Stem Cell Treatment To Cure the Most Common Cause of Blindness 126
The Times Online reports that researchers from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital have developed stem cell therapy that can treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of blindness. They are currently moving the treatment through the regulatory approval process, and clinical trials are expected to start within two years. Quoting:
"Under the new treatment, embryonic stem cells are transformed into replicas of the missing cells. They are then placed on an artificial membrane which is inserted in the back of the retina. ... [Professor Pete Coffey, director of the London Project to Cure Blindness] said the treatment would take 'less than an hour, so it really could be considered as an outpatient procedure. We are trying to get it out as a common therapy.'
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, thank god for that (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the article, is hardly ready for use, so far only tested on rats and pigs. There'll be many years of trials before its ready for use on people. Plus Stem cells have be known to turn cancerous, cancer of the retina, would be quickly fatal, there so close to the brain.
Stem cells have tremendous potential to cure disease and even to reverse the aging process. The next twenty years of research might total change the sad process of aging in human.
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There are politics to this (Score:2, Interesting)
Let them go blind.
RS
Re:There are politics to this (Score:4, Interesting)
The Real Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
So let's say they come up with a cure for something, anything, using embryonic stem cells.
The next logical step is to produce this cure in production quantities. How long until the supply of embryos in storage from artificial insemination attempts, etc. are exhausted?
What then? The only option is pay men and women for their sperm and eggs so that they can produce the embryos from which to harvest the stem cells. I understand that extracting eggs is an expensive and painful process. Of course, give a guy a Hustler and he's good to go.
So in order to commercialize the cure, even in limited quantities, you essentially have to set up embryo factories.
If that does not give you pause, then there is something wrong with you.
Religous FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
For the record I, and most outside the US, do not care whether the stem cells are embryonic or not, so long as the medics have the genetic material, and that means diversity of genes, to search for cure to debiliting illnesses especially as there is a surplus of fetuses for other reasons.
Restoring pluri-potence to the patients own cells may well be desirable but is not essential as various gene splicing and gene injection techniques generate neither cancer or rejection as some comments, clearly FUD from the US rabid right suggested.
What is clearly necessary is better scientific education and that is better done by paying attention in school rather than church.
Thank goodness Obama at least sounds rational.