Stem Cells: A Ray of Sunshine and Hope

by metatron 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  metatron

  It's difficult to feel much optimism now, with national economies so shaky and jobs so scarce - but read the headlines here

  http://news.bioscholar.com/2010/12/a-cure-for-baldness-could-be-available-in-5-years.html

  The greedy Big Drug companies and corrupt FDA won't be able to stop the progress that is being made internationally on this subject. The potential cures (yes, CURES, not endless dependent 'treatment') are amazing - blindness, paralysis, baldness, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure - potentially anything! Every day brings another reported breakthrough!

  We could be on the edge of an age of the most wonderful miracles ever and the most profound weapon against personal human suffering ever.

  metatron
• 

  zoiks

  We could be, and I hope that is the case. Add to the greedy drug companies and FDA the wacko fundamentalists (of more than one religious faith), that continue to push an anti-science agenda in their respective communities and countries. Still, to see the progress being made is heartening.
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  jgnat

  I have one better. How about a stem cell cure for AIDS? http://www.skynews.com.au/tech/article.aspx?id=553912&vId=

  I saw this on the news last night and a young man here in our city is part of clinical trials for the stem cell cure. The article itself is a little discouraging. It is true that bone marrow transplant is an unrealistic cure, but stem cell therapy is not.
• 

  galactical

  These developments are awesome, who knows what could be just around the corner with all of the advancements in science?

  One thing i worry about, though, is whether or not the status quo (pharmaceutical companies) would allow for a total cure of these conditions and conditions. Maybe i'm being too cynical, but i'm pretty sure that they'd rather have you on a regular treatmant plan for the rest of your life than a one-time cure.
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  yknot

  Stem cells can also be harvested from a donor's FAT CELLS!

  Cytori Therapeutics has been using these flab stem cells to address Chronic heart disease? Check: In human studies released in May, the cells improved patients’ aerobic capacity and shrank the size of the infarct (tissue killed by lack of blood). Heart attack? Check: A human clinical trial, also reported in May, found that the cells increased both the blood supply to damaged heart muscle and the volume of blood that the heart pumped. Kidney injury as a result of cancer therapy? Check: In recent rat studies, the cells improved kidney function. Incontinence after prostatectomy? Check: Another recent study reported that, by 12 weeks after injection, the cells had decreased the amount of urine male volunteers were leaking by 89 percent.

  Of course such trials take many more years before approval so the company has pushed further ahead with a less 'needed' appendage: Breast!

  Two trials have been completed in cancer patients in Japan and Europe and another in Japan in women just wanting to be a 'fuller'. This probably will decrease breast implants as most women don't want to look un-natural (and un-natural isn't usually the goal so much as having been the only option with silicone and saline).........ideally a woman would go in have lipo around her 'trouble spots', the fat cells harvested would be put into a centrifuge and readied for injection abilities of 100cc to 200cc.

  http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/10/ff_futureofbreasts/all/1

  http://www.cytori.com/innovations/clinicaltrials.aspx

  _________

  of course trials of 'pixie dust' is ongoing in Texas for soldiers.

  (sorry I really really really really really like regenerative medicine and beyond the obvious life-saving benefits.....it potential for vanity uses are uber appealling for many women)
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  cantleave

  I would be more than happy to donate my fat cells. Believe me I have enough of them.
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  Vidiot

  Wouldn't be a kick in the balls if the promises of the "New System"- perfect health, longevity, etc. - were actually accomplished in this "Old System" by means of advances in medical science, like stem cell treatments, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and retroviral therapies (which - ironically - utilize an evolutionary model in their application)?

  Being inherently conservative (and in their own way, superstitous), the vast majority of Millenialists (JWs included) assume - either implicitly or explicitly - that the End Times and Millenial Reign will manifest themselves in an overtly supernatural manner; the potentially negative results of climate change, unsustainable population growth, and the effects of Peak Oil, however, are fundamentally mundane "real-world" phenomena, as are the inevitable advances mentioned above.

  Fundamentalists of all stripes would have a tremendously difficult time dealing with it.
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  jgnat

  I am not so cynical about the pharmaceuticals. There are some "total cure" prevention offerings out there, but the public doesn't seem to be buying it. Case in point, vaccines. There's a vaccine out there to prevent HPV, which in turn prevents cervical cancer. I've been getting public service announcements and glossy brochures advertising it's benefits, which my gut tells me it's not selling like hotcakes.

  I like the idea of a vaccine. It is not a drug. It triggers my own immune system to be alert for threats. Why won't people buy in to vaccines? Part of it must be the endurance urban legend as fact, and our own myopic habit to worry only about what is right in front of us. Vaccines, by their nature, are preventative. You'll never know what it kept you from having.

  http://www.quackcast.com/epodcasts/files/podcast_37.m4a

  http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=51285
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  leavingwt

  I like the idea of a vaccine.

  It's extremely difficult to discuss vaccines on this forum, in my experience. Good luck.

  
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  jgnat

  Vidiot, it did occur to me, too, that longevity may occur through advances in health care. Already our parents are living far longer than they ever imagined.

  I think that fundamentalists could absorb this in to their world view by attributing the advances to divine intervention, and declaring that the millenial reign has begun. That gives them another thousand years for proselyzing.