Slashdot Mirror
FDA Warns Against Using Young Blood As Medical Treatment (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Tuesday against using plasma infusions from young blood donors to ward off the effects of normal aging as well as other more serious conditions. Plasma, the liquid portion of the blood, contains proteins that help clot blood. The infusions are promoted to treat a variety of conditions, including normal aging and memory loss as well as serious conditions such as dementia, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and post-traumatic stress disorder.
"There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product," FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote in a statement Tuesday. "The reported uses of these products should not be assumed to be safe or effective," he added, noting that the FDA "strongly" discourages consumers from using this therapy "outside of clinical trials under appropriate institutional review board and regulatory oversight." Gottlieb said that "a growing number of clinics" are offering plasma from young donors and similar therapies, though he did not name any in particular.
"There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product," FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote in a statement Tuesday. "The reported uses of these products should not be assumed to be safe or effective," he added, noting that the FDA "strongly" discourages consumers from using this therapy "outside of clinical trials under appropriate institutional review board and regulatory oversight." Gottlieb said that "a growing number of clinics" are offering plasma from young donors and similar therapies, though he did not name any in particular.
Hopefully this will lower young blood prices, been awhile since I've had a good drink.
Government needs to keep their nose out of my business. What next, are they going to tell me I shouldn't eat the hearts of my enemies to gain their powers?
>" FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote in a [statement] Tuesday. "
At this time, that link for the statement is broken.
Do be warned- there are, indeed, serious risks with infusing foreign blood. All kinds of blood-borne diseases can be transmitted, as well risk of injection site infections. You can also have severe allergic or other auto-immune reactions. At those *crazy* costs ($8k for just a single treatment of 1 liter), one would think you would be blood typed matched carefully to blood products that have been thoroughly tested and screened and all equipment is sterilized properly. But, who knows.
And there is no proof it does anything at all. Not yet, anyway. And I doubt such profit-motivated "desperation clinics" are performing any controlled studies to help change that.
One ridiculous medical quack cure after another, this one is from the *middle ages*, for God's sake.
Eat from the food pyramid, get some exercise, take medicine only when necessary, and you will maximize your chances.
Well, if the FDA is this quick to be adamantly against it, then it must be something good and beneficial.
Their opposition is actually pretty wishy-washy. They say the benefits "aren't proven", but there haven't been any rigorous clinical trials, so that is at best a neutral statement. Meanwhile, there are several animal trials that showed a clear benefit to the transfusions.
Rob Liefeld's art was terrible. His proportions were madness and he couldn't draw feet to save his life. Why, the thought to using it to treat any medical condition is just absurd.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I take geezer blood. I can kick kids off my lawn so fast now they're dizzy when they land. And my COBOL coding is faster.
Table-ized A.I.
" but there haven't been any rigorous clinical trials" You didn't even look at all, stop asserting bullshit moron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_blood_transfusion
In experiments like this, researchers found that some of these mice died quickly (11 out of 69 in one experiment) for reasons the scientists could not explain, but described as possibly some form of rejection.[1] Amy Wagers, a researcher who coauthored several mouse studies on young blood transfusion, has said that her papers do not provide a scientific basis for some of the existing human trials.[2]
Evidence from two large studies in 2017 showed that the transfusion of blood from younger donors to older people led to outcomes that were either no different from, or led to worse outcomes than, blood from older donors.[1][6]
I've been doing it for 3000 years. It's perfectly safe.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
If folks really find this 'treatment' beneficial, find someone with hemochromatosis, and offer them a low payment for regular donation.
For those that don't know, it's a condition where a persons gut is sort of out-of-control in terms of how much iron it absorbs, leading to a slight excess of iron. This slight extra iron can build up to unsafe levels if not removed for several decades- and the most convenient option for removal is simple: Draining about a blood donation worth of blood twice a week, until the levels are 'normal', then less frequently to maintain.
The body replaces the blood just fine, and the blood is perfectly find for almost every use, since a slightly elevated iron level is rarely an issue for 99% of cases.
Unfortunately, lots of blood organizations refuse to draw blood from folks with this condition for free - and want to charge for the regular blood donation as 'treatment' - and will even pour the blood out rather than use it to help anyone, with no clear reason other than unmentioned greed as motivations.
So, if this 'treatment' becomes fashion, then I hope it leads to a less crazy situation for folks with that condition - though it is still crazy to use blood this way too. Perhaps in this case, two crazy situations make a sane result?
