Science Ain't So Bad

INCONTINENCE

TALK about the things that people take for granted!

Your sphincter?

If something goes wrong with  your urinary sphincter or your anal sphincter you can become incontinent.

Seriously,

Most people with incontinence cope.

Not so easy though.

I’m not saying their lives are over. Not at all. There are treatments –  exercises, nerve stimulators, drugs,  surgery. Even diapers. But wouldn’t it be nice if  you could just call up and say “How about a new one?”

Dr. Kalil Bentar (Institute For Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center) is developing artificial sphincters – anal AND (you’ll be thrilled to know) urinary – that could replace the real thing. They’re grown in the lab with real muscle cells and real nerve cells. Drop in place replacements.

It’s no Heathkit. Surgeons are still needed for the “install”. Still. This is a big advance.

ScienceAintSoBadRating? In spite of the yuck factor, I would like to give this one a 10 because it’s SO cool and offers a great quality of life for millions of people.

But I can’t.

Not yet.

There‘s still a lot to be done before this is fully refined, tested, and available.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 6 for now.

More to come.

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Credit to Joriel “Joz” Jimenez for the above photo.

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Dear MISTER SASB: My grandmother’s got stomach cancer. She’s had surgery, drugs, and chemo. Now the doctor says she should get hospice care which totally (if it’s okay to say) sucks big time. Grannie taught me to read and to ride a bike and even how to cut cocaine. There MUST be something they can do! –  Nancy Trill

Dear Nancy:

It sounds like yer granny could open up her own pharmacy.

Anyway, to answer your question, her Docs COULD get your granny hooked up with a clinical trial that offers some new hope. But they probably won’t. Denise Mann (Web MD) says most patients who could qualify for clinical trials, won’t even hear about them. At least, not from their own doctors.

This doesn’t mean doctors are a bunch of bums. The ones I’ve worked with (and consulted) are almost uniformly terrific. They work hard and they’re, mostly,  very smart. BUT they are human (surprise!). Just so many hours in a day. Just so many dollars in a paycheck. They can’t be everywhere. Can’t do everything. Gotta go home sometime. And this has a lot to do with why they’re shy about introducing their patients to clinical trials. Keeping up with 8,000 trials is SLIGHTLY impossible. When would that “keeping up”  happen? Before 5 AM? Or after 2 PM? Medicine is intense. The hours are long and the stakes are high. And there’s a lot of required reading just to stay current in day-to-day practice.

Also, there’s the relationship thing.  Maybe a particular clinical study does offer “a shot” (usually a long one). Still. It probably means the patient’s off to some distant place at a time that’s infinitely crappy and emotional horrendous.  And the patient and his.her doc often have a thing going, a doctor patient relationship. Believe it or not, separating from the Doc who took the patient this far down  Dismal Road  can be tough for both the patient and the physician.

INVESTIGATE EARLY

People, naturally, do the regular stuff, first. If things don’t work out, maybe they start looking around for unregular stuff.  It’s tempting to see clinical trials like the extra innings. After the first nine. (A little baseball metaphor here.) Well, sorry, Bub, but that may be too late. Some of these trials won’t let patients who are practically gonners into their programs. They need to get at them earlier in the progression of the disease.

THE RIGHT ANSWER

You’re kidding, right? If I knew the right answers to this stuff, do you think I’d be sitting here cranking out blog articles? I don’t know how to get doctors back into this loop either.  But something’s gotta change. That’s for sure. It’s not right to expect patients, on their own and at the worst possible time in their lives, to become medical detectives, capably sorting through the relevant research. And it’s not like NO doctors are referring to clinicals. Maybe we need to understand what the doctors who get this right are doing.

Mister ScienceAintSoBad‘s an optimist. He thinks things will improve.

Sooner’s better than later.

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Credit for above cartoon (which I don’t exactly understand either) to, xkcd.

STICK A STEM CELL IN IT

FIRST DEAFNESS CURE WITH STEM CELLS?

Chloe Sohl was a happy kid, hanging with friends, worrying about her looks, and trying to stay awake in stupid math class, when something really, really, surprising happened to her.

She went deaf.

Is there a good time to go deaf?

If it happens at the EXACT second when the kid who’s thumpin’ your seat back starts screaming? Yeah. That’s OK.

Long as you get yer hearing back after you land.

But forever? And  in high school when you, seriously, NEED to  jabber all day and all night with other kids to keep SANE? And be hooked up to  music when, THEORETICALLY, you should be studying? Ugh!

