FDA OKs First Human Trial of Neural Stem Cell Therapy 149
An anonymous reader sends word that the FDA has approved a phase 1 trial for Neuralstem, a company with a patented stem cell procedure targeting ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and other spinal conditions. The company's CEO said in a press release, "While this trial aims to primarily establish safety and feasibility data in treating ALS patients, we also hope to be able to measure a slowing down of the ALS degenerative process." Results are expected in 2 years. The trial will involve 12 ALS patients who will receive stem cell injections in the lumbar area of the spinal cord. An information site for the disabled community adds hopefully: "If it makes it through all stages of testing, we will see if doctors are willing to [use] it on subjects that have injuries coming from physical injuries like diving accidents."
Dr. Stephen Hawking (Score:3, Insightful)
Any chance that this could be passed through quick enough to prolong a certain genius' life?
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Keep in mind that Hawking lives in England, not the United States. The FDA has no jurisdiction over him. Now it may be in practice that the British health service does follow FDA recommendations in large part, so it's not likely that the treatment would be available any too soon there. But it is certainly possible for him to travel to Europe or even to Asia in order to get treatment if he wants it. There are clinics in Germany, Mexico and China at least that are doing experimental stem cell treatments for A
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Well Dr. Hawking it will take two years just on the test subjects to see if there is any progress. As a man of science you should know that these sort of things cannot be rushed and the scientific method has to be followed and the work peer reviewed.
You've made it this far, chances are you can make it until they find a cure for ALS. I am certain after the trials are done and the procedure is ready for the public, you'll be on the top of the list because of your scientific importance.
Some in your situation m
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If it proves to be effective early in the trials, he can afford to meet his doc in "some hospitals in the far east"(better yet in Cabo) for the treatments. It happens every day, at great expense to the sick and great risk to the providers. The FDA may not approve, but the people who can't afford to wait for the bureaucratic trials to inch along do.
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Yeah, he thinks he's so smart...
Oh, wait...
Nevermind.
Big News? (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes me sad that this is news in 2009. This should really have been commonplace research by now.
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How so? The earliest versions of the technique only date back to about 2002, and I don't see any evidence that research has been slower than one might expect.
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oh shut it. Far fewer people have dies waiting on something then would ahve if they just rushed or ignored testing.
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Holy crap. Your post actually proved your point about waiting and testing, or in your case proof reading. :)
But your point is a small one if that in the perspective of medical testing. I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice. There is quite a large number of people out there that are terminally ill and suffering. They are looking forward to death to get away from the pain and drug induced ment
Re:Big News? (Score:4, Insightful)
You think it's the FDA that's been holding up stem cell research, and not the religious yahoos?
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His point was a more overall shot at the FDA process.
You are correct, it's the religious jack asses that claim to want a free country but then shove there magic fairy views down everyone else throat that have us 8 years behind in our research.
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You assume they are distinct groups.
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He also assumes the world is round, the sky is blue, and the sun rises in the east. What's your point?
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Of course the world is actually somewhat oblong, the sky itself doesn't have a color and the sun doesn't move so much as the earth spinning in relative motion to it.
Certain assumptions only make sense in a certain context.
Tax funded embryonic stem cell research (Score:2)
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You think it's the FDA that's been holding up stem cell research, and not the religious yahoos?
The only thing "held up" was federal funding for stem cells that resulted in destruction of the embryo/fetus. The research was not banned in any way. It did not affect any stem cell research from cells taken from your own body (which have the added benefit of being much less likely to be rejected). Nor did it affect Amniotic cells.
There are more legal hurdles right now to test on animals (which Neuralstem admits to doing), than stem cells. And if the animal rights crowd gets their way, this research are
Actually funding is holding it up (Score:2)
This company in particular was formed in 96 and didn't go public until 2006. Throw in the major advances in computing power and only recently wholesale push for this type of tech across the world and I don't think we can lay it at the feet of the fundies.
Remember, under Bush it was only certain "types" of stem cell research that were inhibited. A lot of the success stories from here and elsewhere came from those not restricted in the US to "public funding". Private funding wasn't stopped. However many o
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"I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice"
Perhaps, but how do you do that and keep the study valid?
4. Get in drug trial and die.
5. Drug gets released and due to failure in the blinded study it is ineffective or worse, kills people.
"*(Human analogs need not be live animals BTW, they can be lab grown organs or cells)"
That's very nmoce for certian tests, but not a good overall tests.
Seriously, peo
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"I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice"
Perhaps, but how do you do that and keep the study valid?
By the history and diagnosis of the patients as terminally ill entering a study and having reactions. It's not being presented here that it would allow the statistics to be directly entered with the rest of the data since these are extreme cases. But if you can say that so many people that were terminally ill lasted well beyond their estimated time of death VS those that did not recieve treatment. That's just added data for the study isn't it? And you get to possibly help people or at least give them hope.
"*(Human analogs need not be live animals BTW, they can be lab grown organs or cells)"
That's very nmoce for certian tests, but not a good overall tests.
Seriously, people have been dealing with these issues forever. It's a hard one for people who actually understand the science process and the value of good studies.
F
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Then there's the flip side of that coin. I'm sure someone will remember the movie but the point stands as a reasonable example.
The trials have to have a baseline or control group usually and that means a placebo or no treatement for those unlucky ones in the trial.
So you have a group that is suffering from an ailment and they get into a trial and then don't get treated anyway. So while the drug was being delevoped and during the testing and all the way up until it is released to market, the person doesn't g
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That is far from clear. It's obviously hard to determine the counterfactual numbers, but there are estimates that FDA testing delays kill many more people than they save [fdareview.org]. And in the case of a terminal illness like ALS, there's a substantially reduced downside if the treatment turns out to be harmful so it makes sense to be more aggressive.
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milton friedman's thoguhts on the FDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZL25NSLhEA [youtube.com]
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I personally agree with your sentiment, that withholding possible treatment from the dying because "it's not tested" isn't valid. I mean, yes, they could die. Oh, wait...
Your statement about "rights" pricked a sore spot with me, though...
"Rights" are entitlements secured by popular consensus, or force. You think that what's "right" or "acceptable" for an individual defines right and acceptable behaviour for a government? Nice idea,but an individual is supposedly held responsible for their individual actions
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Re:Big News? (Score:4, Informative)
Well see, we have this massive bureaucracy in the USA called the "Food and Drug Administration", whose job it is to kill people by impeding medical research.
The job of the FDA with regards to medical research is to ensure that what's called "medical research" is actually both "medical" and "research" by reasonable definitions of those words. Do you really not understand why this is necessary?
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Quite right, Mr. Gingrich. It's almost time for bed now sir, so if you don't mind, please turn off the computer and take your medicine.
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Corporations aren't noted for having any regard for human lives. They would kill everyone outside of one big city if they knew it meant many more people moved into the city that they completely control.
I think the solution to this is to have an opt-in for patients to join the trials at any time (pairs of 2 for control/variable groups), rather than a closed selection of candidates. Give them an explanation of the risks, and let them make a choice.
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Corporations (Score:3, Insightful)
Leave (Score:2)
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Well see, we have this massive bureaucracy in the USA called the "Food and Drug Administration", whose job it is to kill people by impeding medical research.
I was going to say that cells have this massive "bureacracy" they call "normal cell biology" that makes nearly everything else look like a children's book, and that tends to slow down research. And there are other "bureacracies" like
-A complicated central nervous system
-Ethics
-Lack of resources
-Researchers need to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, play videogames, etc
-The fact that no one really has figured out how to repair a central nervous system and we don't have a crystal ball that will tell us these th
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http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/09/nerve-cells-have-an-energy-efficiency-an-engineer-would-love.ars
Re:Big News? (Score:4, Insightful)
Were you aware that there are other countries? :-)
All of the folks arguing about health care don't make the connection that Hawking has lived so long in a country with socialized medicine.
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Well first, you've gone off topic.
But anyways, the main argument against socialized health care is not that it's going to kill off everyone immediatly. It's that it'll make things worse.
In the US we've had the government involved in health care for 40+ years and things have gotten worse in many respects.
Contrast with the computing industry where thigns have gotten much better and has been largely un regulated. hell the cases of regulation have hurt it, eg software patents.
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The private medical system is so screwed
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You know in the 50's it was not hard to find health care, it was even cheap. But since then what have we done? we've added all sorts of regulations. now in our current state, we want to do what? add more regulations. Your solution is to have some government bureaucrat/bureaucracy who will likely have no incentive to do a good job, and will likely get lobbied by big insurance, to supervise?
as I posted above, milton friedman has some thoughts on thalidomide. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZL25NSLhEA [youtube.com] mu
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What kind of stem cells? (Score:1)
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As far as I can tell from the radio interview at the top of their news page [neuralstem.com], they are adult stem cells from the brain.
Re:What kind of stem cells? (Score:4, Informative)
That's what I'm guessing too. TFA is ridiculously underinformative. Neuralstem doesn't seem to be talking specifics for some reason.
A video on their website [neuralstem.com] was -slightly- more informative. They make lines of neural stem cells and inject them into the damaged part. That to me was somewhat questionable. Injecting undifferentiated, replicating cells into your central nervous system, even if they're neural stem cells sounds dangerous. You want the specific type of neuron there, and enough glial cells. Without directing their differentiation, I would expect you'd end up with a random mix of cells, or possibly a glioma [wikipedia.org].
It mentioned that these were patented methods. I don't know much about patents, but I did find this patent [patentstorm.us] issued to neuralstem biopharmecuticals ltd (same company?).
The abstract to that patent:
What it actually seems to cover is nothing revoultionary. They isolate a neuronal stem cell, culture it in a wide variety of commonly used growth factors for 30 divisions, transfect the C myc gene, and then culture it in the same growth factors and/or whole serum. That's to make a line of cells. C-myc by the way was one of the transcription factors used to make induced pluripotent stem cells, and is associated with many cancers, which is worrisome. Nothing in that really suprises me. I'd be interested to hear from slashdot's armchair lawyers (or real lawyers) as to whether or not you can simply patent a combination of common techniques to make a line of stem cells.
What is more interesting to me is another patent that Neuralstem has [patentstorm.us], Use of fuse nicotinamides to promote neurogenesis.
The abstract for that one:
I'm less of an expert on this, it's a lot of biochemistry I'm not familiar with, but from the summary:
It seems they have a patent on compounds which have been shown to nudge stem cells towards making neurons. This might be their answer to the first problem I mentioned: not wanting to inject undifferentiated cells into your spine or brain.
I'm guessing their technique involves 1. Surgery to get tissue samples which would be enriched in neural stem cells (I've heard the cells next to the ventricles in your brain are good spots for that) 2. They take those cells and put them in their culture media that causes the stem cells to divide 3. They transfect c-myc to increase the yeild 4. They harvest the undifferentiated cells and incubate them with their differentiation compounds before or as they 5. Inject the mix into your damaged spinal cord.
If they moved on to humans, I'm guessing they've already demonstrated this works to a degree and doesn't cause a lot of cancers in mice or other animal models. The results on that are probably published, but I've wasted enough time here.
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That's what I'm guessing too. TFA is ridiculously underinformative. Neuralstem doesn't seem to be talking specifics for some reason.
I'm guessing their technique involves 1. Surgery to get tissue samples which would be enriched in neural stem cells (I've heard the cells next to the ventricles in your brain are good spots for that)
So, if I understand you correctly, you're guessing that they're adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells? That might answer your implied question of why Neuralstem isn't talking specifics -- stem cell research is only cool when it's embryonic stem cell research... ;)
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Well not really guessing, the video says something like "takes your stem cells."
Anyway, the current buzzword is induced pluripotent stem cell... and terrorism. Nano. Biofuel.
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This ignores the fact that stem cells take their orders about what to become from their neighbors
I think that part alone is oversimplifying things, but what exactly ignores that? The growth factors listed in the patent are the same factors present in the niche where these stem cells are maintained, combinations of them keep the stem cells proliferating while they're expanding the isolated stem cells. The second patent, the chemicals which induce neuronal development, presumably do so through the same signaling pathways used by the microenvironment to direct neural stem cells to differentiate.
If you'r
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Why does it matter?
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Why does it matter?
One reason it matters is that we are forever being told how embryonic stem cell research is going to find the cure for every disease under the sun, and anyone who thinks the money should be diverted to research into stem cells from alternative sources is a religious nut who should shut up, yet of nearly 100 current treatments using stem cells, there is not a single one that uses embryonic stem cells. If this were better known, then all the resources being wasted on this dead-end research could perhaps be u
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Bullshit.
There are a number of people who repeat that straw-man for political and religious motives, but what promoters of embryonic stem cell research usually argue is something more along the lines of:
"Embryonic stem cells are worthy of research not only because understanding how they differentiate can help us understand how to better use adult stem cells, but a
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One reason it matters is that we are forever being told how embryonic stem cell research is going to find the cure for every disease under the sun,
The new line of thinking is that Induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC) [google.com] will do all that ESC was promised to do. IPSC comes from your own cells which have been modified to be like ESC.
