BLOGGING FROM THE WHITE HOUSE — via Jeff Jarvis.

AMAZING NEWS, which I hope will pan out:

DALLAS – An experimental vaccine wiped out lung cancer in some patients and slowed its spread in others in a small but promising study, researchers say.

Three patients injected with the vaccine, GVAX, had no recurrence of lung cancer for more than three years afterward, according to the study of 43 people with the most common form of the disease, non-small cell lung cancer. . . .

The cancer disappeared in three of the advanced-stage patients. Two of those patients previously had chemotherapy, which failed. In the rest of the advanced-stage patients, the disease remained stable and did not spread for almost five months to more than two years.

A close friend of mine (actually, a former girlfriend) died of lung cancer at the age of 33, despite never having smoked. I’d like to see that sort of death become as obsolete as death from bubonic plague. And when people like me seem to be in a hurry to see science and medicine progress, it’s because we understand that people are dying now who don’t have to be, and who won’t be once cures are developed. (Via Donald Sensing).

UPDATE: Reader David Horwich emails:

Some of my practice is helping pharma (including biotechnology) companies raise the capital necessary to get through the three phases that must be done before a drug is approved for sale. The last credible figure I saw was that a pharma company would spend north of $100 million to get a drug approved; it takes 10 years to do this. Now think about the funnel that the company has to sift through to get there. Phase I is testing safety and a little bit of efficacy. If the compound makes it through to Phase II, it tests efficacy and determines the appropriate dosage to try to make it work. Phase III is for all the marbles, when
the company does a double-blinded, placebo test, in multiple clinics throughout the country, once it has located and enrolled the patients.

Then, if the data pans out, the company prepares a report of its findings and goes to the FDA and waits nearly 18 months to find out whether or not it will then have the luxury of spending tens of millions of dollars on marketing and selling the drug. All before one dollar of revenue.

And a significant percentage of drugs that get into Phase I don’t make it to Phase II. And a lot of Phase II drugs don’t make it to Phase III. And a large number of Phase III drugs fail the test. The cost above does not include these failures. The next time anyone complains about the high cost of prescription drugs should understand this. The reason Canada or EC countries get innovative drugs much cheaper is because they don’t have to go through this system of bringing a drug to market. Think Thalidomide and you can understand why this occurs.

Having said all that, there are some truly amazing technologies in the pipeline that I know about. The entrepreneurial spirit and the compassion and passion that executives at these startups and nascent companies have is astonishing to be part of and makes my job all that much more satisfying. Genomics is going to make their job much, much easier and has already begun to do so.

Bring it on, I say.

AMIR TAHERI WRITES on the end of illusions in Iran, including the notion that the mere holding of elections constitutes democracy, and the idea that Iran is likely to be reformed from within.

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis has a roundup of Iranian blog coverage.

UPDATE: More thoughts, on an earlier version of Taheri’s piece that ran in the Arab News, here.

THE TROUBLE WITH LIBEL. Most people who file those suits seem to regret doing it.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT.

And then there’s this. I guess you don’t find many apparatchiks who favor free speech.

MARGARET WENTE has thoughts on the unfolding Canadian scandals, which really deserve more attention than they’re getting in the States.

FREE DOWNLOADS AND COMPETITION: Okay, the InstaWife’s book was selling on Amazon for $100 used, which led her to make it available for free download on her website. The used price is now $95.24, after being available for download for over a month, even though there’s a comment on the Amazon page telling people where they can get it for free. I’ll grant that this isn’t scientific, but it certainly suggests that the availability of free downloads doesn’t destroy the market for a product, even at a very high price differential.

What’s more, she’s gotten quite a few donations through her website, making the entire operation a profitable one. People’s willingness to make donations, sometimes sizable, in support of things they can get for free is something that has surprised me about blogging, and suggests that the portrayal of human behavior I got in Econ 101 was incomplete.

NICK SCHULZ on gay marriage. A few days ago, I noted that although gay marriage polls badly, I didn’t think the intensity of the opposition was very high. So far, it still looks that way.

BASED ON THIS BLOG REPORT, Iranians appear to be boycotting the elections, and everything else, today.

UPDATE: You can read translated Iranian blog reporting here at IranFilter.

MICKEY KAUS notes that CBS gave Kerry a mulligan. Is it bias? Or Kerry’s superior strategy?

MORE ON IRAN: This story from The Telegraph suggests that a collapse may be imminent, or at least that the mullahs have lost moral and religious authority:

The old American embassy in Teheran might have been seared into the world’s consciousness as the cradle of Iran’s revolution, yet the talk among the young Revolutionary Guards stationed there does not match the murals shouting defiance from battered walls.

“I would live in America, no problem,” said one 22-year-old, who added that he associated the country with “love and freedom”.

Nearby, “Down with USA” was painted on the wall in garish red and yellow hues.

Another guard, also in his 20s, added: “Our government has one view of America but the people have another.

“Our government tries to show the US as an enemy of our country and of our people. All of the young believe the US is good. Most of the people believe this.”

