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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.
This is truly great!
If only our daily "news" was filled with more with these types of stories than the typical FUD and propaganda perpetuated by these organizations.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
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 dunno, I still think the ignorant asses are the people arguing that a clump of cells without so much as a functioning brain stem can somehow be so special as to deserve special consideration.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Nice to see breakthrough research like this coming from a single-payer healthcare system like the UK. When people start saying that the only places that can afford groundbreaking medical research are the ones where the "customers" pay a fortune, it'll be good to be able to point them to things like this.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
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?
Nah.
People coming in and demanding proof of things their politics made illegal to study are really annoying.
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.
In my state, it's illegal to use state funds to research the effect of global warming on coastal water levels.
People who ban researching things for political reasons(rather than say consistency with existing laws outside of research) are harmful. There's something very wrong with the notion of not researching things that might reflect negatively on your ideology.
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. . . .
I think it is referring different cases - initial trial involving three patients while not successful at least showed that treatment is safe. New attempt on Mr. Fidyka went much better.
In all of these examples, there's somebody else that's much closer that cares. But the embryo doesn't care, and if its mother doesn't care, why should I ?
Just the stories should be more accurate.
The research was mostly in UK but surgery was in Poland:
"Our team in Poland would be prepared to consider patients from anywhere in the world who are suitable for this therapy. They are likely to have had a knife wound injury where the spinal cord has been cleanly severed"
He has also recovered some bladder and bowel sensation and sexual function.
I'm happy to not be paralyzed and certainly hope to stay that way. But, if I was... I think these functions might be even more important to me then getting my legs back. Don't get me wrong, not being able to stand or walk would really suck. But.. a person with no leg function might get along in a wheel chair. Shitting oneself and not being able to enjoy sex... there just isn't a chair for that.
In this case I'd say it's more about sinuses.