Stem cells were never said to be a cure for all diseases. Cancer and infectious diseases, for example, were never potential diseases to be treated with stem cells. Regenerative medicine only.
...and anyone who thinks the money should be diverted to research into stem cells from alternative sources is a religious nut who should shut up
Frankly, some of you guys are seriously misinformed. It's easy to write off people who honestly have ethical concerns, when others ar
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And none of you guys seem to realize that ESC research is done on embryos that were headed for the incincerator anyway.
If ESC treatments become viable, IVF leftovers do not provide a sufficient supply for more than a tiny fraction of the people who would request treatment
Besides, many people will still have ethical problems with forcibly "harvesting" parts / cells from people, even if they are headed for the incinerator. Didn't we just have this same debate a few years ago with harvesting condemned criminals for organs? "And none of you guys seem to realize that these organs are being taken from people who were headed for
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If ESC treatments become viable, IVF leftovers do not provide a sufficient supply for more than a tiny fraction of the people who would request treatment
Citation needed. These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient.
Besides, many people will still have ethical problems with forcibly "harvesting" parts / cells from people, even if they are headed for the incinerator. Didn't we just have this same debate a few years ago with harvesting condemned criminals for organs? "And none of you guys seem to realize that these organs are being taken from people who were headed for the electric chair anyway."
You slipped "people" in there. You realize of course that's a not exactly a clear cut issue. It's a major difference between the execution and ESC.
In a word, if you want it, spend your own money on it, and don't just get upset and call people ignorant when they don't share your priorities. Other people have legitimate needs for this cash, and there's only so much of it to go around.
I don't think enough people would be willing to spend their tax money on defense to actually support an army. I don't want any of my tax money going overseas to Iraq or Israel, yet that's not an option. The idea that you should get to decide where
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If ESC treatments become viable, IVF leftovers do not provide a sufficient supply for more than a tiny fraction of the people who would request treatment
Citation needed. These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient.
True -- in some previous treatments, each patient may be implanted with brain tissue from as many as seven aborted donors [nytimes.com]. Granted, that was before isolated stem cells were in use, but for ESCs to move from the laboratory into the doctor's office, unless we plan on keeping all of our patients on immunosuppressants, I was under the impression that SCNT or some other form of "therapeutic cloning" is necessary to obtain ESCs that are usable cells that won't cause rejection. Ultimately you're right -- it's ha
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These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient.
True -- in some previous treatments, each patient may be implanted with brain tissue from as many as seven aborted donors [nytimes.com]. Granted, that was before isolated stem cells were in use,
The article there was talking about fetal brain tissue, not embryonic stem cells. Fetal brain tissue cannot be expanded in vitro, ESC do. That 1992 study used seven fetuses presumably for that reason: there is so little tissue per fetus and you can't just grow it to as much as you need.
but for ESCs to move from the laboratory into the doctor's office, unless we plan on keeping all of our patients on immunosuppressants, I was under the impression that SCNT or some other form of "therapeutic cloning" is necessary to obtain ESCs that are usable cells that won't cause rejection.
Right, which is one reason why IPSC is more promising. And that reminds me we've gotten off on a tangent. When you implied that IVF would not supply enough ESC for -therapy- I should have pointed out that ESC probably are
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Right, which is one reason why IPSC is more promising.
FWIW, I fully support IPSC. There already exist over a hundred treatments using them, and I see every reason to concentrate effort on expanding this research line.
When you implied that IVF would not supply enough ESC for -therapy- I should have pointed out that ESC probably aren't going to be used for therapy, they're used for research.
But you said, "These are self-renewing cells. It's not like you need to sacrifice one embryo for each patient." -- by saying "patient", we were continuing on the line of "treatment", not "research". If ESCs are to be used on patients, and we don't intend to keep them on immunosuppressants, then SCNT requires that we don't just create and sacrifi
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Existing Conditions? (Score:4, Insightful)
Neuralstem's own website [neuralstem.com] also seems rather scant in details on therapy for highly developed levels of ALS. Does anyone know of any research being conducted to treat the latter stages of ALS or how relevant this treatment is for those stages?
Stem cells = Cancer (Score:4, Informative)
But those are the problems this research will address. I'll be eager to see the results in two years.
