Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping!
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World Parkinson Congress
Washington DC Convention Center
February 22-26, 2006
Washington, D.C., USA
http://www.worldpdcongress.org/
The World Parkinson Congress, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an international forum for the best scientific discoveries, medical practices and caregiver initiatives related to Parkinson's disease.
By bringing physicians, scientists, allied health professionals, caregivers and people with Parkinson's disease together, we hope to create a worldwide dialogue that will help expedite the discovery of a cure and best treatment practices for this devastating disease.
Here is the rub. Since the cells needed for replacement of authentic human dopamine neurons that migrate to the proper location express particular properties, these authors wanted to know those specific properties. If they are identified, they could grow large numbers of cells in a culture system and use them on multiple patients. This is akin to what is done with some human embryo lines used to make antibodies. In other words, perhaps only a few human embryos would have to die to bring a greater good (their view and not mine). The idea would be to engineer large numbers of them.
The other paper shows that a specificity exists between the nervous, immune and blood systems. Without a precise match, some cells will not migrate appropriately no matter what. If I am reading this correctly, the second paper makes the results of the first paper more difficult to implement because "just the right circumstances must prevail for a successful implantation." This may mean that one could have the perfect cells created in a culture dish, but they won't work if the patient's body does not support the implantation appropriately and to the correct degree.
As in all things, these are baby steps. It is much better to see them trying to understand this in animals then to promising that it will work in humans in a couple of months. That is honest at least.
Well, just remember that for years they touted the "cure" was in fetal cell transplants, taken from fetuses aborted between 14 and 20 weeks...but then, when they did it, they had problems: Most didn't work (and those who improved had no fetal cells left-- probably just the surgical procedure helped, even if only saline was injected...indeed, there is an old surgical technique that dates back 50 years to treat Parkinson's that essentially destroys a little tissue...)...
And then some DID take and overgrow. One overseas experiment led to a man having a tumor, because the fetal cells started growing into all types of tissue (a teratoma)...and in the US, some cases ended up overgrowing, and the patients had twitching and spasms, which are worse than the Parkinsons' disease...
It's like the cartoon The Sorcerer's apprentice: Magic seems nice, but you have to learn to turn the magic off...until they do more research you won't get "success"...