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Cell Transplant Allows Paralyzed Man To Walk
New submitter tiberus sends word of a breakthrough medical treatment that has restored the ability to walk to a man who was paralyzed from the chest down after his spinal cord was severed in a knife attack. A research team from the UK, led by Professor Geoff Raisman, transplanted cells from the patient's nose, along with strips of nerve tissue from his ankle, to the place where the spine was severed. This allowed the fibers in the spinal cord to gradually reconnect.
The treatment used olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) - specialist cells that form part of the sense of smell. ... In the first of two operations, surgeons removed one of the patient's olfactory bulbs and grew the cells in culture. Two weeks later they transplanted the OECs into the spinal cord, which had been cut through in the knife attack apart from a thin strip of scar tissue on the right. They had just a drop of material to work with - about 500,000 cells. About 100 micro-injections of OECs were made above and below the injury. Four thin strips of nerve tissue were taken from the patient's ankle and placed across an 8mm (0.3in) gap on the left side of the cord. ... Two years after the treatment, he can now walk outside the rehabilitation center using a frame.
I read some time ago that the olfactory cells are one of the few nerve cells that maintains the ability to reproduce and create new connections, then it seems that the researchers basically created a "hard hack" with that. Interesting, and hopefully it will be applicable in many similar cases.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
I don't think that was ever promised. Embryonic stem cells were seen as very promising for research and possibly treatment.
There's been one notable success:
http://healthland.time.com/201...
Other therapies have been significantly hampered by Government policy, but despite this some researchers went ahead. They found unforeseen obstacles like tumor formation, and unstable gene expression.
The problem with the Embryonic stem cell debate hasn't been the ethical concerns. Those are real, and should be address. But you need to know that there are those out there that used the debate not to fight Embryonic stem cell research, but to fight science itself. You don't want your tax dollars to go towards stem cell research? Fine, that's a reasonable request. But what happened was they not only pulled funding for Embryonic stem cell research, they also said that researcher couldn't receive ANY federal funding at all. For any other project. You were basically blacklisted if you even touched the topic. That had nothing to do with moral concerns, that was an attempt to use the governments muscle to kill the research entirely.
Embryonic Stem Cells had, and still have great medical promise. If your kid died from some disease, then a few years later research into stem cells lead them to some new drug that would have cured him, how would you have felt about the way this had been handled? Does it matter that they didn't find the cure? What's the next research they'll try to kill? Will it be the one that could have cured you?
Can someone clarify the discrepency here?
Dr Tabakow carried out an initial trial involving three paralysed patients who each had a small amount of OECs injected in their damaged spinal cords. While none showed any significant improvement, the main purpose of the study was achieved, showing that the treatment was safe.
Prof Wagih El Masri said: "Although the clinical neurological recovery is to date modest, this intervention has resulted in findings of compelling scientific significance."
Darek Fidyka, who was paralysed from the chest down in a knife attack in 2010, can now walk using a frame.
So the doctors think that going from paralyzed to walking is modest and insignificant? Were they not talking about the same patient? Something doesn't make sense here.
It's similarly illegal to study gun violence under a US public health research grant, even though every other class of mortality is nominally okay.
More pointedly, the US keeps statistics on deaths from gun violence, except the number of people killed by police. From: List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States
Although Congress instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, this was never carried out, and the FBI does not collect this data either.
Note: This was recently covered by The Daily Show on Comedy Central.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .