Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives Alternatives and ALCHEMISTS Stem Cell Research-resetting the immune system

Hi Sue22!

Very terrific news indeed! Thanks for sharing

Nikki

That is my impression too.

And our current president who is not against stem cell research, but actually fighting to lift the bans against embryonic research, for incredibly stupid "moral" reasons, has expressed his frustration about the lack of progress, too.

Other countries like China are leading the way on research, I do hope that this controversy will at some point end, and we will start contributing significantly to stem cell progress as well.

well the spondy association would not be the one who does stem cell research. A guy like Dr. Burt who is an immunologist would be more appropriate.

Believe it or not he has been doing it for approx. 20 years. But it's still relatively in it's infancy. Even my rheumy told me "no way" when I told her I was considering it. But it was based on ignorance. She knows nothing about it. She has her "protocols" of drug treatments and that's it.

We do need to start making progress and useing embyonic stem cells. But due to religious objections this is getting stifled. But Dr. Burt is well on his way to making people better. He is adding more and more protocols. He treats many different diseases with great success. The biggest challenge is getting insurance companies to pay the treatment. It costs over 100 thousand dollars and insurance companies consider it "experimental". no suprise.

Hi finnari

100,000, wow. Very expensive. Worth it though? Yes, I think.

Another area I am intersted in exploring in this regard is 'nanomedicine'. This is something that medical futurists I associate with are putting time into, and, like stem cell research, is another promising way to treat many diseases in the future. There has been research on it with RA: http://www.dovepress.com/targeting-nanom...recommendation1

Generally speaking, the problem in treating with drugs like TNF blocking agents is the lack of knowledge regarding the 'complete picture' in rheumatology, and in medicine in general. There is too much guessing going on. Too many side effects. As advanced as western medicine is, our medicine is relatively primitive in many ways. Its even worse with AS because they don't even know what causes it really, yet. Not for sure.

That said, advancing technology of this decade will allow us to uncover many more of the details. Genome projects are most hindered by the lack of inexpensive processing power and sophisticated pattern recnognition software needed to decode disease part-whole relations. This is something that will change substantially in this century. We really are at the dawn of the horizon of a whole new way of medicine because of the advancing capabilities of the comptuers we use to understand medicine.

It does bother me greatly that religious ideals about stem cells should get in the way of medical progress. I see there being more hope for a 'nanomedicine' solution coming from the States before stem cells get even the time of day for rare diseases like ours.

Continuing to look abroad for these reasons....

Well TNF inhibitors are nano medicines. The article you provided demonstrated the latest. Yet you state later in your reply "the problem with TNF inhibitors"......

I have been on TNF's for 10 years, with some breaks. They are by far the best medicine I have ever been on. I do think they are specific enough medicine that does not wreck my body. But like most meds they lose there strength.

Hi Finnari

You are right. What I linked was not what I was getting at. Linked the wrong thing. I meant 'nanomedicine' in a different sense. In the sense that it would not involve drugs but involve intelligent 'nanobots'.

Nanorobotics:

"Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the microscopic scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the still largely hypothetical nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots, devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. As of 2010 nobody has yet built artificial non-biological nanorobots: they remain a hypothetical concept[citation needed]. The names nanobots, nanoids, nanites or nanomites have also been used to describe these hypothetical devices"

"In the future, nanorobots could revolutionize medicine. Doctors could treat everything from heart disease to cancer using tiny robots the size of bacteria, a scale much smaller than today's robots. Robots might work alone or in teams to eradicate disease and treat other conditions. Some believe that semiautonomous nanorobots are right around the corner -- doctors would implant robots able to patrol a human's body, reacting to any problems that pop up. Unlike acute treatment, these robots would stay in the patient's body forever."

Nikki

The nanorobots do sound like they could be the future of medicine, as sci fi as they sound, Nikki!

At this time, I think of most medicines as inhibitors of our body processes, although some stimulate as well. The inhibitors may be helpful when something is malfunctioning, like an auto-immune disorder that is causing damage, but they don't really correct the problem, only disrupt it.

I thought of an analogy the other day. Say you live in a house, and there is poisonous gas coming in from outside. You hire a professional to help you with the problem. He comes by, sees the gas leak, but can't do anything about the gas outside. So he addresses it by turning off your air conditioner, reducing the air intake into the house. It helps, you get less poison gas, and as a result, you are better off than before. But now without that air conditioner on, you are also getting less healthy air too, and that is a new problem...a side effect...

Maybe the nanorobots could go farther than drugs and actually reprogram and correct malfunctioning body chemistry!

Hi,

The successes with stem cell research:

Number of cures found using:
- Adult stem cells => 70 plus
- Embryonic stem cells => 0

More info:
1. A stem cell is a popular name for a cell that is
undifferentiated; that means it has not yet begun to develop to maturity.
2. Some scientists believe that stem cells may be
used to repair damaged organs, and to treat some
degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s, and spinal cord injuries.
3. There are two types of human stem cells, namely
adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells can be derived from certain tissues including blood, brain, bone marrow, fat, and umbilical cord blood.
4. Embryonic stem cells can be derived from human
embryos about one week after fertilisation. The
extraction of embryonic stem cells is unacceptable
because it kills human embryos.
5. A number of international documents, including the Nuremberg Code and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, reject the use of human beings in experimental research, and so embryonic stem cell research is in violation of these codes.
6. Some embryo research involves experimenting on
those so-called “surplus” embryos who are left over
from IVF. Other research is carried out on embryos
who are deliberately formed for the purpose of
destroying them to extract their stem cells.
7. Tumours have developed in both adults and
animals who were injected with embryonic stem
cells, and to date, there have been no successful
therapies developed from using these cells.
8. Patients would have to purchase embryonic stem
cells, and the costly drugs to prevent their immune
system from rejecting them. This would not be the
case with adult stem cells.
9. Many private investors in biotechnology are
withdrawing their money from embryonic stem cell
researchers because they are not seeing any
positive results. On the other hand, the successes of adult stem cell research are spurring major
investment because of the beneficial therapies it has produced.
Dr Peter Hollands, who worked as a clinical embryologist at Bourn Hall Clinic, the world's first IVF unit, has said that “embryonic stem cells have yet to be used to treat any form of disease,” and that it is “common sense” to direct resources towards adult over embryonic research.(http://www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/treatments.
htm)

Hope this information is useful,
John

Dr. Burt from Northwestern is coming to my hospital to talk to the doctors about stem cell surgery. In the evening he is hosting an event at a resort where he will talk to auto immune disease and meet patients. I will be going there to meet him and tell him to finish the protocol for AS so we can get going on it!!