SOCIAL ISOLATION. CONFUSION AND MISERY.

Chloe wasn’t completely deaf yet but it was bad and getting worse. Hearing aids helped a little. Maybe drugs would slow things down. Eventually, though, Chloe’s ears were over.

Some say deafness isn’t bad. Kinda cool, actually. Maybe you’ve seen young people  talking in sign. Their fingers dance, their eyes gleam, and their faces are animated. It’s amazing and it is beautiful to watch. This isn’t a disability, it’s a gift. Cochlear implants are for slugs.

But Chloe wasn’t trying to make a political statement. She just wanted her life back.

A CHANCE

Her folks (both doctors)   explored all the “safe” possibilities and came up dry. Should they go the  edge? Should they gamble or should they accept a life of silence for their daughter? They had heard about a Korean company, RNL Bio, that offers stem cell cures. After talking to the docs there, they decided to take a chance.

“ We only did it, once we were convinced it would be safe for our daughter to have this treatment. Among the things that were reassuring about the treatment were the fact that the cells are coming from her own body .. That decreases, a great deal, chances of a mishap,“ says her dad. (Video below.)

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Chloe became a “medical tourist”.  After sending off some tissue samples to RNL Bio, she traveled to Japan where stem cells were infused into her body. MISTER ScienceAintSoBad doesn’t know what she was thinking when they hooked her to the IV; HE would have been thinking “Time to kiss my butt goodbye”.

Luckily, nothing terrible happened to Chloe. She returned to the U. S. and, eventually, got back all the hearing in one ear and most  in the other. She could hear again. The first American – the first earthling, as far as we know – to have been thus “cured” of deafness by stem cells.

ISN’T THIS A LITTLE TOO PAT?

ISN’T THIS KINDA CRAZY AND IRRESPONSIBLE?

AND WHAT’S WITH THE QUOTES AROUND CURED?

Uh. Yeah, yeah, and I’ll put quotes anywhere I want to. My blog.

Here’s the thing.

Stefan Heller (Stanford University School of Medicine) knows about  hearing loss. He’s a revered pioneer in this field. His remarks to MISTER ScienceAintSoBad were short and clear. He  isn’t a fan of this kind of thing.

We’ll leave it at that.

Research into hearing loss is going great guns, but it’ll be a long time till you see cures announced.  The researchers are careful. They don’t want to risk hurting as many people as they help. Or taking money under false pretexts.

The burden is heavy. It’s how we do science.

Dull, huh?

So what do these magicians at RNL Bio  know that the rest of the world doesn’t?

Maybe it’s WHO they know. According to an article in Korea Times (November 15, 2010), the company gave breaks to lawmakers in return for favors. An investigation was launched into its practices this year.

Also:

It clones dogs.

It sell cosmetics (stem cell based).

A couple of patients died. Not saying it’s their fault. You gotta worry a LITTLE though, right?

And its success stories, like the carefully prepared video on YouTube that’s posted below, are more often touted in unchallenged venues then in professional forums.

ARE RNL BIO’S ETHICAL PRACTICES POOR?

Medical experiments on human beings is kinda complicated territory. We let cancer patients do “trials”, for example. Usually, this is a last resort. But, still, however tightly controlled,  these are experiments (with strict protocols). Unlike most research facilities, institutions that cater to “medical tourism” aren’t under that much scrutiny. Their published studies and follow-ups are a little sparse. As far as hearing loss goes, we haven’t heard of any other successful stem cell  cures like this one in a human.

Was Chloe Stohl just lucky? Was it the other drug that was in her system at the same time? Was it a rare case of spontaneous recovery  unrelated to the stem cell infusion? Why isn’t her current health status public? Were we all tricked, somehow? Was it a made up story?

This blog’s detective agency is busy with Congressman Wiener, right now. No time to figure what’s behind the curtain in the Sohl case. Probably we’ll never know.

How do we rate this one?

ScienceAintSoBadRating for a good yarn = 10

ScienceAintSoBadRating for good science?  Uh… Jury? Hey. Where’s the jury? Are they still out?

Video Of Chloe Sohl

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Credit for the  image of an ear (has nothing to do with stem cells, by the way):
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TYPICAL VEGAN

Dear Mister ScienceAintsoBad,
Was Dr. Spock a Vegan? – GetItAllWrong

A Vegan? From the planet Vega?

