Artificial Blood!

[Elliot Kane]

Gotta give kudos to the science-types for this one:

Limitless artificial blood for transfusions: coming soon?.

A real medical breakthrough, it would seem

[Nero the Glorious]

Its the vampires...its all a cover

[kitty]

Wow that#s pretty awesome

I'm just wondering though, were do they get the ES from?

And I remember that they tested ES as transplants on animals before and realized that most got tumors.

Anyways - if that works fine, it'll solvea lot of problems!

[LaFille]

That's a nice achievement; I hope that the clinical trials will be well done and successful too.

Here is a link about the current state of stem cells research ethics and laws in the US.

[kitty]

Aug 20, 2008 2:02:47 GMT LaFille said:

That's a nice achievement; I hope that the clinical trials will be well done and successful too.

Here is a link about the current state of stem cells research ethics and laws in the US.

And..who cares about the US?


KITTIN! Promise ;D

[The Sonar Chicken]

That's really awesome.


If it succeeds, the question is: in whose hands will this technology end up in? I hope not another greedy pharmaceutical company whose aim is to monopolise it, with fixed pricing.

[Elliot Kane]

Good question, Luci. At this point I have no idea, but I assume the US govt will want anything that important, which means either it'll get shared with key allies (Yay for Britain! ;D) or - more likely - some smart President will gift the knowledge to the world as a goodwill gesture.

Lots of kudos points for that one, I should think.

Not that too many nations have the tech to use the knowledge, I'm sure, but still...

[The Sonar Chicken]

Aug 20, 2008 12:13:26 GMT Elliot Kane said:

Good question, Luci. At this point I have no idea, but I assume the US govt will want anything that important, which means either it'll get shared with key allies (Yay for Britain! ;D) or - more likely - some smart President will gift the knowledge to the world as a goodwill gesture.

Lots of kudos points for that one, I should think.

Not that too many nations have the tech to use the knowledge, I'm sure, but still...

I sure as hell hope it'll be the latter, since I did bring up the AIDs possible cure thingy at a talk just 24 hours ago and the speaker was all like "Even if it does work, you think the pharmaceutical giants will allow that to happen? Fat hope!"

Ugh... now here's another cause for Obama to win, since so much of the phamaceutical stuff happens in USA and since problems like these have a higher chance of flourishing under a conservative rule. (Of course I could be wrong by a million marks.)

Anyways, it has to be the latter if it's in everyone's interest to prevent great tragedies in the ER when there're many victims and lack of blood.

[Elliot Kane]

It would indeed mean a complete end to contaminated blood in transfusions. Good point, Luci

As for the politics of the person doing the handing over - I don't think they matter, honestly. It's more about how they see the rest of the world.

Handing the secret of it over would be a major kudos thing and bound to play well to other nations - people & govts alike. With that kind of good PR at stake, anyone might do it.

[cleglaw]

LOL! The evil pharmaceutical companies. Who would develop the drugs if the pharmaceutical companies did not exist? Are you saying they are not entitled to a profit? It takes a massive amount of money to research and develop biotechnologies.

And before one jumps on the bandwagon of socialist egalitarian cliches about the evil drug companies, a little research into the facts would be prudent. The company named in the article about Artificial Blood is Advanced Cell Technology.

Now, ACT could be on the verge of shutting down. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday, the company warned that it doesn't have cash to continue operating after July 31 without raising additional money or drastically slashing operations. It reported $17 million in current liabilities, but only $1 million in cash and other current assets, an indication it could be forced to file for bankruptcy protection. And ACT's stock, which was as high as $8 per share three years ago, closed yesterday at 2.5 cents a share.

Full Article Here

[The Sonar Chicken]

There's nothing wrong about pharmaceutical companies but I'm talking about drugs where they deliberately hid the facts about the side effects and assured consumers they were fine to be taken, in combination with others or denied that there were certain effects like "possible seizures", "possible(or 100% confirmed) loss of vision", etc. Or companies which expose the trial users to risk of say... contracting certain illnesses/diseases by withholding certain information about the procedures of the experiment, trial(or whatever you call it).

There're quite a few trials where the testers have died after they were say... exposed to certain strains of viruses and not informed about it, probably because the researchers wanted to like observe the effects of the experiment like the effectiveness of the drugs/placebos.

