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The stem cell debate: this stuff is personal
Tag it now -
Thursday, 02 November 2006
I've been reluctant for some reason to get into this here, which is silly, I realize, because there are large chunks of Prisoner of Trebekistan about dealing with my family's various health troubles.
One of the things that losing on Jeopardy!
taught me, finally, is that I do not know shit, and even if I did, it
wouldn't matter as much as trying to be good to people I love. One of
whom is my sister. Not to give away the ending of the book. Anyhow.
First, let's review: one of these things is not like the other.
Thing
is, you never know how your own family may be touched by this stuff. As we discover near the end of the
book, after decades of mistaken diagnoses, my sister has Crohn's disease, which is definitely just lousy with badness. Crohn's sucks.
And Crohn's one of the many illnesses which may be helped with stem cell research. The first person to ever receive the treatment was reported here
in 2001. By 2005, this was the state of the art (CD = Crohn's
Disease; HSCT = Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapy; emphasis is mine):
Eleven of 12 patients entered a sustained remission... After a median follow-up of 18.5 months (range, 7-37 months), only one patient has developed a recurrence of active CD, which occurred 15 months after HSCT. CONCLUSIONS: Autologous HSCT may be performed safely and has a marked salutary effect on CD activity. A randomized study will be needed to confirm the efficacy of this therapy.
There seems to be a current clinical trial listed here, incidentally.
I want my sister to get better so bad I would give a kidney, one
lung, three toes, and half my scrotum just to see her hopping around in
good health. I can do without those, and a whole lot more. But I need my sister.
So, see, this shit is personal.
This Tuesday, please vote for someone sane.
UPDATE: I should clarify some stem cell stuff, since I'm not a doctor
and you probably aren't, either. And keep in mind I don't know diddly
about squat, so I could be wrong about anything, including my name.
But as I understand it, the stem cells used in the therapy described above are harvested from the patient's own
body, then frozen. Next comes some immunosuppressive chaos, then the
transplant, then (with luck) a whole bunch of recovery. I'm
oversimplifying, but that's the shape as I get it.
There are risks all along the way. Overall mortality is around 10%,
just for buying this ride, not even counting the underlying disease
that brought you to the park.
Embryonic stem cells come into play here because they've been shown
to have the clear potential to take the place of adult stem cells taken
this way, and more effectively, thus reducing some (not all) of the
risks to the patient. Which means that if the research goes forward, it's more likely that a procedure like the above may do my sis some good someday.
Also, there are lots of procedures where the patient needs marrow from
a donor; in these cases, embryonic stem cells offer the hope of much
greater chance of acceptance. So.
