I LIKE MILK, CLICK CLICK
if it meant the difference of being bed-ridden or walking...
is a couple of clicks of the mouse THAT terrible?
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I LIKE MILK, CLICK CLICK
if it meant the difference of being bed-ridden or walking...
is a couple of clicks of the mouse THAT terrible?
Is this like one of those chain letters?? I mean only in board form? HMmmmmmmmm
hmmm... point taken.
i just find it very important research that is
repressed due to bullshit thumpers that feel
its the beginning of 'the end'....
this bill would essentially open up doors that
are currently barred. it would give permission
to generate research that could help create and
establish a means of building new cell-clusters
which could then be surgically injected into
a patient... replacing the damaged cells....
and allowing their brain to recognize that the
cells are mended and they can move body parts
that could not have been moved prior....
in addition to re-establishing motor skills
and/or body functions that are now being run
by machines.
if your child were hit by a car... or fell from
a tree, causing it to become paralyzed from the
neck down for the rest of its life....
wouldn't you want SOMEone to say they have a
chance with a revolutionary new process of
creating new cells to replace the damaged ones?
(this was a rhetorical question... not directed
at you personally, cya)
there are THOUSANDS of adults and children all
over the country (and world) that could GREATLY
benefit from this research... but the research
cannot be conducted because our country feels
its too christian to do it... it essentially
defies 'god' and 'fate'. (no dj, this is not
directed at you, either)
no one is concerned with creating a 'new human'
under the supposed laws of stem-cell research...
they just want the permission to see if they
can prevent these atrocities... or, at very least,
help those suffering from them now.
no one is obligated to go to the link and send
this to their representatives....
but we ALL stand at risk for cancer... and other
harsh anomalies which could easily be corrected
with this research.
the longer it takes to get permission...
the longer it will be before we can harness
its life-saving goodness.
thats all.
stem cells kick ass.
Research into them should be heavily funded, since you can well.. do so much with these things.
All the damages you could repair in human bodies, so many people you could help.
But i doubt i have a representative to write to.
aye.
it does bother me that people are 'scared' of
stem cell research because they fear we will
build androids or 'alternate humans' or some
shit... and then the whole 'soul' issue comes
into play...
but for right now... we cannot get to see how
far stem cells can help us unless we have the
permission to do so.
i believe that there is a small ruling that allows
some research on stem cells.... but nothing
tragically dramatic that would improve the
course of living for the ones that will
appreciate it better.
this is so unfortunate.
The Early SHOW, CBS A transcript for the CBS interview
February 27, 2001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Early SHOW, CBS
Eight months ago, a car accident left 18-year-old Melissa Holley of Ridgway, Colorado, paralyzed, possibly for life. But a new experimental treatment is providing her some hope that she will walk again. Melissa Holley joins us from her home and Dr. Valentin Fulga, vice president of Proneuron Biotechnologies, the company in Israel that is conducting the clinical trial that Melissa is participating in, joins us from Israel.
It's been 7 months since 18-year-old Melissa Holley received an experimental treatment for paralysis in Israel as part of an FDA-approved clinical trial. The results are promising for the young woman, who was paralyzed from the middle of her back down to her toes as a result of a car accident last year in June. Two of her vertebrae were crushed and her spinal cord was severely injured when her car flipped over on a wet road. She was driving alone to work. Part of the car landed on top of her. The diagnosis was bleak. Doctors didn't say that she wouldn't walk again, but they concluded that the paralysis was probably irreversible.
Her father decided that that diagnosis would not be the final one. He spent 2 days and nights searching the Internet and found out about an experimental therapy for paralysis that was being done in Israel. But it had only been performed on rats. Melissa Holley became the first human to receive this treatment, which is called autologous activated macrophage therapy. The treatment involves using the patient's own white blood cells--drawn from skin and bone marrow--to regenerate the severed nerves in the spinal cord.
