(NYP) Heart Disease Triumph (fetal stem cells)

[ovidsen]

(Sunday June 4, 2005)

By Brad Hamilton

June 5, 2005 -- A top New York doctor says he's made a revolutionary breakthrough — using stem cells to reverse terminal heart disease in just a few months.

Dr. Valavanus Subramanian, the chief of cardiovascular surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, yesterday awed a medical conference in New York with a report on his groundbreaking trial, which was done in Ecuador to avoid federal and state regulations limiting the use of fetal stem cells.

"The reason we go offshore is because it's not FDA approved," said a member of his team.

The disease is invariably fatal, and can be cured only by a transplant

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/44975.htm

This appears to be a very strong argument against those who insist that fetal stem cells have far less theraputic value than umblical cord or adult stem cells

[librechik]

1. it's Valavanur &

wish I could find this somewhere beside the NYP...

I refuse to register to read that tripe--but this sounds intereting--
What terminal heart disease exactly?\\

:kick:

[Cooley Hurd]

2. My mother died from diabetes...

...and heart disease goes hand-in-hand with it (due to repeated congestive heart failure episodes). I guess, after so many CHF instances, the heart disease becomes irreversible.

[roseBudd]

21. it is the neurohormonal response to the failing heart...

that continues to damage the heart. Hypertrophic cardiomyophy is rather common in the feline and animal research to benefit humans also increases the veterinary knowledgebase. I just sent this to the yahoo group Feline Heart. Bush hasn't signed any laws banning feline stem cell research. If it cures cats there would be nothing the fundies could say.

This is huge because CHF is very common and hugely expensive to society in terms of healthcare dollars.

[notadmblnd]

4. Congestive heart failure

is something I'd call terminal heart disease. Lost my husband to it almost two years ago, he was 54.

[ovidsen]

7. The article

doesn't say which heart disease. Sorry.

[Blaze Diem]

3. Will Dick Cheney be flying to Ecuador for stem-cell procedure??

Will it be paid for by the American taxpayers?

[truth2power]

6. How ironic...

That was my first thought. Cheney...hmm...wonder if he'll avail himself of this procedure. Given how a principled moral stance is so frikkin' important to him, he should walk the talk and elect to die rather than let those embryos be sacrificed for his worthless hide.

Yeah...right! :eyes:

[napi21]

14. Have you noticed, every time a RWer is asked if they would take

advantage of any new discoveries found in a foreign country, they NEVER answer the question? Oh, they give an answer, but not to THAT question. Always something that skirts the issue.

I suspect ALL of 'em would have the procedure if it benefitted them personally, no matter if it was not permitted to be researched in the US.

I don't recall what the RW reaction was when Barnard did the first heart transplant, but I'd bet they were pitching the same kind of fit over that "playing God" back then, yet lots of them take advantage of transplants now, huh?

[pfitz59]

11. Like rich girls getting abortions?

I remember the 60's when wealthy girls from US would take 'vacations' to Switzerland. (Wink! Wink!) Snowbirds already flock to mexico for medicine and medical procedures unavailable in US. US used to be leader in medical innovation, but no longer.

[nine30]

17. Penis Cheney has never openly opposed Stem Cell research..

..or even gay marriage for that matter.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Really interesting -- thanks for posting.

[davsand]

8. If this pans out it will kill most opposition to stem cell research.

Diabetes is a big one, but heart disease is HUGE. If you look at how many people die from heart disease every year, and how many are diagnosed with it every year, you will see the opposition to stem cell research drop away if it is proved it can help.

The NYP is a POS (Piece of Sh*t) newspaper, but I do hope this is honest news this time.

FWIW, Congestive heart failure is a progressive disease and it does kill people--by degrees. It is a sort of a spiral downward where the heart stops functioning at top performance, fluid then builds up in the body because the heart isn't working correctly, then the heart functions even LESS effectively until you have a heart attack.

They can control it successfully (for a while) with a lot of drugs and attention, but ultimately without serious intervention of some sort it kills the patient. They do by-pass surgery to help improve heart function, and that can help for a time. However, if the tendency to arterial plaque is present, ultimately the bypasses fill in again and the condition deteriorates again.

My Dad had his first heart surgery 13 years ago. He's been in pretty good shape for quite a few years up to about the last five, and they have been a stone bitch for him. It has been a never ending round of stints to try and keep his bypass grafts open and his heart function up, and lot of drugs. He had three heart attacks in a six week stretch a couple of months ago.

