from God Himself, and it actually informed him and gave him direction for the rest of his life.”

Debating conversion

The nature of Black Elk’s conversion, however, is still debated by some scholars: Did the traditional healer become a Catholic out of true conviction or did he simply give in to pressure?

His great-granddaughter, Lakota activist Charlotte Black Elk, has been critical of the Church.

“There are varying types of genocide,” she told C-Span in a 2001 interview. “There’s the genocide where you outright kill people. There’s the genocide where you deny them identity through religious expression, through theology.”

She believes Black Elk converted because it was politically expedient.

“In those days, we weren’t allowed to travel without permission,” she told VOA. “But as a catechist, Black Elk could go everywhere and conduct traditional ceremonies.”

She said she does not support the idea of the Catholic Church claiming her ancestor as a saint, “but I do respect those who do,” she said. “And I will live well together with all my relatives.”

White is aware that not everyone supports the cause, but rejects their criticism.

“For over four decades, he was a catechist. He brought in hundreds of converts. Is this something you do just for a meal ticket, just to be able to travel freely?”

That said, he issued an invitation to skeptics: “I would invite them to give me some evidence. In my job as postulator, I would want to hear evidence to the contrary of what I feel and what I believe.”

The final decision will lie in the hands of Pope Francis, who has been vocal in his support of indigenous rights.

If confirmed, Black Elk would be the second Native American to receive the Church’s highest honor. The first was Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th century Mohawk, canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

From: MeNeedIt

Miami Citizens Become Scientists to Study Rising Seas

Rising seas driven by climate change are threatening coastal cities around the world. The Southern U.S. city of Miami is already feeling the effects. Every autumn, when tides are at their highest, residents contend with flooded streets. Now, scientists are turning citizens into scientists to help them understand the impacts. VOA’s Steve Baragona spent time with volunteers splashing in puddles for science.

From: MeNeedIt

Bangladesh Asks NY Fed to Help it Recover Stolen Millions

Bangladesh’s central bank has asked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to join a lawsuit it plans to file against a Philippines bank for its role in one of the world’s biggest cyber-heists, several sources said.

The Fed has yet to respond formally, but there is no indication it would join the suit.

Unidentified hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the New York Fed in February last year, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system. The money was sent to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines.

Nearly two years later, there is no word on who was responsible, and Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million, mostly from a Manila junket operator.

​Legal action discussed

Officials from Bangladesh Bank and the New York Fed spoke about legal action against RCBC in a conference call last month that was also attended by two representatives from SWIFT, according to three sources in Dhaka who had direct knowledge of the conversations.

It was agreed that Bangladesh Bank would send a proposal on the suit to the New York Fed, they said.

“The aim is to file a case by March-April in New York,” said one of the sources. “Work is on. Bangladesh Bank is likely to send something to the Fed soon.”

The source said the idea was it would be a civil suit to recover the money, and that Bangladesh hoped the Fed and SWIFT would be joint petitioners.

Subhankar Saha, a spokesman for Bangladesh Bank, said he had no knowledge of any plans to sue RCBC but that “efforts are on to recover the entire stolen money.”

The New York Fed and SWIFT declined comment.

A source familiar with the New York Fed’s thinking confirmed that Bangladesh Bank’s external counsel raised the idea of filing a suit against RCBC in the call.

The New York Fed officials agreed to review any proposal Bangladesh Bank wrote up, but they did not formally agree to a joint effort, and have not since worked on it nor heard from Bangladesh Bank, the source said.

​Rogue employees

RCBC has blamed rogue employees, and Philippine prosecutors have filed money-laundering charges against a former RCBC bank manager and four people who owned the bank accounts where the funds were sent, but are not identifiable because the accounts were in fake names. They are the only people to be formally cited in association with the crime.

Bangladeshi officials have cited internal RCBC documents, also seen by Reuters, to assert that the Filipino bank ignored suspicions raised by some RCBC officials when the money was first remitted to the accounts on Feb. 5, 2016, and then delayed acting on requests from RCBC’s head office to freeze the funds on Feb. 9.

RCBC did not respond to requests for comment. But it has said in the past that it would not pay any compensation and that Bangladesh Bank bore responsibility for the theft since it was negligent.

RCBC was fined a record 1 billion Philippine pesos ($20 million) by the country’s central bank last year for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it.

Separately, a Bangladesh court has sent letters rogatory to the United States seeking the findings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the case, said the main police investigator in Dhaka. Letters rogatory are documents used to obtain judicial assistance from foreign courts.

