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Finnish Patient Gets New Jaw from His Own Stem Cells
An anonymous reader writes with news out of Finland, where a patient's upper jaw was replaced with bone cultivated from stem cells and grown inside the patient himself. We discussed other advances in stem cell research a few months ago. Quoting:
"In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal stem cells -- immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or blood vessels. When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said."
If I had $100B I'd spend it on blackjack and hookers!
In fact, forget about blackjack.
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I have a mandibular excess and a maxillary deficiency (meaning my jawbone is too big and my upper face area is too small), which leads me to grind my teeth, get some major TMJ pain, and end up with ruined and crooked teeth. I've looked at all the surgeries (major, like taking your jaw OUT of your mouth entirely), and they didn't seem worth the risk. The long term problem is I'll lose all my teeth. I was the freak with the toothbrush in school, who flossed and brushed and rinsed 3 times a day. Today I'm the root canal and filling king, because of the jaw issue.
When stem cells are available to regrow teeth, it will take off. The problem is that I expect the ADA (that's the lobbying group to keep dentists expensive and rare, like the AMA is a lobbying group to reduce the supply of doctors and rape the patients' wallets) will fight it tooth and nail. They'll do it under a mask of "religion" by a group controlled by them, but it will happen.
Here, again, we see a market phenomenon that will either be over-regulated by the government so that it takes too long and is too expensive to bring to market, or we'll see a complete destruction of a huge opportunity to fix problems. I am willing to take a risk to deal with the teeth issue today, and I'm probably going to have to do it in India or China because I know that we won't get any favor here if it competes with the strong lobbying cartels, like the crooked dentists (or the doctors, or the CPAs, or any number of groups who have "associations" to harm consumers with bad legislation).
Do you really think the ADA will be against a procedure that requires much oral surgery, and associated fees? They don't make money off people without teeth, so it is their best interest to encourage you to keep them.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
This reminds me of an animation I saw on a "movie" called "Too Outrageous Animation" where a guy kept praying to Saint Martin to grant 4 wishes and his nagging wife said she wanted his body covered with cocks(fingers, tongue, elbows, etc.). St. Martin granted the wish and the husband was so enraged that he said he wanted his wife covered in vaginas. That wish was granted and then they both saw they could never go out in public and so they wanted none, the wish was granted. Then they realized they had zero sexual organs and wanted their old ones back; the wish was granted. The moral of the story was: Instead of asking for cocks and cunts, ask for brains instead.
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There is no such thing as an "upper jaw." We have various bones forming the base of the skull and associated teeth structures (aka maxilla) and a lower jaw (aka mandible).
Dentists have been using stem cells for years. In certain situations when there are not enough bone to place dental implants, dentists would place bonegrafts mixed in with blood drawn from the hip marrow. You get around 5-10 stem cells for every million blood cells but that's all it takes to convert the bonegraft into the patient's own bone (the stem cells become osteoblasts). The only difference in this study versus what we have been doing is that they place the bonegraft with stem cells into the stomach for osteoconduction versus us placing the material into place right off the bat. Typical wait times for us is only 6 months before the bone is deemed solid enough for implant placement.
The pope just shit a brick
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I was not screaming "STOP" at the controversy. I was screaming "STOP" at yet another repeated falsehood. I am perfectly willing to discuss the "controversy" but not with such outrageous emotional overtones.
... this is just my own opinion, but if I'd had a mother that didn't want me, had aborted me and left me for dead, I'd rather have ended up in a research program than a medical incinerator. Maybe then someone else who might otherwise have died, or suffered horribly, would have some chance at life.
... and knows it.
I have nothing against working multiple lines of research: one or both will pay off handsomely (or maybe another effort that's not even been thought of yet, but will likely benefit from current progress.) But the "killing babies" argument is getting old and tired, and is not relevant because nobody kills babies for the express purpose of acquiring stem cells. That's just a lie, pure and simple. They're discarded embryos that have no hope of ever being born
Nobody wants to deal with the real issue of why there are so many non-viable embryos available for research purposes in the first place. What? That's a complex psycho-socio-economic problem that has no easy answer and can't be solved by blowing up abortion clinics or passing a few laws? Huh. How about that for controversy. Perhaps we need to rethink some basic aspects of our culture and figure out where we went wrong. This so-called "controversy" over stem cell research is a symptom of some deeper issues. Issues that, I might add, aren't going to disappear just because our President doesn't understand that his moral sense is too simplistic to provide effective guidance in this area (among others.)
I get just as torqued off when people make similar irrational commentary on other equally-hot topics. So calling me a hypocrite is a bit off: I just want people to learn to think. Only then does a reasoned response that might actually improve matters become possible. Otherwise everyone is just stroking their egos and refusing to learn anything.
Look, this same technique is applied to many different issues. Take illegal immigration. As soon as anyone brings up the idea of enforcing the law as written, some asshole immediately starts crying "racism! racism!". At that point, any rational discussion becomes impossible, because anyone who believes we should enforce our own laws has now been labeled a bigot. Doesn't matter what the facts are any longer.
So, if you want to have a decent dialog about the use of discarded embryos in stem cell research, keep the "killing babies" commentary to yourself. It serves little purpose other than to polarize the participants and eliminate any possibility of rational discourse. The people who are performing this research (the ones who originally used embryonic cells) are not baby killers, not abortion doctors, they're researchers with a genuine desire to advance our scientific knowledge and help people. Such deliberate and malicious mischaracterization of others generally means that someone has a fatally flawed perspective that cannot be supported by reality
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
A woman gets badly burned, and they graft skin from her husband's ass to rebuild her face. After the series of operations, she looks great.
She says, "Honey, how can I ever repay you?"
He says, "I get paid back every time I see your mother kiss you on the cheek."
What?