Different Stem Cell Treatments Both Produce Results For Two Similar Spinal Cord Injur

Nurses Activism

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In the first half of April 2006, Beike provided umbilical cord stem cells for the treatment of Gerald Allen, a 27-year-old American with an incomplete spinal cord injury at the c5-c6 disk level that occurred in 2002. Romanian citizen Razvan Iordache also suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury at the c5-c6 level in 1996. Gerry Allen underwent surgical implantation of umbilical cord stem cells during a two-and-a-half hour procedure at Beike, complemented by both intravenous injections and injections into the cerebral spinal cord fluid. Razvan Iordache had stem cell injections into his spinal cord fluid and an intravenous injection without the surgery. Due to national regulations neither patient could receive treatment in their own countries.

Both patients had been doing rehabilitation for years before coming to China, with little to no improvement. Gerald Allen's doctors in the United States had actually stopped prescribing rehabilitation. After the treatments, Gerald gained increased mobility in both his legs and arms, regained the sensation of hot and cold on his body, and he could even perspire below his neck again. When he returned to the United States, his doctor immediately prescribed rehabilitation again due to the progress and he was able to take steps backwards and just recently could take a step forward.

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Razvan Iordache re-gained sensation below his chest down to his legs and is now able to move his fingers, stomach muscles and feet, along with great improvement in bladder control. He said, "It is a general boost in the quality of my life. I am most happy about being able to move my fingers and feet. I still have a long way to go but I am improving and my therapist has said that I have made more progress in three months than I have the last years."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=46233

Specializes in Cardiac Surg, IR, Peds ICU, Emergency.

Just shows that you truly don't understand the issue.

It's more than just about destroying embryos, but also about exploiting them.

As I've said, do as you wish. Don't ask for my money to do something I find morally objectional.

Just shows that you truly don't understand the issue.

It's more than just about destroying embryos, but also about exploiting them.

As I've said, do as you wish. Don't ask for my money to do something I find morally objectional.

Your religious faith is yours.

If we as a free country elect to fund this research through the political process you as an individual are quite free to decline to accept the derived therapies on the basis of your personal beliefs.

Specializes in Cardiac Surg, IR, Peds ICU, Emergency.
Your religious faith is yours.

If we as a free country elect to fund this research through the political process you as an individual are quite free to decline to accept the derived therapies on the basis of your personal beliefs.

I'm not religious. I don't pray or attend church or participate in any religious activities except weddings and funerals. I said I find it morally objectional.

As a free country we HAVE elected to RESTRICT funding through the political process (aside from some individual states), and if it's as simple as that, I don't know why it's still a debate anymore.

And I most definitely would decline any therapy derived from embryonic stem cells, just as some people refuse to take blood products, or vaccinations, etc, based on personal beliefs. It's not unheard of, and it's not rocket science. Often it's not religious, either, as some folks of those positions are big advocates of natural remedies, including things like tetrahydrocannabinol (marijuana).

And again, I don't mind paying taxes for progress and research, but I don't want to pay for embryo farming, exploitation, and destruction, ESPECIALLY when the only results of embryonic stem cell research have been tumors and uncontrolled cell growth. And not only has there been no proven benefit, scientists still aren't adept at reducing rejection.

And the most frustrating thing (to me) about this subject is the intellectual dishonesty that flavors most of the comments from advocates of ESCR, sepcifically the intellectual dishonesty that conveniently leaves out "embryonic" and frequently uses the word "ban," when there is no such a ban.

I won't tell you what to do with your embryos as long as you don't demand my money to do it.

Specializes in Cardiac Surg, IR, Peds ICU, Emergency.

More intellectual dishonesty, since none of the embryos survived, and even countries with more liberal ESCR practices said that deriving an alternative simply to get around a funding restriction is unethical.

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060904/full/443012a.html

China is an emerging country with a massive amount of human resources. The US cannot be leaders in everything.

And while I'm an advocate of umbilical stem cell use, it's not being promoted and championed as much as other less-palatable and less-proven methods (embryonic).

Finally, this would never happen for the citizens of a socialized country. I noticed it didn't say who paid for it. It looks like good publicity for China, possibly at the cost to the impoverished Chinese taxpayer?

While I can relate to impoverished taxpayers anywhere, I believe China benefits from Most Favored Nation Status and no or low tariffs on their exports to US. Let them pay for the stem cell tx that we, hopefully, will start doing here soon. What a Godsend!

Don't be sad.

The US has been doing things with stem cells for over 40 years.

What things, Darren?

Specializes in Cardiac Surg, IR, Peds ICU, Emergency.
What things, Darren?

In the 50's, John Enders grew poliovirus in human embryonic kidney cells.

In the 60's, the US was researching use of stem cells for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and leukemia. Matching sibling stem cell transplants occured. Later, non-sibling transplants were possible.

The research has been ongoing since.

Specializes in Critical Care.

Embryonic Stem cells served one purpose: the creation of pluripotent cells that could adapt. We can now do that with adult stem cells.

