Posted by
michael
on from the if-only-it-were-that-easy dept.
roman_mir writes "Wired reports that a 16 year old teenager had a hole in his heart (a nail gun accident,) which was repaired by injecting stem cells directly into his heart. What is interesting is that the stem cells were taken from the boy's own blood."
this is not really new, several institutes around the world are working with simular techniques, it's hot research for the moment.
Interesting evolution though, even though it's absolutely not certain that this technique is 'good', it's more like a shot in the dark, let's hope it works AFAIK.
-- Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
But has anyone actually used a humans own stem cells to try to repair damage? Have they done it with someone with heart damage? I'm sure many people are researching this, but if this is the first human trial, it's big news.
As far as I know yes, I heard a related topic on the radio a couple of months ago
-- Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
My broken hearts
by
deblorvayn
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· Score: 1, Funny
Take that nasty cheerleaders from highschool!
Just really cool biology
by
foniksonik
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is really cool biology. I look forward to hearing more stem cell success stories. Using your own bodies natural healing capabilities in a more focused and concentrated process... one word, elegant.
Now if those guys in florida will finish their testing on oral bacteria replacement therapy I will look to old age with much less anxiety.
-- A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Own Stem Cells
by
LordLucless
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· Score: 4, Informative
This is really not interesting at all - nobody ever considered using other peoples stem cells to heal people - it'd be just the same as trying to transplant an organ, they'd get rejected.
The reason scientists want to use embryonic stem cells is that they are easier to study, not to use. There is no ethical/moral consideration about using stem cells - it's using embryonic stem cells that everyone kicks up a fuss about - and they are being used for study, they are not practical to be used for actual treatment.
-- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
foniksonik
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I guess it's not interesting if by 'interesting' you mean provocative... if so you are correct.
I think it's very interesting to see good medicine being advanced.
-- A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
[embryonic stem cells] are not practical to be used for actual treatment.
It's no worse than any other organ transplant. In fact, if anything, it's better because the cells can be genetically manipulated, they might be derived from nuclear transplants, or they might go into places where there is no rejection. People are very much considering using embryonic stem cells for actual therapy.
There is no ethical/moral consideration about using stem cells - it's using embryonic stem cells that everyone kicks up a fuss about - and they are being used for study, they are not practical to be used for actual treatment.
You're absolutely correct. Unfortunately, the term "stem cell" has become so tainted by the pro life crowd and W's faith-based opposition that at this point most folks don't know the difference, and don't realize that every human body produces stem cells. Ask the average American where stem cells come from. I guarantee that in most cases, the answer will be "unborn babies," even though that's not at all accurate. It's a reflection of the power of the moral "majority" over the general populace. (I put "majority" in quotes just as I write off the fantasy that African-Americans are the "minority" in Memphis, even though they continue to demand "minority" treatment here.)
Yes, fetuses are a veritable font of neverending stem cells, but that's not the only place they come from. What really irks me is that while abortion is perfectly legal (as well it should be), there's controversy surrounding the use of fetal stem cells. I don't understand why it's such an issue. Let's see, we have two choices,
a) Pregnant woman gets abortion, fetus is disposed of as biohazard
b) Pregnant woman gets abortion, embryonic stem cells are harvested for medical research
I can't grasp why people find option b horrifying. The abortions are going to happen anyway; we might as well get some medical benefit from the process. Every one of us, no matter what we do or don't believe in, is human. We all stand to benefit from this research.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Every one of us, no matter what we do or don't believe in, is human. We all stand to benefit from this research.
Unless you happen to be a poor farmer in Africa, in which case, like the other third of the world's population, you don't even have access to clean water.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
Ioldanach
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The reason scientists want to use embryonic stem cells is that they are easier to study, not to use.
From what I've seen, embryonic stem cells were what we started working with because we couldn't isolate stem cells in adults. Since we had the opportunity to work with pure concentrations of them from embryos, we've managed to figure out how to isolate them.
Thus, embryonic stem cell research was essential and is probably waning in necessity as we can now isolate quantities of stem cells from adults and children.
