Circa 2018
This first pitch isn’t about baseball. It’s about a military hero regaining his sense of independence. Militarykind, USA TODAY.
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,274
The results of a clinical trial using bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) to treat late-stage knee osteoarthritis were published recently, and they came back positive. The trial included both phase 1 and 2 and was designed to determine the safety and efficacy of MSC stem cell therapy.
A battery of tests
During the trial, patients were given a single injection of 1, 10, or 50 million MSCs directly into the knee. The trial used a number of tests associated with knee osteoarthritis, including the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), a common set of standardized questionnaires used by healthcare professionals to evaluate the condition of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. The WOMAC includes questions relating to pain, stiffness, and the physical functioning of the joints.
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On the degenerative disk disease and senescent cells from FightAging: “… It is just a pity that so few older people know this at the present time — the hundreds of millions worldwide who are suffering when perhaps they need not be…”
At this point, I suspect it will surprise no-one who follows the field to learn that the accumulation of senescent cells is a significant cause of degenerative disc disease. The evidence from a mouse study that is provided in the open access paper here doesn’t quite rise to establishing that claim, but it is compelling nonetheless. Given the role of cellular senescence in arthritis, a disease of localized chronic inflammation, it is logical to also expect a role in the degeneration of intervertebral discs, as this is also a condition of aging in which inflammation seems important.
Senescent cells, even while present in only comparatively small numbers, generate a potent mix of molecules that spurs chronic inflammation and is destructive of surrounding tissue structure. Fortunately early senolytic compounds, those shown to destroy a sizable fraction of senescent cells cells in animal studies, are cheap and readily available to anyone willing to try this self-experiment. It is just a pity that so few older people know this at the present time — the hundreds of millions worldwide who are suffering when perhaps they need not be.
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Topol is a dreamer. “One can imagine that AI will rescue medicine from all that ails it, including diagnostic inaccuracy,” he writes. (There are roughly 12 million misdiagnoses of serious illness in the United States every year, and medical error kills a quarter-million Americans annually.) But even Topol admits that this hope is far from being actualized. Indeed.
Cardiologist Eric Topol explores the benefits of artificial intelligence in medicine.
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A new story on my latest article from #transhumanism critic Wesley J. Smith:
Oh my. Two of contemporary society’s most prominent anti-human utopian movements — radical environmentalism and materialistic transhumanism — appear on the verge of a bitter showdown.
When you think about it, that makes sense. Both movements see themselves as the future’s only hope. But their core purposes are incompatible. Radical environmentalists — “nature rights” activists, deep ecologists, Gaia theorists, and their fellow travelers that elevate nature above humanity — hijacked and refashioned traditional environmentalism into a mystical neo-earth religion that disdains homo Sapiens as a parasitical species afflicting the earth. These radicals hope to thwart our thriving off the land in order to “save the planet.” Indeed, I sometimes believe that if they could, they would forcibly revert our species to hunter/gatherers — without the hunting part.
In contrast, transhumanism denigrates both the natural world and normal human life as irredeemably limited, and worst of all, ending in death! They yearn to possess extraordinary capacities without having to work to attain them. Rather than pursue virtue, transhumanism expects to overcome human nature through applied technology. Indeed, movement prophets predict the coming of “Singularity” — a discreet moment in time when unstoppable cascading technology will enable transhumanists to “seize control of human evolution” and reengineer themselves into an immortal “post-human species.”
The intellectual peace between these competing social movements was recently breached by Zoltan Istvan, one of transhumanism’s most creative apologists, who ran for president in 2016 on a plank of defeating death and garnered scads of earned media by touring the country in a bus fashioned to look like a coffin. In an all-out frontal assault on the hallowed presumption of contemporary environmentalism, Istvan not only writes that “nature isn’t sacred” (can you hear the gasping?), but he committed an even worse anti-environmentalist sin by arguing that “we should replace it.”
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Bacterial cells that normally colonize our guts can distinguish themselves from other bacterial species using what’s traditionally considered their enemy—a virus. Researchers report April 16 in the journal Cell Reports that some bacteria use viruses that have infected them (i.e., phages) for self-recognition and thereby show greater fitness, repelling competitors that lack this adaptation.
This is the first evidence that cells can distinguish themselves from related competitors through the use of a virus. The implications are that we should re-evaluate the relationship between a virus and its cellular host in that there are sometimes benefits to having a viral infection.”
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Yale is making waves. They have had great Research papers over the past 3 years. Some of which has proven my constant words now for two decades that we have a pandemic plague that attacks our individual Eukaryotic cells the day long causing What AEWR Has named the Senesonic plague the disease we have called aging. Respect r.p.berry & AEWR https://adamandevewordresearch.blogspot.com/
The researchers did not hail from House Greyjoy — “What is dead may never die” — but came largely from the Yale School of Medicine. They connected 32 pig brains to a system called Brain Ex. Brain Ex is an artificial perfusion system — that is, a system that takes over the functions normally regulated by the organ. Think a dialysis machine for the mind. The pigs had been killed four hours earlier at a U.S. Department of Agriculture slaughterhouse; their brains completely removed from the skulls.
Brain Ex pumped an experiment solution into the brain that essentially mimic blood flow. It brought oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, giving brain cells the resources to begin many normal functions. The cells began consuming and metabolizing sugars. The brains immune system kicked in. Neuron samples could carry an electrical signal. Some brain cells even responded to drugs.
The researchers have managed to keep some brains alive for up to 36 hours, and currently do not know if Brain Ex can have sustained the brains longer. “It is conceivable we are just preventing the inevitable, and the brain won’t be able to recover,” said Nenad Sestan, Yale neuroscientist and the lead researcher.
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There is a link to the full vid. “Life extension escape velocity in 10 years.” Here is currently my favorite go to link in support of this potential: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/01/delivery-of-45-age-rev…eview.html
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S\xC3O PAULO, April 16, 2019 — A new technique for decontaminating organs before transplantation using UV and red light irradiation has been developed by researchers at the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in partnership with the University of Toronto. The biophotonic decontamination technique, which was initially developed to decontaminate lungs with viral infections such as hepatitis C, could help prevent transmission of diseases to organ recipients and increase the number of transplants.
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