Good GRIEF, GetItAllWrong. Spock was a Vulcan, not a Vegan. Very serious. Pure logic. Big ears. Mind-melds. Telepathy. His planet was nipped by a black hole before its  population had a chance to switch to a more enlightened diet.

Vegans currently live on OUR planet. Earth. Not the planet Vega. Most Vegans are very serious and logical. They have big ears and they’re kinda empathetic, if not telepathic. The difference, my dear GetItallWrong, is meat.

Not having any of it.

At all.

No milk, no pig’s knuckles. No seafood. No poultry. No eggs. No dairy products.

Pretty extreme, you may say. But, you know what? Healthy as pineapples. (Was gonna say “pigs” but some vegans do read this blog, after all.)

Here’s the thing.

An article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Duo Li), reviews lots and lots of studies about Vegans here on earth over about 30 years.

The conclusion?

They can do better.

Cutting out the animal products is a very, very good thing. However, Vegans tend to be a little light on iron, zinc, B-12 and Omega 3 fatty acids.

Not good, since that can lead to atherosclerosis, heart problems, and stroke. But tweaking things a bit with fish oils and nuts should do the trick here.

This is a worthwhile report.

Scientifically sound.

But this is a “may increase the risk” thing. I don’t see any “Vegans Keeling Over In Large Numbers” data.

Could be next.

Take yer supplements.

OK?

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OUR BUDDY, MISTER PYLORI

THE BUG THAT SHARES YOUR LUNCH

Helicobacter pylori. Ever hear of it? It’s a bug that eats your gut.

I guess you could say it dines where you dine.

It wasn’t THAT long ago (1982) that two Australians, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, discovered that these little helicobacter pylori were involved with ulcers. An amazing, amazing thing, really, since everyone KNEW that ulcers were caused by stress. Bacteria couldn’t live in the stomach where it’s so acid.

That’s where we were wrong.

We now know that there are bugs (I’m being terminally cute here, I mean, microorganisms) which can live in places you wouldn’t believe. Hot, dry, cold, acidic, basic, radioactive. We call them “extremeophiles”. If they can live in yer gut, what next? Could they live on Mars?

In New York, even?

Well.

In fact, helicobacter pylori do inhabit the intestinal tract where they are associated with ulcers, gastritis, and cancer. The obvious question: if this stuff can be caused by microbes, can antibiotics help?

Sure.

Which means that some people are getting cured.

If everything goes right.

Not so fast, though. Ever hear about antibiotic resistance? Every time we get our hopes up, there always seems to be a new disappointment. Finding out about helicobacter pylori was a great step. But efficiently rousting MISTER pylori from the gut?  Currently that means using several antibiotics as well as strong anti-acids.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Where to turn? How about the University of Rhode Island?

RHODY TEK

LAB ON A CHIP ( Mohammad Faghri, Dept Of Mechanical Engineering, URI )

Ever heard of the University of Rhode Island? It’s a public university in a state the size of a  parking lot.

URI seems to be having its own “Sputnik moment”, something ABC’s Christiane Amanpour (a URI graduate) calls ” a whole new era of technological, scientific.. progress”. Stanford and MIT have nothing to apologize for. Excellent centers of science and engineering. But they’re looking over their shoulders at “Rhody Tek”

A group of URI’s scientists have reduced the functionality of a medical testing lab onto a single chip. Drop of blood. Instant results. This technology  may wind up in apps for the iPhone. Android phones, too.

Another group’s figured out how to use saliva (instead of blood) to monitor immunosuppressive drugs. (Don’t see the big deal? I’m happy for you. I hope you never do.) And another group’s working on a patch for anti-tick vaccines. (I said the STATE’S small. I didn’t say the insects were.)

URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, which had a research vessel on station monitoring the BP oil spill,  has hundreds of projects cooking.

(My wife? Maybe she works at this fine institution, maybe she doesn’t. I would NEVER let something like that influence my objectivity!!!!)

What’s URI got to do with h pylori?

A group headed by Dr. Steven Moss is  developing a vaccine against helicobactoer pylori. The vaccine is delivered nasally, by the way. Yet another “sniffer”. (The work’s in the Journal Vaccine.) In addition to the researchers from URI,  Moss is working with scientists from Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital, and Epivax, Inc..  In the  careful way that researchers talk, he calls this work “encouraging” but “preliminary”.

Which it is.

If everything works out, there’ll be a lot less miserable digestive tracts on this planet.

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Image credit: Wikipedia commons.

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