On Thanksgiving Day, Holley started getting some feeling in a small part of one of her upper thighs. Since then, she has experienced more feelings in her legs and she can wiggle her toes. Doctors don't know how much improvement in her condition there will be as a result of this therapy. But what they have seen so far looks promising. The scientists involved in the study would like to be able to duplicate the success they have had with rats in humans. Fulga says that rats have been able to walk after receiving the treatment--not normally, but they were able to move their hind legs.
Interview with Melissa Holley
Melissa Holley wants to make more people aware of this clinical trial. She talks about the results that she has experienced from the therapy more enthusiastically than does Fulga. He says the results are encouraging, but he has to be very cautious not to overstate the results.
Holley says that her accident was on June 25th. "I was on my way to work and I had to be there at 4 PM," says Holley. "It had been raining earlier and my wheel just caught on the side of the road." She says the car flipped over and a wheel landed on her T6 and T7 spinal vertebrae. "They found that I had a complete injury," she says. "I was paralyzed from the middle of my back on down. It became more evident that I was going to either start dealing with what I had, which was nothing, or look for some hope with this procedure. We learned it was a credible procedure, not just some guy in the middle of nowhere."
Holley says that it was scary to be the first human to have this therapy. Especially when she got to Israel and they explained exactly what they were going to do. "They had only tried it on rats," she says.
Holley describes how she gradually began to regain some feeling after receiving the therapy. "About 2 weeks after the surgery, one of the nurses came to give me a shot in my right thigh, and when she rubbed it down with the alcohol, there was a little feeling--about a half-dollar size--where I could feel the swab," she says. "From there on, week by week, I would get blurbs of feeling on my thighs first, more so up on my leg and then it worked downward. They [the feelings] started connecting in the larger areas, and then I started developing pain sensation in the right leg. If I pinch my right leg it hurts. If I pinch my left leg, I feel the tug of the skin, but not the pain.
"Thanksgiving night was the first time I acknowledged any type of regain in muscle movement. I was just sitting in my room and I noticed that I was having a spasm, when your nerves shoot off randomly." She says she noticed that she could control a muscle in part of her thigh after the spasm subsided. At first she thought it was the spasm doing it. "After the spasm stopped, I put my hand on the inside of my thigh and tried to contract my muscle and I did. First, it was just my right side and then as the night went on I had my left inner thigh and my quads and I could wiggle my toes," says Holley.
Holley says that she is starting to get some muscle movement back and the feelings that she is experiencing are great. Holley says that she can move her foot and toes up. "I have regained some of my abs and at night, I do some crunches--which are weak crunches, but they are crunches," she jokes.
She says that she thinks of her father as "a life saver." "There was that aspect of time that something had to be done, and it had to be quick. The fact that he found something is like a miracle," she says.
She credits Fulga for translating the therapy that was used for rats into use for humans. "Any advancements or changes in my condition are reported to him," she says. "When I found out that I had the new movement I called him."
Holley says it's unfortunate that this therapy is not being offered to patients with older injuries. She hopes that as more patients are found to participate in studies like this one, the possibility for helping people with older injuries will increase.
Melissa Holley is very fortunate that her father quickly found out about this clinical trial on the Internet, because in this trial the patient has to be treated within 14 days of injury.
The Trial
This study is in phase I of clinical trials. According to Dr. Dan Lammertse, the medical director at Craig Hospital in Denver that is tracking Melissa Holley's progress, the results of this feasibility study looks promising. "The scientific basis makes sense," says Lammertse. "It appears to have very low potential for adverse outcomes and complications, so it has a lot of inherent advantages. But the test is to provide this treatment to a number of people and to use the best scientific means to figure out if it has helped them." Lammertse says that if you take 100 people with a spinal cord injury, some will get better and some won't. "If you have an experiment like this," and you have a small number of people who are getting somewhat better, "it's hard to put it into perspective in the context of the natural course of recovery. We don't have a precise way of predicting recovery for an individual."
Lammertse says that the people in the study have so far experienced a better-than-typical recovery, but at this point, it's hard to know where they will wind up in terms of how much they will be able to function.