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What they need is stem cells that grown in presence of a bio-compound not found naturally in the body. Give stem cells and drug them until stem cells are at the "just right" stage, stop taking the drug.
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Do tumors REALLY reproduce exponentially, or do the "message" other sells to become part of the tumor? Isn't the heart of a cancer tumor dead cells?
I've got my own theory that Cancer and Viruses in most cases are broken messaging systems in the body. A genetic message is sent and something like a Telomere gets snipped and eventually, the message is not reproduced and copied. Cancer and Viruses cannot do anything on their own -- they use the bodies on mechanisms against it.
So stem cells are not going to beco
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At any rate, stem cells have the potential to endlessly reproduce based on the presence of growth factors. Many forms of cancers and precancerous states are characterized by rapid an
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Your Google profile to which you have linked in your signature suggests you're unemployed, at least that's what I take "futurist", "gamer", and "slashdot.org commenter" to mean. Failed IT career?
and virgin.
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He just got served!... with some information about stem cells. And also served as in "got his deserved comeuppance." Both senses of served are true, really.
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Wait what? (Score:2)
we will see if doctors are willing to [use] it on subjects that have injuries coming from physical injuries like diving accidents.
First you have to convince crazy religious idiots, then you have to convince the crazy government idiots, and yet you still have to convince the crazy doctor idiots!? Is there no end to this insanity?!
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Neural Stem Cell Therapy - It Tickles! (Score:2, Funny)
Sample Size? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can someone who understands statistics and FDA trial phases explain something to me. . . Is a sample size of 12 really big enough to be a reasonable 'safety' trial? Or do they start with a small trial, just to find out if there's any problems so severe that they would affect almost *anyone*, then in future phases, increase the sample sizes to more and more test subjects, looking for those problems that only affect 1/1000 or 1/100000 patients?
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Can someone who understands statistics and FDA trial phases explain something to me. . . Is a sample size of 12 really big enough to be a reasonable 'safety' trial? Or do they start with a small trial, just to find out if there's any problems so severe that they would affect almost *anyone*, then in future phases, increase the sample sizes to more and more test subjects, looking for those problems that only affect 1/1000 or 1/100000 patients?
A phase 1 is testing for safety to show it should be allowed to progress to phase 2 trials, not safety nor efficacy with respect to the population. More than you every wanted to know about clinical trials, but you did ask: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trial [wikipedia.org]
Misleading Title (Score:5, Informative)
The first US phase 1 trial, yes. The FDA couldn't have approved the first neural stem cell trial because it was conducted in Sweden by Hakan Widner in 1982 http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/26/us/success-reported-using-fetal-tissue-to-repair-a-brain.html [nytimes.com]
George Carillo was the first recipient. He was the first and worst of the 'frozen addicts' covered in J William Langston's "The Case of the Frozen Addicts". His and others' poisoning by MPTP contaminated home made fentanyl resulted in Parkinsonism, which was partially reversed by fetal neural cell grafting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP [wikipedia.org]
Their misfortune and subsequent treatment contributed to our now extensive understanding of Parkinson's and of the dopamine system, understanding that contributed to the success of Drs Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric R. Kandel, recipients of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. It also contributed to the discovery of endogenous MPTP, and that its conversion to MPP+ in neural mitochondria could be blocked in a majority of cases by trimethylnaphthoquinone, an MAO inhibitor found in tobacco.
Re:Wonder how this will cost (Score:4, Funny)
Kids eat too much anyway - it'll do them good. How much does a sandwich and an apple cost, anyway? You're not going to fund much research for that.
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Obviously he should go to the grocery store and only buy the two slices of bread, four strips of bacon, single leaf of lettuce and tablespoon of mayo he needs.
Or maybe, just maybe, the point was that there is a certain minimum amount of purchasing required to make food at home, a minimum that makes the occasional sandwich ridiculously expensive.
If I only eat a sandwich once a week or less, it is much more cost effective to buy one at the deli then try and store perishable goods I won't be using.
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Why it was "insightful", I'm not sure. Although
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That's a hell of a sandwich if you're using the whole tub of Mayo, a pound of tomatoes, a whole loaf of bread, a pound of bacon, a whole head of lettuce, and alongside it a 10 serving bag of fritos, and then drinking a whole quart of milk? Can I ask what your BMI is?