He's coming down to the end of the fight, I suspect. I feel especially bitter when I consider that the bullshit games the fundy freaks want to play with stem cell research might actually have prevented a line of research that could have helped my Dad and few hundred thousand other people.


Laura

On edit: It is more people than I'd stated originally that could benefit:

"Incidence and Prevalence

According to the American Heart Association, nearly 5 million people experience heart failure and about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Heart failure becomes more prevalent with age and the number of cases is expected to grow as the overall age of the population increases.

The condition affects 1% of people aged 50 years and older and about 5% of those aged 75 years and older. African Americans experience heart failure twice as often as Caucasians. About 10% of patients diagnosed with heart failure die within 1 year, and about 50% die within 5 years of diagnosis."

http://www.cardiologychannel.com/chf/

[Robb]

9. I just hope it's not a set-up...

...a la the offshore cloning weirdos.

I'm just a great big cynic these days, eh? :D

[Igel]

10. Yikes.

Again, the adjective that's used is meaningful, whether it's cord, embryonic, or adult. This is not one of the usual ones, and the stunning news value isn't in the therapy, but in the adjective.

These weren't embryonic stem cells. Embryos are usually created in the lab (and are danged hard to find when floating around, unattached, in a uterus). They're usually pitched out when not wanted; and if they aren't ever implanted, most people have no trouble thinking they're not viable. Left alone in their environment, they'll die. Mix up a mess of them for research, show a picture to most people, and you get support for embryonic stem cell research. These lumps of cells have no obvious mother or means of support.

This moves the issue beyond embryos. We're talking fetuses, "five to 12 weeks old". I've known women who were showing at the end of 12 weeks. They have a mother, albeit she may be unwilling. Left alone, they'll grow.

This is opening stem cell research essentially to the range of fetuses allowed to be aborted for any reason by Roe v Wade. Many more people will have trouble with the idea of a woman getting pregnant and aborting the fetus/baby (no neutral word here, I'll use both to highlight the problem) than they will with disembodied embryos. Even if the fetus/baby would be aborted for other reasons, it'll be a problem. We have a whole new range of argumentation and fighting to look forward to.

This has no bearing on the principle science-based embryonic stem cell argument: most embryonic cell lines have gone cancerous, they tend to lean towards being unstable, and there are still no therapies based on them that I'm aware of.

[Malva Zebrina]

12. No

Many more people will have trouble with the idea of a woman getting pregnant and aborting the fetus/baby (no neutral word here, I'll use both to highlight the problem) than they will with disembodied embryos.

Err--you are wrong. "BABY" is NOT neutral at all. A BABY is a born human being. A three month or twleve week old fetus , and that is the exact word and is indeed THE neutral word to use, bereft of any appeals to emotion or pity, that needs to be used. A fetus is NOT a baby. Period.



This is not a "baby" except to a mother who is carrying it and wants it and then she may refer to it as her "baby" . Acually it is her "baby to be" and is the reason she is referred to as "expecting"

This fetus at twelve weeks cannot subsist or exist on it's own.

We're talking fetuses, "five to 12 weeks old". I've known women who were showing at the end of 12 weeks. They have a mother, albeit she may be unwilling. Left alone, they'll grow.
.

She is not a mother at this stage. She is a female who is pregnant. Use of the language in that way is specious.

And if she is unwilling, she has the right to abort according to her own abilities to run her own life the way she and no one else, knows to be fit.

[catzies]

13. Thank you for excellent response. Well done.

:thumbsup:

[napi21]

15. That is ONE opinion, but it is not the belief of many.

It may not be YOUR belief, and that's OK, but many people really believe that egg becomes a baby at the time it is fertilized. Their biggest argument IS that scientists will use aborted fetuses for this research. The bills in the House/Senate now specify the use of unwanted and to be destroyed frozen embryos being stored in fertility clinics, and that's the only process that stands a chance of passing...for now at least!

[reprobate]

16. Too bad you didn't see the 'fair and balanced' story on cbs sunday morning

Here's my email to them:

Your story on stem cell research would have been "Fair and Balanced" if you had just added one thing: EVERY ONE OF THESE BLASTOCYSTS WILL BE DESTROYED ANYWAY WEN THEY ARE DEEMED NO LONGER VIABE DO TO AGE.


In my logic class 45 years ago this was called a lie by omission. Come on, people, you are supposed to be journalists. Act like it.

[Kelvin Mace]

19. Calling an embryo a baby

is like calling a grain of sand a Pentium chip.