How It Works
Macrophages are white blood cells that play a role in healing wounds and regenerating tissue. "When we are talking about spinal cord injuries, we are looking at nerves in the central nervous system and periphery nerves," says Fulga. "The difference between these two types of nerves is that nerves in the central nervous system don't re-grow by themselves and nerves in the periphery do." Fulga says the therapy that Melissa Holley received involves taking some of the macrophages from the periphery and putting them into the central nervous system so they can educate them to work. Fulga says that they help the nerve cells to regrow. "The macrophages in the central nervous system are scarce and lazy," he says.
Fulga says that it's important to understand that macrophages do not turn into nerve cells, they just help the nerves to regrow. "They bring about an environment that is conducive for regeneration," he says. "So, in a nutshell, we take blood from the patient, we isolate the macrophages from a bit of the patient's skin, and bring them to Proneuron [the biotech company he works for]. We put them together and we culture them for approximately 1 day," says Fulga. "We take the macrophages and put them with the wounded skin, so we educate them. We then take the macrophages, which are now more mature and hopefully more effective, and we put them into a small syringe. The neurosurgeon injects them into the spinal cord and that's all."
Doctors braced Holley's spinal cord with two steel rods before injecting 4 million macrophages, less than a thimbleful, into the injured area. She and her father spent 3 months in Israel.
Interview with Dr. Valentin Fulga
Holley had what we call a complete spinal cord injury. She had been diagnosed by her neurosurgeon in Grand Junction, Colorado, and her father approached us. She had no sensation and motor function below the level of injury. It was a little higher than the waist, from the middle of the back down, no feeling sensation or movement.
The term "autologous" pertains to the person himself, meaning we don't take tissue or blood from one person and give it to another. We take the patient's own cells and we use them. Macrophages are white blood cells and they exist everywhere in the body. We have them in the lungs, in the liver, of course in the blood, and also in the central nervous system and also in the peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system is the brain, the spinal cord, and the optic nerves. The peripheral is all the rest of the nerves in the body.
Melissa Holley was a perfect candidate for this study. She met all of the criteria. Candidates for the study have to be acute patients, within 14 days from the injury. We don't know if a longer period will be suitable. The reason for these 2 weeks as a window of opportunity is based on the work that we have had in animal studies so far. We know that we can treat animals after 14 days from the injury, so that's what we have tried in humans. Every day many people call me and email me asking for treatment. Unfortunately, I cannot give them any treatment. First of all, I am not the neurosurgeon, but that's not the issue. It's very difficult to find people within the 14 days of injury who know about the study and are in good-enough condition to travel.
Secondly, the level of injury is important. People who are too high or too low are not eligible because at this stage we cannot take patients that have respiratory problems, and we cannot treat patients that are injured above the C5 vertebrae, the fifth vertebrae of the neck.
I don't think there is anyone in the world that really knows what is going to be for Melissa. It's a novel therapy, and she is the first one to receive it. We know what we got from rats. At least until now, we see a resemblance in the recovery that we saw in rats, in terms of . . . they were able to walk.
Holley has gotten back some motor function and with some physical therapy she may be able to improve more, but we don't know. On the average, the animals recover after 12 weeks. Think of the rat whose spinal cord is less than half a centimeter in diameter and think of the human who has a spinal cord on average 1 centimeter or 1.2 centimeters in diameter. The amount of tissue that has to regrow is significantly larger for a human. In general, what is suggested in the literature is that it will take three to four times longer in a human in terms of a spinal cord injury. We can extrapolate that what happens in a rat in 3 months, may happen in a human after something like 9 to 12 months, but we don't know for sure.
We are encouraged by the results of the three patients in the study. At this stage, we have submitted the clinical study to the FDA, and we asked for some changes in the manufacturing stage. We have to wait for the FDA decision to enroll more patients because we want to comply with all of the regulatory requirements. They are looking for about eight participants in the first phase of this study. The Israeli Ministry of Health is also monitoring this study.