“We have questions for the Federal Reserve Bank, we want to collect the FBI report, what their findings are,” Molla Nazrul Islam, a special superintendent of police in Bangladesh, told Reuters this week.

An FBI spokeswoman said the agency could not comment on ongoing cases.

A hacking group called Lazarus that is believed to have connections to North Korea has been linked to the Bangladesh cyberheist, and some U.S. officials said earlier this year that prosecutors were building a case against Pyongyang. But no case has yet been filed.

From: MeNeedIt

Study to Determine if 3-D Mammograms Produce Better Results

Mammography has been a standard screening device for breast cancer since the mid-1970s. And the practice is credited with a 30 percent decline in death, thanks to early detection and treatment.

Now, many doctors are urging women to get a 3-D mammogram, which produces a more detailed view of the breast. But there has not been a large-scale study to determine if the technology actually provides a better outcome — until now.

Women older than 50 are advised to get a mammogram every year or two to screen for breast cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women.

​Comparing mammograms

A new study funded by the National Cancer Institute will compare traditional mammograms with the 3-D version to determine if the newer, often pricier choice really improves early detection of tumors.

“It’s a new technology that has been FDA approved,” said Dr. Tova Koenigsberg of Montefiore Health Systems in New York. “But we don’t actually have studies that know whether in a large population 3-D actually helps.”

Koenigsberg heads the project at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care, one of about 100 clinics participating in the five-year study. The clinics, spread across the United States, and a few in Canada, will soon enroll healthy women ages 45 to 74 who are planning to get a routine mammogram, including Sabitri Jaipersaud.

After a doctor found what turned out to be a benign abnormality in her breast, she became diligent about annual mammograms and felt joining the study was important.

“It immediately piqued my interest because I feel that all, all of us can benefit from this and for the future,” Jaipersaud said.

The women in the study will be randomly assigned to get either the regular mammogram or the 3-D version for five years. Most will be screened annually but post-menopausal women who don’t have certain cancer risk factors will be screened every other year.

A traditional mammogram takes an X-ray of the breast from top to bottom and side-to-side.

“In a 3-D mammogram,” Koenigsberg said, “the camera actually sweeps at an angle and allows us to see the breast at different angles and projections.”

Known pros, cons

Doctors know that there are pros and cons to 3-D mammography, said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

“It might find disease that we need to find that two-dimensional does not,” Brawley said. “There’re potential cons in that it has a higher cost, higher amount of radiation, given every dose, every time a person has a test, as well as it may find a higher number of false positives.”

As for what type to choose, some insurers, including Medicare, cover the 3-D version, and a small number of states mandate coverage. Other insurers may require women to pay $50 to $100 more out of pocket.

After collecting the result of every scan, biopsy and cancer at the end of the study, researchers hope to provide certainty about how often women should get mammograms, and which women would benefit most from which type.

From: MeNeedIt

Condom Clothing Designer Shocks Congo Into HIV Awareness

A Congolese fashion designer is promoting safe sex with a collection of clothes made of condoms that she hopes will help combat HIV/AIDS in the central African country.

Felicite Luwungu started making her condom line, which includes strapless evening gowns and tops, after the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit close to home.

“I have lost loved ones to HIV – that’s what inspired me to do this,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from the capital, Kinshasa. “The message that I hope people will apply is to be prudent.”

The number of people living with HIV/AIDS and dying from related infections in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been falling for more than a decade, according to the United Nations.

The prevalence rate of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is about 0.7 percent, among the lowest in southern and central Africa, UNAIDS data shows.

Luwungu, 40, displays her work in runway shows and exhibitions. When she finishes the condom collection, she plans to present it at a large fashion show next year.

The designs have shocked audiences but responses have been mostly positive, Luwungu said.

“People make jokes but it doesn’t discourage me,” she said. “That only pushes me to do this more.”

From: MeNeedIt

US EPA Chief Says He May Launch Public Climate Debate in January

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could launch a public debate about climate change as soon as January, administrator Scott Pruitt said on Thursday, as the agency continued to unwind Obama-era initiatives to fight global warming.

The agency had been working over the last several months to set up a “red team, blue team” debate on the science relating to manmade climate change to give the public a “real-time review of questions and answers around this issue of CO2,” Pruitt said.

“We may be able to get there as early as January next year,” he told the House energy and commerce committee during his first Congressional hearing since taking office.

