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First Successful Cell Transplant Cures Diabetes
Iphtashu Fitz writes "A few months ago the 50th anniversary of the first organ transplant was celebrated. Over those 50 years surgeons have learned how to sucessfully transplant many organs and other body parts. Now it seems that Japanese surgeons have added yet another successful transplant to the list, having recently transplanted insulin-generating cells, known as Islets of Langerhans from a mother to her diabetic daughter. Three months after the surgery both mother and daughter appear to be completely healthy. Although the daughter no longer needs insulin she still needs to take powerful drugs to keep her immune system from rejecting the new cells. Researchers also still don't know if this procedure would work in many people with type 1 diabetes since in many of those cases their own immune system has destroyed their Islet cells."
With the advent of this new treatment, maybe thousands of diabetics could have the ability to live insulin-injection free. Yes, they do have to take anti-rejection drugs, but it is no different then taking the drugs for an organ transplant. Even if this is only a prelude to a new, more permenent treatment, the possibilities of this doing good with this new treatment is huge.
Still valuable research, no doubt.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
So the woman is not taking insulin anymore, but she is taking immuno-suppressants.
This means she has switched from one type of life-long medication to another type of life-long medication. Is this really a change for the better?
They will be rejected too, since most diabetes type 1 patients' immune system are programmed to destroy insulin producing cells.
Not only has the idea been around, but it has actually been performed multiple times. This was the just the first islet transplant from a [keyword]living[/keyword] donor. While still a great scientific event, the poster has misled and over-hyped this story.
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The Japanese case is the first to be performed successfully using cells from a living donor. Previous cases involved donors who had died or who used their own reprocessed cells, which are injected back into their body.
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(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Me American. Thump bible. That cure all! Bush say so.
You can't seperate the ethical questions from the scientific ones. If you are pissed off at how society anwsers ethical questions, then offer something more insightful to the debate than"Me American. Thump Bible".
It is true in some instances a majority of the voters don't want scientific advancement at the cost of their moral values. Maybe stem cell research can save the lives of people with parkinsins disease. But does society want an added value to more aboritions "Hey, the dead baby was good for something after all, lets have more of them". Is a life a commodity?
Without ethics, it is possible we would have places where people would broker in body organs. Have an extra kidney? We're buying! The poorest would sell a kidney, and the richest would get his transplant. But we don't have that system because or values and ethics say it is wrong.
When it comes to any research, we have to identify how we will continue. To some it is oppressive, like when the FDA takes so long to approve a drug. To others it is needed caution.
So, how about explaining your position a little better? All I can tell from your original post is you seem to have anger toward the Bible and Bush.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
1: abortions are legal and its the persons choise if they decide to have one and frankly it is not our place to force our morality on others (ethics dont define what you decide you want done to yourself , it defines how you act to others IMO)
,then would it not be better to get something usefull out of them,If you belive that they were living thinking beings (not the debate as to if that is true or not) and there is nothing(ethicaly or moraly) you can do to stop it taking place then why not get some good out of it .
,they are performing tests to assure the medicine does not cause more damage than it prevents , blocking funding to stem cell research does nobody any good , the pro lifers still get irate about abortions ,The religious folks who like to get irate with science and find another area of research to attack , the people suffering from parkensons lose some more hope ,The pro stem research lobbyist get a bit irate . all in all the situation is throughly iratating.
. .
,but he is very much right , its a no win situation unless you count votes for political fiqures a win , as thats the only thing to come out of this
2: if these abortions are going to hapen
The analogy you use of the FDA doing further research is specious
Im not an american and my views on Bushs other presidential acts otherwise aside , This was a totaly stupid decision that seems to me a bit like book burning
The research will continue , Your tax dollars are put to better use(?) are they , do you know what the funds got diverted to , i can hasten a guess that it is not back to you or another scientific field, Stem cell advances that will(possibly nothing is certain , but its fairly likely) save millions of lives will instead hapen much later and instead of being partial protected will be in the hands of a private company and it will end up costing you more in the end
The grandparent may have phrased it in a way that offended you slightly
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I don't think anyone would become pregnant just so they could be harvested for cells. But if they did, what would be the harm? It's not "dead baby". It's a fetus. It might be only few clustered cells without any brain-functions. If those cells could be used to cure someone from a mortal disease, I fail to see what damage it does. Of course, abortion is a big thing for the people involved, but if they want to do it, who are we to say "no"?
Abortions will happen. Outlawing them wont make them go away. And since they will happen no matter what, you might as well figure out ways how they could benefit the society as a whole. Demonizing the doctors who do them as "baby-killers" or something accomplishes nothing. using the cells for cures of disease or research accomplishes quite alot.
If you really want to reduce the number of abortions, you should focus on educating people. No, "say no to sex!" or bible-thumbing is not the answer. Objective information about different birth-control methods and making them available would be a good start.
And like it or not, life is a commodity. It has been since the dawn of time. We have had prostitutes, slaves, mercenaries and even regural wage-slaves. We all sell our lives to some extent for money.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Since insulin is a relatively small polypeptide, wouldn't it be easier on the patient to grow the beta-cells on substrate inside microspheres with pores of about 50 nm? If you make the spheres out of non-organic material, immune cells will neither attack them or move into them.
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ASCII art:
/ i \ i
/ \
| csc |
o csc io c = beta cells
| csc | s = substrate (serum proteins)
o csc o o = pore
\ / i = insulin
o / i
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The insulin and glucose can traverse the pores, but immune cells can't reach the beta cells.
Just some wild speculation and it probably isn't even practical. I'm just a biochemist.
First of all: the cell transplant genie has been out of the bottle for about 5 years. Last mentioned success at King Hill hospital.
This is no way new.
2.: more important: the knock out here is the anti-immune-drugs. being treated with this means: live in a sterile environment, no carpet, no plants in your room etc, having any tooth fillings removed/teeth replaced with ceramics (drilled into the jaw. yes drilled) or a denture. And so on.
Plus, a simple cold hits you like a hammer.
So you pay your so called "health" with sacrifying a much larger portion of quality of life than the diabetes had an impact on.
Probably the most important is that it would be ethical to try withdrawing immunosuppression in this population (in contrast to say, heart transplant recipients, who would die if their organ were rejected). In islet transplants, the worst case scenario is that you are back on insulin. It's also possible that you could become sensitized to additional antigens during the rejection process, which may make it harder if you need a kidney down the road.
It is certainly possible that some organs will end up being rejected, but if information can be gleaned from the process that improves the safety and efficacy of transplant regimens, I think it's a reasonable trade-off. Obviously, however, the informed consent process needs to be very carefully thought out and meticulously executed in a tolerance/drug withdrawal trial. The Immune Tolerance Network is a good resource.
Or if type 2. Taking stuff to keep your blood sugars level reasionable. Which that stuff usually affect the kidneys over times. And still run the risk of anything with small blood vessels having problems.
Sounds like. With this. You are changine one problem for another. Drugs that supress the amune system on rejection have there own nightmare.
Be nice for a total cure of this problem for both type 1 & 2.
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