She is a hero. She and her father are heroes. I thought to myself, "Would I be able to do this?" To go to another country and have an experimental treatment? I don't know. It's amazing.
*******************************************
Also, if you wanna...you can click this link.
LINK
i doubt anyone will read that. i did... and i
think its great you posted it. however, there's
a stark difference in that type of operation and
that of stem cells.
while in this case, they used her own cells to
'help' the other cells grow...
with stem cells, they are usually removed from
(at present) aborted fetuses... and stem cells
are the building blocks for ALL cells... to generally
if you wish to 'create' neuro cells... you can
stimulate the stem cells to create neuro cells...
so, in essence, it is creating the same cells
unlike the previous story.
in either case, i believe all research should
go toward this type of improvement....
Yes I realize the differences.
However due to my interest in motorcycle racing I frequently hear of the paralysis/stem cell issue.
The above was just something I came across and thought it was somewhat relevant to this topic.
Speaking of paralysis...I have a new post!
but we ALL stand at risk for cancer...
wtf does THAT have to do with paralysis?
did you mistype that Shatz?
just curious.
that page is spam.
I aint' signin or doin shit.
If I get paralyzed, hey, shit happens.
ummm... no, it was not a mistype.
cancer destroys cells.
anything else?
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Tempus Sans ITC, Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><font size=2 face="Tempus Sans ITC, Tahoma">Originally posted by Cow Cud Is A Twin:
I aint' signin or doin shit.
If I get paralyzed, hey, shit happens.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
ok. i've adopted your motto.
Cool post on macrophages!
Another day with something learned [img]smile.gif[/img]
Hmmmm well not meaning my 1st post as a slam against Shatzy about it being spam... just found it funny after we had just talked about a letter TG got.
Anyhow for my thoughts on the subject I would have to some what agree with Hanny yet still side somewhat with stem cell reseach.
Ok call me a fence rider. Either way it has nothing to do with some Christine or GOD beliefs or something left to fate. But somehow (how can this be construde as anything other then the thought we will end it all if we keep mucking around) I dont think that just because we can .... we should. I mean people die every day. Isnt that the natural cycle of life. Born, live, die? How you choose to live your life may have some outcome on how long you live. Some times circumstance over rides that (ie walking down a rode and whammo get hit by a DUI).
But there are many things that we have done to improve live, make the human last longer and longer yet not really as in "not REALY" improve the ending part of life. Bodies have a certain ageing factor in them and from the moment we are born we are always 1 day closer to death.
People get burned, have strokes, heart attacks, blaa blaa blaa but if we fix everything then only the certanty of death would someone or something killing us. If you knew you would never die from some outside cause such as heart problems... how well would one live life?? It doesn't have to do with any religious belief that we shouldn't muck with things but more so that we are each givin a life to live and how that life is lived it up to each person.
Along the same lines... with all the transplants we can now do... do you have any idea of how many people on the waiting line with the "belief that they will be getting one and be able to live" yet die every day just waiting for a donor. And how many more die from rejected donations?
I may live to be 100 yrs old, I may die tomorrow. Who knows. But I saw my mom die and all that she went thru "medically" just trying to stay add to her life when instead she could have been out living what time she had been givin and be happy with that. Instead she spent her last days and months in a hospital filled with promises of more they can do to help her.
So on one side I am happy we now live longer due to some research but unhappy in that I think people now take for granted the time they are givin thinking "there will always be a tomorrow" or that "there is sunshine and rainbows beyond the couldy horizon". Screw it.. put on a rain coat and go play.
One side thought is.. just how intested was Christopher in stem cell reseach before this directly affected him??? Because it happen to him NOW EVERYONE should listen? HMMMM I am not a band wagon jumper sorry. I feel for him but there are a lot of people in the world to feel pity for besides him.
CYA
yeah... that bastard owes me something!!! [img]mad.gif[/img]
[img]tongue.gif[/img]
uh-oh : mental image:
A lot of people who actually use cryogenics only freeze their head (cheaper).