In reality, it's more like this. You use 1/25th of the tub of mayo, so 1/25 of $2 is really more like 8 cents. Hell, let's say you're generous. 25 cents. We'll assume it's one of the nice loaves of bread that only has like 10 slices. so 1/10th o
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I don't usually respond to trolls, but the accountant in me is screaming to right your wrongs.
Haven't you ever heard of amortization? Depreciation?
Just because you have to buy a whole new jar of mayo/pound of bacon doesn't mean you get to assess it all against your sandwich.
If a whole jar of mayo is two cups, but you're only using a tablespoon of mayo, then you can only charge 1/32 of the mayo's cost against the sandwich, because you can still use the 31 other Tbsp to make other sandwiches. Ditto for howe
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Ah, does that really matter?
Kid goes to school, then has to spend every cent taking care of a failing parent. Parent dies anyway, kid broke for life.
Kid doesn't go to school, gets a job, puts self thru school, and both parent and kid come out better.
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You're right (Score:2)
I see you did well at Economic Fallacy School.
You are right. Why don't you Paypal me all of your money, and you can continue on.
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I assume you have the same concern about every single medical procedure ever invented?
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No, he's not concerned with any medical procedures at all. He's a conservative, so he doesn't go to doctors, he just prays.
Oh shut up, earth worshipper. Earth is a goddess crap was retarded 2000 years ago and its still retarded now.
Re:Wonder how this will cost (Score:4, Informative)
Wonder how much the treatment will cost? How many kids don't get to eat at school so that someone gets this treatment.
Don't worry, the people who can't afford lunch for their kids will be the same ones who can't afford this treatment. So nothing you would be concerned with.
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WTF?
That website is horrible and factually wrong.
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WTF?
That website is horrible and factually wrong.
What's that you say?! A troll has a link in his sig to a website that is wrong!?! Rally the Internet Justice League - this evil cannot be allowed to stand unopposed!!!
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Well geez, how else do you propose we pay for it? It's not like we can just stop attacking foreign countries and killing thousands of civilians, can we?
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Wonder how much the treatment will cost? How many kids don't get to eat at school so that someone gets this treatment.
Feel free not to have the treatment if you get ALS. You know, For The Children and all.
Except that's not what will happen and you damn well know it. If you're diagnosed with a horrible and deadly disease, you will personally knock a million lunches out of a million hungry, adorable, big-eyed schoolkids' hands, and laugh at them while they cry, if that's what it takes to get you a cure.
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If it was my kids, it would be worse:
"Excuse me. If you're sick, you can have my sandwich if that will make you better."
Imagine it with the 5-year-old lisp.
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There are certainly medical treatments that will never be viable in economic terms, that are available(or not) basically for ethical/humanitarian reasons. However, cures for diseases that would otherwise involve a number of years of expensive decline and an early death may well not fall into that category. Because R&D is expensive, the per-case cost of the first
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Oh wait a minute, you said treatment, as in the spinal cord repair. I thought for a minute you were talking about the Iraq war, Mr. Center-right conservative. Sorry, my bad.
1) We already spend three times as much per year on keeping old people into expensive medicine than we do the war.
2) Iraq has twenty trillion dollars worth of oil. Had the war gone out ok then gasoline would be fifty cents a gallon and the national savings would be about 300 billion per year, if not more, basically saving enough money to
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There have been several studies involving prayer and healing, with extensive double-blinds.
It only make the person who prays feel better, which is no small thing, but praying for someone else does not promote healing.
In the case of certain sects who believe in prayer instead of medical treatment, it actually promotes death.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I'd say RTFA, but it did seem to dance around that issue for no good reason...
It seems that it is in fact adult stem cells. They harvest them... possibly from your brain or spinal cord, I don't know.
As far as ethics go, I do have to point out that the adult stem cell field didn't start independently. A lot of what we know about adult stem cells we only know because we learned it first in embryonic stem cells. If this works, it's fruit of the ESC research tree. If you're not okay with ESC research
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of what we know about adult stem cells we only know because we learned it first in embryonic stem cells. If this works, it's fruit of the ESC research tree. If you're not okay with ESC research but want treatments from it, you're still going to have to answer some ethical questions for yourself.
Much of that seminal ESC research was animal, not necessarily human.
For another example, much of what we know today about the effects and treatment of hypothermia is taken from Nazi human experimentation (see ref. [jewishvirtuallibrary.org]). These ethical questions surround us -- it's not limited to ESCs.