How long can the Mullarchy keep power under these circumstances?

SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM BULGARIA:

Something about this war is eating Bush’s detractors alive, something unquantifiable with conventional weights and measures. I think that it is because if George W. Bush really did lie (and thus surprising both the Right and Left), the anti-war crowd would still have to face a disheartening Spectacle of Freedom For An Entire People, instead of the more satisfactory Humiliation Of Bush At The United Nations And Mass Graves Nobody Knows About.

That simple.

Nothing is more irritating than watching your enemies fail to live up to your worst expectations. If George W. was hawking stolen museum art, or John Ashcroft was forcing Shiites to convert, or Dick Cheney was sucking the oil from Iraqi teenager’s skin, the Left would have far lower blood pressure. They would be relieved, vindicated, because the war would be delightfully immoral.

The anti-war crowd long ago started measuring themselves as culturally, intellectually, and morally superior to the pro-war crowd, instead of measuring whether their policies were superior. Thus, the incredible success in Afghanistan and Iraq is not a blow to their policy, it is a blow to their ego and sense of self.

Indeed. (Via Vodkapundit).

“WORTHWHILE CANDADIAN SCANDAL” — Now there’s a turn of phrase that just keeps going. . . .

HUGH HEWITT: “My offer to [John] Edwards to co-host my program any or all days from now until March 2 remains open. Given that I am on, among many places, in drive-time in L.A., San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, and in the early evening in Boston, Atlanta, Cleveland and Cinncy –all Super Tuesday markets– I am certain he’d be tripling his exposure in those cities by coming into the studio, but I haven’t heard from the campaign.”

If Edwards passes on this offer, he deserves to lose.

ROGER SIMON continues to follow the money — Saddam’s oil money, that is.

RHODE ISLAND’S GOVERNOR CARCIERI has withdrawn a proposed state Homeland Security bill that got a lot of criticism.

ANDREA SEE will be running in the Xiamen marathon and is looking for sponsors (the money goes to charity). If you’ve been waiting your whole life to sponsor a tattooed smartassed Chinese/Singaporean woman in a Chinese marathon, well, here’s your chance.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: “I can’t help but think some people admire totalitarian regimes not because they want to live in one, but because they want to be in charge of one.”

He also has some thoughts on what should be done with Saddam.

PATRICK BELTON has a roundup of reports on tomorrow’s Iranian elections and observes:

ON THE EVE OF A CORRUPT ELECTION which will undoubtedly install a conservative majority and add the Iranian parliament to a trifecta of judicial, clerical, and now political institutions controlled by hardliners, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi announced today that she would not vote, in protest against the mass disqualification of reformist candidates. Abstention will be widespread, in fact – Agence France Presse’s correspondent this morning found only one passer-by who was planning to vote, after speaking with three dozen.

Still, there will be an election, even if it has already been determined that its results will not reflect the preferences of the Iranian people.

The real question is what will happen next.

IRAQI WOMEN are marching to demand equal rights. Funny that American women’s groups aren’t rallying loudly to their support.

IS THE JOHN EDWARDS CAMPAIGN REALLY “WHOLLY FUNDED by the trial lawyers”? That’s what John Kerry’s press secretary, Stephanie Cutter, is quoted as saying in the New York Times. And, since the Times story provides no contradictory information, and it’s the New York freakin’ Times, I guess it must be true, right?

Maybe I’ll go donate a buck to Edwards, just so that he’ll have gotten at least one dollar from somewhere else. Odd that it hasn’t happened before. . . .

UPDATE: Are all these people trial lawyers, too? And how does the Times know? Superior investigative journalism, I guess. . . .

OKAY, I GUESS THAT MAYBE SOMEWHERE things are weirder than this, but they couldn’t be much weirder.

At least they’re polite Nazis. . . .

BILL MOYERS WILL LEAVE PBS, after the elections.

HOSSEIN DERAKSHAN is encouraging Iranian bloggers to be reporters during tomorrow’s elections.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, you might want to read this piece on what’s at stake:

Demonstrations five days ago in the western city of Marivan were so potent that the regime sent helicopter gunships to shoot down protestors, and there are reports that members of the regular armed forces joined the demonstrators. And in Hamadan, demonstrators clashed with security forces after the closure of the unfortunately named “Islamic Equity Ban.” The demonstrators accused the bank managers of stealing the bank’s money and smuggling it out of the country to their personal benefit, and that of the regime’s top figures. The charge is credible because, as Western governments know well, large quantities of cash — just as in the case of Saddam Hussein — have been moved out of Iran in recent months by friends and relatives of the leading officials.

Read the whole thing, which also reports that smugglers, trying to get uranium out of Iran and into Iraq, were arrested in Mosul. That ties together interestingly with this report of newly discovered uranium enrichment equipment.

The Mullarchy that rules Iran wants to turn it into North Korea, with themselves in the role of Kim Jong-Il.

WINDS OF CHANGE has its always-useful and interesting war news roundup posted.