The result: engineered stem cells without concern for rejection or runaway cancerous type growth that ESC are notorious for doing.

All the advances in stem cell research are coming from adult cells and cord blood.

ESCR is a passe science that only serves a political purpose in that it confuses the morality of abortion by painting the wanton destruction of human life in more humane terms.

Show me ONE embryonic stem cell research program that currently exists outside of gov't funding that is specifically targeted to ESCR. The only people still using ESC are those that must do so for their gov't grants.

Stem cell research offers amazing possibilities. There is no evidence whatsoever that destroying embroyos offers any comparative advantage to that research. In fact, they are less stable AND less effective than auto-transplants of adult stem cells.

Once adult stem cells were able to be manipulated into pluripotency, the concept of ESCR became a political debate instead of a scientific one. Science has moved past ESCR. Maybe it's time those with agendas that ultimately serve to cripple all stem cell research do so, as well.

At the moment, the effort to continue ESCR is stealing money away from the real research. Those that advocate wasting limited resources to continue a passe science are the ones crippling current stem cell research. And the the reason why is pure politics.

ESCR muddles the abortion debate. Politics. Symbolism over substance. That's the bottom line of it.

~faith,

Timothy.

Even as regulatory and patent developments follow relatively predictable trajectories, restraints on public funding undercut the route from lab to marketplace and put the United States at a disadvantage internationally. Further, an overselling in other biomedical venues, such as gene therapy, has discouraged risk-capital investment, which is hampered as well by the absence of a trusted business model for stem cell enterprise.

Along with the rest of the world, the US struggles to accommodate the scientific, ethical, business, and political considerations that will determine when or whether stem cell research will realizes its promise. It is unwise to compound the difficulties endemic to this field by foregoing both federal money and federal control. Rather, the US government should adopt national ESCR standards, tracking those promulgated by the National Academy of Sciences, and restore access to federal funding, a bulwark of US basic research for decades.

http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/002334/index.html

in a study in rats, neural progenitor cells derived from human fetal stem cells have been shown to protect the vision of animals with degenerative eye disease similar to the kinds of diseases that afflict humans. the new study appears today (march 28) in the journal public library of science (plos) one.

the lead author of the study, university of wisconsin-madison researcher david gamm, says the cells - formative brain cells that arise in early development - show "some of the best rescue, functionally and anatomically" of any such work to date. in animals whose vision would typically be lost to degenerative retinal disease, the cells were shown to protect vision and the cells in the eye that underpin sight.

the new findings are important because they suggest there may be novel ways to preserve vision in the context of degenerative diseases for which there are now no effective treatments. macular degeneration, an age-related affliction that gradually destroys central vision, is a scourge of old age, robbing people of the ability to read, recognize faces and live independently.

the finding that the brain cells protected the cells in the eye was a surprise, according to raymond d. lund, an author of the new study and an eye disease expert at the university of utah and the oregon health and sciences university. the neural progenitor cells, which arise from stem cells and further differentiate into different types of cells found in the central nervous system, were being tested for their ability to deliver another agent, a growth factor that has been shown to be effective in treating some types of degenerative disease.

http://www.news.wisc.edu/packages/stemcells/13618

Why not derive stem cells from adults?

There are several approaches now in human clinical trials that utilize mature stem cells (such as blood-forming cells, neuron-forming cells and cartilage-forming cells). However, because adult cells are already specialized, their potential to regenerate damaged tissue is very limited: skin cells will only become skin and cartilage cells will only become cartilage. Adults do not have stem cells in many vital organs, so when those tissues are damaged, scar tissue develops. Only embryonic stem cells, which have the capacity to become any kind of human tissue, have the potential to repair vital organs.

Another limitation of adult stem cells is their inability to proliferate in culture. Unlike embryonic stem cells, which have a capacity to reproduce indefinitely in the laboratory, adult stem cells are difficult to grow in the lab and their potential to reproduce diminishes with age. Therefore, obtaining clinically significant amounts of adult stem cells may prove to be difficult.

Studies of adult stem cells are important and will provide valuable insights into the use of stem cell in transplantation procedures. However, only through exploration of all types of stem cell research will scientists find the most efficient and effective ways to treat diseases.

http://www.news.wisc.edu/packages/stemcells/facts.html#5

Specializes in Cardiac Surg, IR, Peds ICU, Emergency.
Even as regulatory and patent developments follow relatively predictable trajectories, restraints on public funding undercut the route from lab to marketplace and put the United States at a disadvantage internationally. Further, an overselling in other biomedical venues, such as gene therapy, has discouraged risk-capital investment, which is hampered as well by the absence of a trusted business model for stem cell enterprise.

http://www.vetscite.org/publish/items/002334/index.html

Not sure how this makes sense; how is the US at a disadvantage internationally if another country makes greater progress on some aspect of SCR? Do you think they won't sell it to us? The reality is that now someone else has made the remarkable investment in R/D, similar to what US companies have done in pharmaceuticals, resulting in a remarkable advantage to other countries who are now able to develop and purchase these same drugs at a lower cost.

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