Ryan Fenton
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like the sort of comically evil plot Montgomery Burns might try, sending Smithers to tap kids' arms while they sleep?
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like the sort of comically evil plot Montgomery Burns might try, sending Smithers to tap kids' arms while they sleep?
You're probably subconsciously thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Feud_(The_Simpsons)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Plasma infusions don't make you youthful. For that, you have to drink the blood while it's still warm, fresh from the source.
Doing so might make you very sensitive to sunlight, though.
#DeleteChrome
Medical quack cures during the middle ages spread via word of mouth among the clueless masses.
Modern social media is a way for the clueless masses to quickly spread (mis)information via word of mouth.
During the interim period, we had broadcasting - a few people communicating to many, via books, newspapers, radio, and finally TV. These forms of communication cost money, so they were only available to people or organizations willing and able to pay for it. That meant what they were saying usually had to first go through some sort of vetting process, to make sure it wasn't wasting their time and money.
Then the Internet happened. It's given us lots of great things, but it's also led to a regression of information dissemination. Social media costs nothing to use, meaning that the rumors and hearsay spreading among the masses are once again able to drown out the volume of information from authoritative sources.
People keep championing censorship as the solution (companies and organizations doing "fact-checking" and deliberately squelching info they deem to be incorrect). While that can work, it's incredibly risky. All a wannabe-dictator has to do is replace the fact checkers with people sympathetic to his cause, and the whole thing gets re-purposed into a system to control and subjugate the masses. The proper solution is to educate people, so they're better able to decide for themselves what's true and what's quackery. Unfortunately that's a lot harder than censorship, so lots of people who really should know better are advocating trading off some of their freedom for better security against quacks.
The food pyramid we all learned in the 80s is totally wrong because it puts too much emphasis on grains / carbs.
Well, if the FDA is this quick to be adamantly against it, then it must be something good and beneficial.
Spoken like someone with access to the safest drug supply in the history of the world who then wants to shit on it from within. Everything is a conspiracy.. EVERYTHING
"Well, the government tells me not to breathe cinnamon, but fuck that! Just the MAN keeping me down! No way, I'd rather fucking choke myself to death on camera than take sound advice..." - Republicans are literally this dumb.
Democrats are dumb enough to bring up the regulation of inhaling anything when it was Republicans who insisted on locking up hippies for decades for simply inhaling a plant that they said you shouldn't inhale..
Here we are 20 years later and your dumb ass is actually promoting the government banning you from inhaling something. I know it's just a silly example, but you really need to think shit through... Maybe not everything the government declares to be dangerous really is.... Hrm?
How many people will die of old age before research into preventing aging becomes legal?
Oh vanity of vanities - you want to live forever and you want to have children too. What could possibly go wrong? You should be content that you can now live almost twice as long as most people did in the middle ages.
Right now all medical research is banned, unless it is to prevent or cure a disease, and aging doesn't count.
This is simply not true. Life extension research exists and is carried out by Harvard and UCLA to name a few.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I think the government should supply free cocaine to the masses.
-- Cheers!
Someone wanted their snake oil and patent medicines back.
When my mom was Stage 3-4+ with metatstatic breast cancer, she got a few blood transfusions. It was like the equivalent of a video game med pack. She had so much more energy and vitality, it was like a glimpse of her when she wasn't sick.
I think the last 2 we even requested within about 4-6 weeks of her death so she could attend a couple of last hurrahs with the extended family and not just be a total zombie.
I think this might have been whole blood and not just plasma, though.
Yeah, that's what America needs. More self-righteous, overconfident narcissists.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It definitely worked for the Skeksis.
-Dave
The fun bit is where they reject science because it supposedly tries to force them how and what to think instead of allowing freedom to think for themselves, then they turn around and parrot the same bullshit (usually even verbatim) they hear somewhere else.
I'm dead serious, if I had a buck for every flattard talking about how "water always finds its level", usually EXACTLY with these words, I could buy Apple.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... either ban the practice or shut the fuck up.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Considering those Wikipedia references are a blog saying parabiotic effects are really interesting, but there's no evidence in humans, maybe in 10 or 20 years, and a review/opinion article with the title "Younger blood from older donors: Admitting ignorance and seeking stronger data and clinical trials" I think your response "stop asserting bullshit moron" might be a little bit too strong?
i hope this people arent force now to get plasma the old dracula way
It sounds like a reasonably Modest Proposal to solve the overpopulation problem as well.