Pruitt, others cast doubt

Pruitt and other senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration have repeatedly cast doubt on the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide (CO2) from human consumption of fossil fuels is driving climate change, triggering rising sea levels, droughts, and more frequent, powerful storms.

In June, Trump pulled the United States out of a global pact to fight climate change, saying the deal was too costly to the U.S. economy and would hurt the oil drilling and coal mining industries.

Pruitt is reportedly vetting a list of scientists that have expressed doubts over climate change to take part in the upcoming debates, including some that have been recommended by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation.

An EPA official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the selection of scientists.

Skeptics pressure Pruitt

The debate would come as the EPA proposes to rescind the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obama’s main climate change regulation that was aimed at reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

On Thursday, Pruitt said the agency plans to propose a “replacement” for the Obama-era rule. He previously only committed to considering a replacement.

But Pruitt has also been under pressure from conservative climate change skeptics in Congress to go further and upend the scientific finding that CO2 endangers human health, which underpins all carbon regulation.

‘Breach of process’

At the hearing, Pruitt said there was a “breach of process” under the Obama administration when it wrote its 2009 “endangerment finding” on CO2, because it cited the research of the United Nations climate science body.

“They took work from the U.N. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) … and adopted that as the core of the finding,” Pruitt said.

He did not say whether he plans to try to undo the finding, which legal experts have said would be legally complex.

Pruitt told Reuters in July the debate could be televised.

From: MeNeedIt

Oscars Organization Adopts Code of Conduct After Weinstein Expulsion

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science announced Wednesday that it has adopted its first code of conduct for its 8,427 members.

Film academy chief executive Dawn Hudson introduced the new rules to members in an email. In October, the academy broke with tradition and made Harvey Weinstein just the second person ever expelled from the Oscars’ governing body.

 

The new code of conduct stipulates that the academy is no place for “people who abuse their status, power or influence in a manner that violates standards of decency.”

 

The academy’s board may now suspend or expel those who violate the code of conduct or who “compromise the integrity” of the academy.

 

The standards of conduct were drafted by a task force launched by the academy in October. It was formed after Weinstein was accused by dozens of women of sexual harassment and abuse.  Weinstein, who won an Academy Award for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.

 

Hudson told members that more details on the process by which offending members will be judged will be announced later.

From: MeNeedIt

7 Years in Prison for Former Top Volkswagen Manager  

A federal judge in Michigan has sentenced a former high-level Volkswagen manager to seven years in prison for his part in the scheme to cheat emissions tests and defraud consumers.

Oliver Schmidt has also been fined $400,000. He pleaded guilty in August to charges that included defrauding the United States and violating the Clean Air Act.

“This sentence reflects how seriously we take environmental crime,” Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Lemisch said Wednesday. “Protecting national resources is a priority of this office. Corporations and individuals acting on behalf of corporations will be brought to justice for harming our environment.”

Schmidt was the general manager of Volkswagen’s U.S. Environment and Engineering office. He admitted knowing about and agreeing with engineers to carry out a scheme to install a device on certain VW diesel vehicles that would switch on for emissions tests, but switch off during normal driving.

Customers bought the cars believing they were environmentally friendly when in fact the cars were polluting as much as 30 times higher than U.S. standards.

Federal courts have ordered Volkswagen to spend more than $1 billion to buy back or repair the affected cars.

From: MeNeedIt

China’s Ofo Joins Crowded Paris Bike-share Market

China’s Ofo launched its dockless bicycles in Paris on Wednesday, becoming the fourth bike-sharing plan operator in a city set to banish all combustion-engine cars by 2030.

Ofo France general manager Laurent Kennel told Reuters the firm, one of two bike-sharing giants in China, had put just over 100 of its bright yellow bicycles on Paris roads on Wednesday and plans to ramp that up to 1,000 bikes by year-end.

Ofo comes hot on the wheels of Hong Kong-owned Gobee.bike, which launched in October and whose bright green bikes, estimated at a few thousand, can be seen on every Paris street.

A third Asian player, Singapore-owned oBike, has a few hundred bikes on Paris streets, and will also compete with the city’s long-established Velib plan.

Unlike the dockless Asian bikes, the Velib bikes must be parked in fixed docking stations of which there are some 1,800 in Paris, but which are often full in popular parts of the city.

“We want to be leader in free-floating bikes in Paris and France,” Kennel said.

He added that to cover Paris well, the firm plans to put several thousand bikes on the road, although there are no immediate plans to match Velib’s 24,000 bicycles.

Like Velib, the Ofo bikes have three gears – unlike the gearless Gobee and oBike bikes – but will be slightly more expensive at 0.50 euros ($0.6) per 20 minutes, compared to 0.50 euros for 30 minutes for the other two Asian operators.

Ofo’s bikes will be free for the first 40 minutes until the end of the year. Velib is free the first half hour for users with a subscription.

Kennel said Ofo operate more than 10 million bikes in 200 cities worldwide, the vast majority in China, and a few thousand in Europe, including in Milan, Madrid, Vienna, Prague, London and Cambridge.

Ofo, which has raised more than $1 billion from Chinese venture capitalists, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., will cooperate with Paris city authorities, which have said they want to regulate the dockless bike plans to prevent chaos on Paris sidewalks.

The dockless bikes can be found and unlocked with a mobile phone app, and after use they can be left anywhere. So far there have been no pile-ups as have been seen on Chinese roads.

The new Asian bike share operators’ entry into the Paris market is well timed, as longtime Velib operator JCDecaux is replaced by the Smoovengo consortium, which won a 600-700 million euro ($700-$825 million) contract to run the Paris city bike-sharing system from 2018 to 2032.

Dozens of Velib docking stations have been out of order for weeks as Velib’s old docking stations are replaced with Smoovengo’s new stations.

The Paris city government is building more bike lanes as it tries to reduce automobile traffic in a bid to cut pollution.

($1 = 0.8486 euros)

From: MeNeedIt

New Jimi Hendrix Album With Unreleased Songs Coming in March

Unreleased songs recorded by Jimi Hendrix between 1968 and 1970 will be released next year.

 

Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings announced Wednesday that they will release Hendrix’s “Both Sides of the Sky” on March 9, 2018. The 13-track album includes 10 songs that have never been released.

 

Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27. The new album is the third volume in a trilogy from the guitar hero’s archive. “Valleys of Neptune” was released in 2010, followed by “People, Hell and Angels,” released in 2013.

 

Eddie Kramer, who worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album made during the artist’s life, said in an interview that 1969 was “a very experimental year” for Hendrix, and that he was blown away as he worked on the new album.

 

“The first thing is you put the tape on and you listen to it and the hairs just stand up right on the back of your neck and you go, `Oh my God. This is too (expletive) incredible,” said Kramer. “It’s an incredible thing. Forty, 50 years later here we are and I’m listening to these tapes going, ‘Oh my God, that’s an amazing performance.”’

 

Many of the album’s tracks were recorded by Band of Gypsys, Hendrix’s trio with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Stephen Stills appears on two songs: “$20 Fine” and “Woodstock.”

 

“It sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash except it’s on acid, you know,” Kramer, laughing, said of “$20 Fine.”

 

“Jimi is just rocking it,” he added. “It’s an amazing thing.”

 

Johnny Winter appears on “Things I Used to Do”; original Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding are featured on “Hear My Train A Comin”’; and Lonnie Youngblood is on “Georgia Blues.”

 

Kramer produced the album alongside John McDermott and Janie Hendrix, the legend’s sister and president of Experience Hendrix. Kramer said though “Both Sides of the Sky” is the last of the trilogy, someone could find new Hendrix music in an attic or a basement, which could be re-worked.

 

He also said they have live footage of Hendrix, some just audio and some in video, which they plan to release.

 

“It was amazing just to watch him in the studio or live. The brain kicks off the thought process — it goes through his brain through his heart and through his hands and onto the guitar, and it’s a seamless process,” Kramer said. “It’s like a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar at the same time, and it’s scary. There’s never been another Jimi Hendrix, at least in my mind.”

From: MeNeedIt

Super-size Black Hole Is Farther From Us Than Any Other

Astronomers have discovered a super-size black hole that harks back to almost the dawn of creation.

It’s farther away from Earth than any other black hole yet found.

A team led by the Carnegie Observatories’ Eduardo Banados reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday that the black hole lies in a quasar dating to 690 million years after the Big Bang. That means the light from this quasar has been traveling our way for more than 13 billion years.

Banados said the quasar provides a unique baby picture of the universe, when it was just 5 percent of its current age.

It would be like seeing photos of a 50-year-old man when he was 2½ years old, according to Banados.