If I could use my own stem cells and not have a lifetime of immunosuppresive therapy or I could write a fat check to the pharma industry every month to cover my meds, I know which route I'd choose.
This is a no brainer. If you can, use your own cells. It's disgusting that some people actually talk down the idea of using your own stem cells in order to create/preserve a secondary revenue stream for abortion clinics.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
dbrutus
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Abortions don't just 'happen'. People are kept ignorant of alternatives, caregivers have more control over aspirin intake than over this particular elective surgury, and abortion providers fight tooth and nail against laws that provide for fully informing the mother of the reality of the situation. Abortion rates can come down via education.
In *every* industry, lower costs and you get higher demand. Secondary revenue sources like selling fetal tissue for experimentation (no, I know that's not technically what happens, it's just effectively so) and harvesting stem cells allows for subsidized abortion costs as a significant source of profit is the scientific community, not just the fee paid by the mother. Lower the cost and like clockwork abortion demand will go up at the margin.
Pro-abortion forces are trying to shift scientific funding so that embryonic stem cells get more money than adult stem cell research. They have bogus FUD campaigns about how stem cell research has more promise when all the practical stem cell treatments discovered to date are from adult stem cells.
the pro-abortion side cloaks itself in the mantle of science but what they're really after is protecting their lifestyle choice and making sure their enablers at the clinic stay in business. That's just wrong.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hey, when you buy paper, do you buy that made of 30% post-consumer recycled paper shit (which is horrible and filled with speckles) or the nice, white (bleached), cut-down-a-healthy tree paper?
Analogously, if I needed a new arm, I'd get me a new one straight from the abortion clinic, young, virile and long lasting. None of that recycled shit. Maybe for a couple extra bills I'd get one from one of Schwarznegger's wives' aborted fetuses. That would impress the ladies.
Now piss off.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Abortion is a good thing and necessary if we are to continue our way of life.
FACT: There are too many people on this earth for everybody to enjoy a high standard of living.
Re:Own Stem Cells
by
melee
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Abortion isn't about population control. It's about correcting the mistakes of stupid people. You want to lower the birth rate you do it through education and building a middle class. (Which is, not coincidentally, the same way to improve standard of living.)
Or, if you don't care about civil society, by trying to legislate your way out of it. (This is my not-so-subtle dig at China.)
While we're at it, that's not a fact. It's a naive supposition. And not a very well formulated one at that.
Abortion is a bad thing and completely unnecesary. The only reasons for it to exist are to terminate babies that are the product of rape (in this case, the mother had no say in the matter) and to protect stupid people from their mistakes. We should stop protecting idiots from everything. We are obviously failing as a society if murder of the helpless is ever seen as necesary.
Actually, it's more like this.
FACT: If one percent of the Earth were covered with plants that were one percent efficent, we would be able to produce enough food to feed 50 billion people at 3500 kilocalories per day. That's enough to get fat on. If we would stop wasting good farmland on stuff that actively kills us (tobacco, alcohol, etc), then the US could feed the rest of the world singlehandedly. The reason people starve is greed. Warlords use starvation as a weapon against their own people.
FACT: If we mined even a small asteroid for minerals, we wouldn't need to mine most things from the Earth for quite some time.
All we need to do to support far more than 50 billion people is get our act together and start developing technologies that will help us to get the resources we need.
I do, however, support the death penalty for horible criminals. There is no reason for us to support them in prison for any longer than we must. Why should they be allowed to live off of our work? If they can be rehabilitated, then go for it, but otherwise, they are simply eating food that could help someone more deserving.
You've gotten it so wrong. Scientists are definately dreaming of using stem cells in treatments. The reason that stem cells are interesting is that they have not been specialized yet. That is, they can still turn into a brain cell, kidney cell, whatever cell. It is true though that scientist are currently studying how this happens. The process is not yet very understood.
And since you can get hearts, kidney, and other organs from other people without them being rejected (although that comes with a little help from drugs), I don't see why other peoples stem cells necessarily would be rejected by the body.
