PLA to perform brain surgery on Canadian kid??

yoda9999

New Member
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The family is flying to a military base where doctors will inject stem cells into Travis's brain to help restore damaged cells and create new ones. The surgery is to be followed by three weeks of traditional Chinese acupuncture and herbal medicine.

Huh? They going to a Chinese military base and inject the kid with stem cells?? This sounds like something out of a James Bond movie. This can't be real can it?

Well, looks like a real story, poor kid. I hope he comes out of it alive. Anyone in China know what this is about?
 

kovona

New Member
I heard it on the news (I m from Canada by the way), since stem cell operations are illegal here, they have to go over to China for the surgery. But I thought it was a civilian hospital, not a military one, this is freaky... I heard the family paid around 30 000 CND for the operation (srry no reference, but the figurehead is around that).
 

Nethappy

NO WAR PLS
VIP Professional
Many chinese top brain who use to work for the US NIH and other top western institutes has return to China to do there research because of ethical consideration within western country and the reduced of research funding. Whereas China willingness to allow people to do experiment, the contious increase of R&D funding and lower operation cost has allow China to become one of the best at stem cell research and teachnology.
 

zhou

Just Hatched
Registered Member
Do you know what's stem cell?Do you know how to study the function of stem cell?Do you know what a role stem cell playing in human or other animals?
No,you know nothing about biological science and when some idiots said something about PLA(the key words are PLA and stem cell) you guys said "oh ,it's terrible,the evile PLA did something bad again".
The truth is PLA did nothing but some idiots made some fake news.
 

The_Zergling

Junior Member
Do you know what's stem cell?Do you know how to study the function of stem cell?Do you know what a role stem cell playing in human or other animals?
No,you know nothing about biological science and when some idiots said something about PLA(the key words are PLA and stem cell) you guys said "oh ,it's terrible,the evile PLA did something bad again".
The truth is PLA did nothing but some idiots made some fake news.

zhou, I think you misinterpreted the remarks regarding illegality of stem cells and a personal stance on the issue. I noted nothing in the thread suggesting that what the PLA did in this situation was evil, in fact I noted the opposite; a family putting their last homes on the docctors with better resources and training in this aspect in China because laws in their country forbid them from doing so.

I was contemplating deleting the post but I figured that you would need an explanation and without the PM function you would be unable to do so. Hope this clears things up.
 

zhou

Just Hatched
Registered Member
Ok.There're many kinds of stem cells in human beings.Current oppinon about the stem cells in brain is:it stops working when the baby is several months old(at that time it's not born and the brain almost fully developed) .So it's useless to inject any stem cells into his brain and it maybe cause brain's new problems.But recent research indicates Brain stem cells MAY work again under some certain conditions so that it can repaire the damaged part of the brain.
The kid will take great risk to do that because the stem cell technology is far from perfect.Wish that kid lucky enough.
 

Baibar of Jalat

Junior Member
There are potential risks of injecting stem cells into the brain, naturally the patients are desperate to try anything that will help them, but this an uncharted field, hence ths risks for some patients is high. they are like lab mice. the article below highlights the threat of cancer like growths.

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Stem-cell studies yield progress, but tumors, too
SIGNS OF PARKINSON'S REDUCED IN RATS, BUT GROWTHS FORMED
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post
Nerve cells grown from human embryonic stem cells and injected into the brains of rats with a syndrome mimicking Parkinson's disease significantly reduced the animals' symptoms, but the treatment also caused tumors in the rodents' brains, scientists reported Sunday.

Researchers said the work showed both the potential benefits and risks of human embryonic stem cells, which have been highly touted for their capacity to replace diseased tissue but are controversial because they are derived through the destruction of human embryos.

``The behavioral data validate the utility of the approach. But it also raises a cautionary flag and says we are not ready for prime time yet,'' said lead researcher Steven Goldman, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Goldman said he suspected that with modest changes in technique, researchers will be able to keep the benefits of the treatment while eliminating or reducing the chances of getting the cancer-like growths. But he conceded that much more research would have to be done before scientists -- or regulators -- were likely to be convinced of the approach's safety.

In the experiments, Goldman and colleagues from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York treated laboratory-cultured human embryonic stem cells in a new way that coaxed many to become a kind of neuron that produces dopamine, a neurotransmitter. Those cells are gradually lost in Parkinson's disease, depriving the body of that essential chemical messenger.

The disease causes motor problems such as trembling and muscle rigidity and a gradual decline in mental functioning.

The team injected the cells into the brains of rats, which had been given a chemical that causes damage similar to that seen in Parkinson's. The new cells integrated into the animals' brains and produced copious amounts of dopamine. As a result, the animals' motor coordination improved almost to the point of being normal, according to the report in Sunday's online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

But when the animals were autopsied after three months and their brains were examined microscopically, the team found multiple tumors, indicating some of the injected cells did not settle into the job of being neurons but rather had begun to grow uncontrollably.

The results were similar to those of other experiments published Oct. 12 in the online journal Stem Cells by a team led by Ole Isacson, a Harvard Medical School professor of neuroscience and neurology. In that case, the stem cells were cultivated differently, produced less dopamine and had fewer beneficial effects. But some grew out of control.

Goldman and Isacson said they are developing technologies for culling from a developing stem cell population those cells that are not fully committing themselves to becoming neurons -- or selecting such fully committed cells from a larger, mixed population.

``We still have so little experience with these cells, but if we keep doing the work and we do it carefully, then I believe that in the long run it will help patients,'' Isacson said.

Thomas Okarma, president of Geron, a Menlo Park company that hopes to gain Food and Drug Administration permission to treat patients' spinal cord injuries with modified embryonic stem cells next year, said his company's cells have shown no sign of causing tumor growth in any of its animal studies.

But he said the FDA has asked for additional extensive data on that question before it would give its final OK.

``What they worry about, and rightly so, is if there are rogue undifferentiated cells lurking in the cell population that we haven't detected,'' Okarma said.

Geron cultivates its embryonic stem cells differently than others, he said, and no tumors have been seen in animals up to nine months after being injected into the rodents' injured spinal cords
 
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