Where are the cures promised by stem cells, gene therapy, and the human genome?

[proud2BlibKansan]

The Medical Revolution
Where are the cures promised by stem cells, gene therapy, and the human genome?

Dr. J. William Langston has been researching Parkinson's disease for 25 years. At one time, it seemed likely he'd have to find another disease to study, because a cure for Parkinson's looked imminent. In the late 1980s, the field of regenerative medicine seemed poised to make it possible for doctors to put healthy tissue in a damaged brain, reversing the destruction caused by the disease.

Langston was one of many optimists. In 1999, the then-head of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Dr. Gerald Fischbach, testified before the Senate that with "skill and luck," Parkinson's could be cured in five to 10 years. Now Langston, who is 67, doesn't think he'll see a Parkinson's cure in his professional lifetime. He no longer uses "the C word" and acknowledges he and others were naive. He understands the anger of patients who, he says, "are getting quite bitter" that they remain ill, long past the time when they thought they would have been restored to health.

The disappointments are so acute in part because the promises have been so big. Over the past two decades, we've been told that a new age of molecular medicine—using gene therapy, stem cells, and the knowledge gleaned from unlocking the human genome—would bring us medical miracles. Just as antibiotics conquered infectious diseases and vaccines eliminated the scourges of polio and smallpox, the ability to manipulate our cells and genes is supposed to vanquish everything from terrible inherited disorders, such as Huntington's and cystic fibrosis, to widespread conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

Adding to the frustration is an endless stream of laboratory animals that are always getting healed. Mice with Parkinson's have been successfully treated with stem cells, as have mice with sickle cell anemia. Dogs with hemophilia and muscular dystrophy have been made disease-free. But humans keep experiencing suffering and death. Why? What explains the tremendous mismatch between expectation and reality? Are the cures really coming, just more slowly than expected? Or have scientists fundamentally misled us, and themselves, about the potential of new medical technologies?

more . . . http://www.slate.com/id/2264401/

[SheilaT]

1. Have they been working with embrionic stem cells,

the ones which seem to hold the major promise for these things?

Wait, hasn't the exact kind of research been blocked almost all of the past several decades?

I think we have the answer.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. and now more roadblocks have been thrown in the way

thanks to the cult of human embryo-worshipping fundie freakazoids. Let's hope that they are unsuccessful on appeal. :banghead:

Let's not forget that we had nearly thirty years of Republican (mis-)rule that pushed all kinds of "faith-based" anti-scientific initiatives and blocked a lot of *objectionable* (to them) research that might've helped. Think about how long it took to get the government to take HIV/AIDS in the mid-1980's seriously let alone DO anything meaningful about it. :puke: Progress in this country is continually slowed by the regressive forces in this country pushing against the more progressive elements at every turn.

[dkf]

2. I always thought the solution to ballooning medical costs is curing the disease.

Funny no politicians ever sell it to us that way.

[Jane Austin]

4. Ask Jonathon Alter

His cancer was treated with stem cells.

[Still Waters]

5. Cures...or treatments?

I am skeptical enough to believe that there will be no more cures. It is much more profitable for the drug and insurance companies to not cure diseases outright, but to ensure their astronomical profits by making sure that people have to take drugs for the rest of their lives.

If polio had arisen in the 1980s, it would not have been cured, just treated. That's my cynical belief, anyway.

[Booster]

6. I've always said if you pay someone a great deal of money to

look for something, they ain't never gonna find it. Put a billion dollars in a trust fund for the first person who finds a cancer cure and you'd probably have it next week.

[Confusious]

7. If it was so easy, cancer would have been cured 100 years ago

Some things are more complicated then most people realize.

I'm sure more then a billion dollars has already been spent trying to find a cure.

Salk was trying to find a vaccine for polio, and he found it. That's how science works. Some things are accidents, some things are predicted, most are found because you're looking for a particular fix for something.

[Booster]

10. You made my point for me. I think they already have a cure for

cancer, but it's just too lucrative for them to keep it hidden and have people pay for "treatment" instead. I'm sure a billion has been spent on looking for a cure, but I'll bet more than a couple of trillion has been spent on treating people. The pharmas win both ways.

[Confusious]

12. I didn't make any point for you

Are they hiding some way to get to another solar system? are they hiding the solution to eternal life? Are they milking the system so we don't get abundant clean energy from fusion?

you open that door, there are so many more. you end up sounding like a quack.

[Confusious]

8. Dup

[TheKentuckian]

9. Treatment is infinitely more profitable than cures.

It would be completely a non-shocker if cures were being sat on. I wish I had that old Chris Rock routine hand to link because he summed it up very well.

Like he said they are probably still mad about polio and all that money they've missed on treatments through the decades.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. dumbass scientists can't cure Parkinsons.

what good are they?