Actually, I am not at all sure that stem cells are easier to study in general. After all, it is only in recent years that so-called cell lines, self-growing cell populations, have been constructed. If you are looking for easy to use cell-lines, I think you go to cancer cells: They have a tendency to grow without much encouragement!
Scientists want to use your own stem cells to regrow organs. Embryonic stem cells are not used for treatment, but only for research. The whole advantage of stem cells is that you can replace/patch up, say, your heart, with 0% chance of rejection because it can be grown from your own cells.
Using someone elses stem cells totally negates this - you might as well have a transplant.
-- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Quake related accident?
by
JimR
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· Score: 3, Funny
...a 16 year old teenager had a hole in his heart (a nail gun accident)...
Wow - I broke my thumb once and tried to convince
people I'd sustained it during a particularly
mouse intensive game of Quake II, but this is
just going too far.
Stem cells or not, if it can cure my broken heart it will be much appreciated.
-- Tat Tvam Asi
Bush is going to use this to ban all cloning
by
arvindn
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
The procedure is experimental, and a lot more research needs to be done before the efficacy of the method can be reliably ascertained. The article lists a number of caveats (see page 2). However, chances are that Bush and his religious right cronies are going to use this to claim that embryonic stem cells are no longer necessary and use it to ban all cloning.
Re:Bush is going to use this to ban all cloning
by
e_pluribus_funk
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· Score: 1
Way to inject your extreme bias into perfectly neutral argument.
I don't recall reading anything about Bush or his "religious right cronies" in the article.
Let me guess, this is your something along the lines of your thought process when reading articles:
Headline: "Looks like it's going to be rain today", Arvin thinks: "Bush is going to use this as an excuse to attack Iraq!"
Hint: you might want to try not to project every little insecurity you have on the evil machinations of Bush or the Republicans. It's not sane bud.
End of the World: Minorities and women hardest hit.
Stem Cells
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
These wonderful things are the reason that i'm in school. Magic waiting to happen, assuming that you don't mind the 20 year wait for the technology to mature. Great stuff.:)
Does this mean...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That one-day, we will be able to take a "magic" pill to encourage stem-cell development that will automatically fix any damage part of the body?
The story says you need concentrated stem-cells to do the job, but couldn't a lower dose constantly taken (like vitamins) could do a similiar job for the whole body?
Not a substitute for embryonic stem cells
by
upper
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· Score: 2, Informative
The success of this procedure says very little about the need for embryonic stem cells, because the stem cells used in this experiment were fundamentally different from embryonic stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells -- the ones from embryos a few days old, also called pluripotent stem cells -- can develop into any kind of cell in the body. The ones used in this experiment must have been multipotent stem cells, because the other kinds disappear long before birth. Multipotent stem cells come in may variations, some more specialized than others. Each kind can turn into a limited number of tissue types. See this for more info.
BTW, the embryos from which embryonic stem cells are taken were not aborted. They couldn't be -- to get pluripotent stem cells, you need embryos only a few days old. The source of those is fertility clinics, which created them as part of in vitro fertilization. For various reasons, fertility clinics sometimes have leftovers. It's quite a stretch to associate them with abortion in any way, and I fail a consistent line of reasoning that could allow these leftover embryos to be destroyed but discourage using them in medicine or science.
Compared to full frontal open chest heart surgery. The article mentions using a heart cathador, which if memory serves correctly is nothing more than a small, maybe 1/4" diameter tube which is inserted into the artery.
Compare a small 1/4" long 3 inch deep incision to a 4-5" cut + chest spreader that most operations require and compare which method causes more trauma to the body, I think this stem cell/cathador technique wins hands down.
Potentially though, this is going to save a lot of people. I wonder if the application is just limited to the heart, or if it can be used for any organ (for instance, my mucas filled lungs and ulcer pocked stomach)
The procedure seems simple enough even where it could be an outpatient therapy depending on what needs to be treated. Sorta neat how the body just lets those stems cells stick right to it.
Re:Appears to be non-invasive
by
feed_me_cereal
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Compare a small 1/4" long 3 inch deep incision to a 4-5" cut + chest spreader that most operations require and compare which method causes more trauma to the body, I think this stem cell/cathador technique wins hands down.