And I'm talking about some or all of the giants and possibly other companies, the ones where the emphasis on profit has long taken precedence over medical ethics and responsibility where transparency is not of importance. And where they attempt to "sweeten" deals with doctors by giving them "vacations, houses, share options", etc so that certain drugs will be promoted for depression, dyslexia(even if the clinical results indicated that said drug could only be used for say... treating seizures and not depression, muscle issues, lung cancer, etc).

This does not mean that every pharmaceutical company is a blight on earth. I'm sure we could do away with some drugs but not most of them. And yes, research is expensive. But does it give a company the right to play with lives as it pleases?

At the most: be transparent and let the consumer know. It's up to them if they want to take the drugs, how much they want to take and so on. After all, some symptoms are lesser compared to the disease or illness you're trying to treat.

[cleglaw]

Medical ethics is indeed of supreme importance. We agree there. Your position does give the appearance of being anti pharmaceutical companies. And your comments about the particular company in question would appear to misguided. You depict it as being profit gouging wealthy on the backs of the poor, when in fact the company is struggling to remain financially solvent.

[cleglaw]

Now a legitimate question in this case is whether the ends justify the means--and by that I mean the use of stem cell research.

[The Sonar Chicken]

Aug 20, 2008 19:47:11 GMT cleglaw said:

Medical ethics is indeed of supreme importance. We agree there. Your position does give the appearance of being anti pharmaceutical companies. And your comments about the particular company in question would appear to misguided. You depict it as being profit gouging wealthy on the backs of the poor, when in fact the company is struggling to remain financially solvent.

Well... ethics are important and it can be trying to maintain a balance between work, finance, law and ethics.

I admit that until lately, I'd always been anti-pharmaceutical for some rather senseless reasons(don't recall why) but I've been attempting to re-inform myself. It's a slow process, though.

Well... some of them do appear to be gouging on the poor but we'll see how they've been as of late. It's not like you can do away with them but instead, take various appropriate measures to ensure they behave.

About stem-cell research: I don't really know. I know only a little about it and even then, that pithy amount is barely enough to inform me about anything.

I think my country(Singapore) does conduct stem-cell research if only for the possible money it could bring. However, so far, information on it in the papers is rather scarce, often in dribs and drabs and also sometimes "fundamentalist Christian influenced".

[Nero the Glorious]

Its amazing how liberal you all are...and seriously...how could you all totally ignore my awesome vampire comments...sheesh... ;D

[Elliot Kane]

Didn't want to incriminate myself by admitting to anything, Nero... ;D

[The Sonar Chicken]

Am I that much of a liberal? ;; Sheez... that's interesting.

[Elliot Kane]

I'm still a Centrist. Likely to stay that way, too.

[LaFille]

Aug 20, 2008 3:15:04 GMT kitty said:

And..who cares about the US?


KITTIN! Promise ;D

You were asking where the stem cells come from and this research is conducted in the US; the link answers to that question (as well as a bunch of others). And since it is one of the leading countries, you can be sure that their policies influence those of the rest of the world.

This organization's research is affiliated with the University of Massachusetts and sponsored in part by the US government, which reduces its exclusivity on the outcome. I personally would be more afraid to see a half-baked, half-understood product going out to the public than that it would be kept secret and exclusive to a few; there are big advantages for them to display their results, getting prestige and significantly increased fundings not being the least. One of the next questions to follow the clinical trials if they succeed some and are deemed worthy to make available will be about choosing the lesser evil... That blood could save lives at the moment and cause their loss later barring unexpected mid/long-term side-effects, even with the company being crystal-clear about their test results. =/

Aug 20, 2008 19:49:01 GMT cleglaw said:

Now a legitimate question in this case is whether the ends justify the means--and by that I mean the use of stem cell research.

Honestly, IMHO one of the questions that should really be asked first in the case of embryonic stem cells research and use is the one about in vitro fecundation, because the embryos that are used (and wanted to be used) are the embryos that are "rejected" in that process, meaning that they would be trashed/destructed anyway. There are currently many other (non-embryonic) stem cell sources explored, but none gives as much positive results as the use of embryonic ones for the moment, unfortunately.