Now i can almost imagine shatzy having the head of some people that owe her in her freezer, to scare those who own her money.
Well had she collected all that money before they went into her freezer she would already have that BMW and be racing TG down some lonely highway against his new truck. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
i could never do that!!!!
a bmw is made to drive 35..... [img]redface.gif[/img]
BAHAHAHAHHAHAHA ya like thru school zones maybe.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Tempus Sans ITC, Tahoma">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#000000"><font size=2 face="Tempus Sans ITC, Tahoma">Originally posted by shatzy:
if your child were hit by a car... or fell from
a tree, causing it to become paralyzed from the
neck down for the rest of its life....
wouldn't you want SOMEone to say they have a
chance with a revolutionary new process of
creating new cells to replace the damaged ones?</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>
This seems like the kind of question you normally attack shatzy. See the line, "if your child", that's a scare tactic. I wonder why you decided to go that route. Was it by mistake, or were you using the media mold to get your point across? Plus, in the topic I read just before this, you made a attack on free form thinking....
I very rarely can call you on anything shatz,
let me enjoy this.... please? [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
hmmm.... christopher reeve's accident preceeded
(known) stem cell research. it was because of
his fate that he has since dedicated his life
to finding a way to help the problem.
it was due to reeve's monetary donations and
whatnot that established the drive for further
research.
up until reeve's accident... stem cell research
was about as widely known as ice cream is to a caveman.
(ok.. thats an exaggeration)
but it was because of reeve's drive and input
that made stem cell research a household name.
Well we could always freeze him and then when we have sorted all the stem cell reseach out we could thaw him out and fix him good as knew. Speaking of which what are your thoughts for or against that? Cryogenics!!!
[img]eek.gif[/img]
i have no problems with it [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
I bet you got Walt Disney hiding in your freezer Huh!!! [img]graemlins/chat.gif[/img]
quite right, AU. i think the reason i mentioned
fetuses is because its the most prominent thought
that comes to mind when talking about stem cells.
and ok gary... you can have your moment.
i can see how what i posted could be considered
a scare tactic... you are right about that...
and i did have some reservation about posting
that segment in the first place, as i had the
notion that it would be percieved as such.
however, one of the reasons i allowed myself
to post it is because when this topic was brought
up, it was swimming around christopher reeve
and i figured it should retire (somewhat) from
that determined imagery.
i had done a thesis on stem cell research and
found that the most common areas of discussion
lay in:
rats, fetuses, and christopher reeve.
when i was conducting my research, several thoughts
came into my mind... like the st. jude commercials...
and how very seldom did i come across the issue
of cancerous/paralyzed children....
it was odd to me that no one had given much
thought about using those children in future
stem cell testing... since technically those
children could show improvement at a quicker rate
(hypothetically).
so, all in all, when i was in the course of this
thread... those same typical st. jude children
popped into my head and i guess i went on that
tangent.
sorry.... but i do see what you are saying.
i assure you that it wasn't meant to be
a scare tactic... but you are spot on....
...Mumbles
That wasn't very enjoyable.
I know nothing about stem cells or whatever. So try not to take this point too seriously... How come we can attach nerves in the hand, but not in the back/neck?
Outside of being a scare tactic.. I thought we came to the conclusion that "what if's" are gay anyhow.
On a side note I did speak with a heart surgon today for awhile and I asked him what he thought of it. And he just simply said outside all of the moral, religious issues it would be cool to grow a heart and he also stated that stem cells have been found in reg blood, umbilical blood, etc.... not that all of that hasn't already been mentioned but I thought I would post it since it came directly from someone who could use the research directly.
CYA
I suffer from a cronic illness that can might be helped by stem cell research and what gets me is those cells can be retrived not only from aborted fetuses but from umbilical cords also. Hence a way to quiet the right to lifers. I say if the technology is out there to possibly make peoples lives better then use it.
aye... thanks cya. [img]smile.gif[/img]
(and yeah... 'what ifs' ARE gay!) [img]tongue.gif[/img]