My friend is a nurse in training. He said he recently observed open-heart surgery. He described to me how they had to yank staples out of this guys chest, like, bracing their feet against the bed and YANKING! And then came the saw... He told me blood and other junk was flying out of the guy, and that the smell of burning flesh from constantly coterizing the wounds was nearly unbearable... People say they feel like they've been hit by a truck after waking up... I deliver drugs in the hospital and it always creeps me out to go to open-heart recovery... everyone looks like a zombie.
Wheras this catheter business is practically out-patient surgery. My friend's dad just had a simmilar operation (minus the stem cells:) and was out of the hospital in 2 days. Definately a step in the right direction!
-- "Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Slashdot Mirror
this is not really new, several institutes around the world are working with simular techniques, it's hot research for the moment.
Interesting evolution though, even though it's absolutely not certain that this technique is 'good', it's more like a shot in the dark, let's hope it works AFAIK.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Take that nasty cheerleaders from highschool!
This is really cool biology. I look forward to hearing more stem cell success stories. Using your own bodies natural healing capabilities in a more focused and concentrated process... one word, elegant.
Now if those guys in florida will finish their testing on oral bacteria replacement therapy I will look to old age with much less anxiety.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This is really not interesting at all - nobody ever considered using other peoples stem cells to heal people - it'd be just the same as trying to transplant an organ, they'd get rejected.
The reason scientists want to use embryonic stem cells is that they are easier to study, not to use. There is no ethical/moral consideration about using stem cells - it's using embryonic stem cells that everyone kicks up a fuss about - and they are being used for study, they are not practical to be used for actual treatment.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Wow - I broke my thumb once and tried to convince people I'd sustained it during a particularly mouse intensive game of Quake II, but this is just going too far.
#exclude <ms/windows.h>
Poetry heals too-- you might try Solace.
Stem cells or not, if it can cure my broken heart it will be much appreciated.
Tat Tvam Asi
The procedure is experimental, and a lot more research needs to be done before the efficacy of the method can be reliably ascertained. The article lists a number of caveats (see page 2). However, chances are that Bush and his religious right cronies are going to use this to claim that embryonic stem cells are no longer necessary and use it to ban all cloning.
These wonderful things are the reason that i'm in school. Magic waiting to happen, assuming that you don't mind the 20 year wait for the technology to mature. Great stuff. :)
That one-day, we will be able to take a "magic" pill to encourage stem-cell development that will automatically fix any damage part of the body?
The story says you need concentrated stem-cells to do the job, but couldn't a lower dose constantly taken (like vitamins) could do a similiar job for the whole body?
Embryonic stem cells -- the ones from embryos a few days old, also called pluripotent stem cells -- can develop into any kind of cell in the body. The ones used in this experiment must have been multipotent stem cells, because the other kinds disappear long before birth. Multipotent stem cells come in may variations, some more specialized than others. Each kind can turn into a limited number of tissue types. See this for more info.
BTW, the embryos from which embryonic stem cells are taken were not aborted. They couldn't be -- to get pluripotent stem cells, you need embryos only a few days old. The source of those is fertility clinics, which created them as part of in vitro fertilization. For various reasons, fertility clinics sometimes have leftovers. It's quite a stretch to associate them with abortion in any way, and I fail a consistent line of reasoning that could allow these leftover embryos to be destroyed but discourage using them in medicine or science.
Compared to full frontal open chest heart surgery. The article mentions using a heart cathador, which if memory serves correctly is nothing more than a small, maybe 1/4" diameter tube which is inserted into the artery.
Compare a small 1/4" long 3 inch deep incision to a 4-5" cut + chest spreader that most operations require and compare which method causes more trauma to the body, I think this stem cell/cathador technique wins hands down.
Potentially though, this is going to save a lot of people. I wonder if the application is just limited to the heart, or if it can be used for any organ (for instance, my mucas filled lungs and ulcer pocked stomach)
The procedure seems simple enough even where it could be an outpatient therapy depending on what needs to be treated. Sorta neat how the body just lets those stems cells stick right to it.