“This discovery opens up an exciting new window to understand the early universe,” he said in an email from Pasadena, California.

Quasars are incredibly bright objects deep in the cosmos, powered by black holes devouring everything around them. That makes them perfect candidates for unraveling the mysteries of the earliest cosmic times. 

 

The black hole in this newest, most distant quasar is 800 million times the mass of our sun.

Much bigger black holes are out there, but none as far away — at least among those found so far. These larger black holes have had more time to grow in the hearts of galaxies since the Big Bang, compared with the young one just observed.

“The new quasar is itself one of the first galaxies, and yet it already harbors a behemoth black hole as massive as others in the present-day universe,” co-author Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory said in a statement.

Around the time of this newest quasar, the universe was emerging from a so-called Dark Ages. Stars and galaxies were first appearing and their radiation was ionizing the surrounding hydrogen gas to illuminate the cosmos.

Banados suspects there are more examples like this out there, between 20 and 100.

“The newfound quasar is so luminous and evolved that I would be surprised if this was the first quasar ever formed,” Banados said. “The universe is enormous, and searching for these very rare objects is like looking for the needle in the haystack.”

Only one other quasar has been found in this ultradistant category, despite extensive scanning. This newest quasar beats that previous record-holder by about 60 million years.

Still on the lookout, astronomers are uncertain how close they’ll get to the actual beginning of time, 13.8 billion years ago.

Banados and his team used Carnegie’s Magellan telescopes in Chile, supported by observatories in Hawaii, the American Southwest and the French Alps. 

From: MeNeedIt

Gene Therapy Offers Hope of a Cure for Blood Disease

Gene therapy has freed 10 men from nearly all symptoms of hemophilia for a year so far, in a study that fuels hopes that a one-time treatment can give long-lasting help and perhaps even cure the blood disease.

Hemophilia almost always strikes males and is caused by the lack of a gene that makes a protein needed for blood to clot. Small cuts or bruises can be life-threatening, and many people need treatments once or more a week to prevent serious bleeding.

The therapy supplies the missing gene, using a virus that’s been modified so it won’t cause illness but ferries the DNA instructions to liver cells, which use them to make the clotting factor. The treatment is given through an IV.

Hope of a one-time treatment

In a study published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, all 10 men given the therapy now make clotting factor in the normal range. Bleeding episodes were reduced from about one a month before gene therapy to less than one a year. Nine of the 10 no longer need clotting factor treatments, and the 10th needs far fewer of them. There were no serious side effects.

Follow-up is still short, a year on average. Some cells with the new gene might not pass it on as they divide, so the benefits may wane over time, but they’ve lasted eight years in other tests in people and up to 12 years so far in dogs.

“The hope is that this would be a one-time treatment” to fix the problem, said the study leader, Dr. Lindsey George of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

Spark Therapeutics, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that makes the treatment, and Pfizer, which now is working with Spark on it, paid for the study, and some of the study leaders work for or have stock in Spark.

Dr. Matthew Porteus of Stanford University, who wrote a commentary in the journal, called the results striking and said, “I think we’re definitely on the road” to a cure. 

‘It’s pretty magical’

It feels like one to Canadians Jay and Bill Konduras, brothers who live an hour’s drive outside Toronto who were in the study.

“It’s pretty magical,” said Jay Konduras, 53, who runs a bakery and was treated in June 2016. 

“Life-changing,” said Bill Konduras, 58, a machinist treated in March.

Before, even small amounts of exertion would cause tiny muscle tears and bleeding problems requiring clotting factor treatment.

“Even something as innocuous as reaching over your head to get something out of a closet, or reaching down to tie a shoe” could trigger trouble, Bill Konduras said.

Six years ago, he nearly lost his leg after a motorcycle crash tore open an artery; he spent nearly a month in the hospital. Since the gene therapy, neither brother has needed clotting factor treatment.

Costs are unknown

The therapy is still experimental and its eventual cost is unknown, but clotting factor treatment costs about $200,000 per patient per year, Porteus said.

Another gene therapy, from BioMarin Pharmaceutical for a different form of hemophilia, also showed promise in a different study. Thirteen patients have been treated and have had a big drop in bleeding episodes and clotting factor treatments, study leaders report. One-year results will be given at an American Society of Hematology conference that starts Saturday.

Other companies are working on hemophilia treatments; Sangamo Therapeutics is testing traditional gene therapy and gene editing approaches.

From: MeNeedIt