[Ilsa]

25. Excellent! Thanks, I'd like to use that one. eom

[Malva Zebrina]

20. You are right

it is a belief and it is a belief that is connected to religious beliefs. It has no substance in fact as far as I am concerned. I am not the only one of the millions of American citizens who think this way either.

You are entitled to your religious beliefs, but only as it applies to yourself and whatever you think is the way to your "salvation"

But---

You are NOT entitled to force those beliefs on other Americans who may not subscribe to your religious beliefs. You are NOT entitled to overthrow the secular laws that protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. In this case, it is the tyranny of the Christain religion that would have women's bodies become their own to do with as they like, to hand that body over to the state, according to their "beliefs" and that is

immoral. It is patently immoral.

[Igel]

26. I do believe I said there was no neutral word there, so I'm quite

sure you're not talking to me when you point out that "baby" isn't a neutral word.

The opposing side views calling the developing thing "fetus" the same way I'd view calling a black man, in the 1830s and held as a slave, "property"--a denial of the "thing's" humanity.

On the one hand, pro-choice people view calling it a "baby" as a horrible exaggeration and mischaracterization.

On the other hand, pro-life people view calling it a "fetus" as a horrible understatement and mischaracterization.

It may be conscience-assuaging to say that clinical terms are neutral and universally accepted, but I'm a generative linguist, mostly, and view terms as defined not by authority figures, but by usage. Usage is split, although both sides are in deep denial about how words are defined, and even that the other side has a right to breathe. And discipline-specific terms are straitjacketing. I'll re-assert my claim: there is no commonly accepted neutral term ... outside of a medical school and cognate contexts, in which terms are defined precisely to draw the only distinctions found to be necessary, and then used as defined.

For a crystal clear example of a case in which the medical textbooks' definitions were inappropriate, but people found themselves ideologically enslaved to technical definitions, recall the incident a few months back in which a man cut open a woman's uterus and stole its contents. It was primarily those who let physiologist's dictate the common usage of terms ran into problems (those rejecting the technical definitions had a much easier time of it): the medical terms failed to meet the requirements of English. Hence the uproar over whether the thief stole a "fetus", or "baby". The medically required term changed half-way through the act, reflecting a distinction required by the profession. The news reports needed a better term; none was permitted.

I avoid provoking either side (at least to a greater extent than the other), having no view on the terms' appropriateness that's strong enough for me to bother to defend outside of a doctor's office; and I refuse to be trained or coerced into one kind of rhetoric or assume that my home office is a medical clinic. But I will defend usage-based definitions, and not just the usage of a small group of professionals. I'd like to think I'm not in a technocracy, at least not yet.

[Kelvin Mace]

18. You can be damned sure Dick Cheney

will get this treatment even if he has to have the stem cells harvested at gun point from pregnant Iraqi women with a butcher knife. After all, it''s not like they're human.

[daleo]

22. This would really test people's religious conviction

Seriously, if 8 to 12 week old fetal cells (that were the product of an abortion that was going to occur anyway) could cure your own congestive heart failure, would you say no?

I have seen the progression of the disease as well. It isn't pretty. Anyone who could turn down an effective therapy, based on religious grounds this tenuous would deserve sainthood. But the rest of us should be given our own choice to make in the matter.

I honestly think most Christians would re-think the matter if it really did offer them a cure for something as common and invariably fatal as congestive heart failure. They would suddenly discover that the Bible is surprisingly silent on the issue of abortion, and the only passage that addresses it fairly directly seems to equate accidentally induced abortion with a property crime rather than the taking of a life.

[megatherium]

23. I've heard that a ancient criterion for the morality of abortion is

that it be before the "quickening", when the unborn child can be felt kicking in the womb. This is perhaps similar to the position I've heard advanced that we should draw the line at "brain birth" (just as we declare the end of life at "brain death"). The central nervous sytem becomes active when the embryo becomes a fetus, at about 10 weeks. Too soon for the Supreme Court, much too late for pro-life people.

[daleo]

24. That criterion could have been used in the ancient world

I am referring to the part of the Bible that talks about the penalties for inadvertently killing a man's wife versus inadvertently making her miscarry, if it happens as a consequence of two men fighting. The penalty for the former was more akin to manslaughter and the penalty for the latter was more like a property offense (i.e. a fine).

I suppose the trouble with operationalizing a concept like "the quickening" is that it would occur at somewhat different times in different pregnancies, and it would be self-reported.