Real time: March 17, 2017. This Alsatian, Dutch, English, French, German and Welsh girl is, for today, Irish. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Patrick was, by historical accounts, a Romanized Brit taken by Irish slavers. Not that the Romans were choirboys. Etymologists say we got the word ‘slave’ due to the proclivity of Roman slave traders to go ‘hunting’ in the Slavic territories.
Anyway, Patrick reportedly had a vision and made his way to the coast where he was rescued. He later returned to Ireland to convert the people to Christianity. The end.
What does this have to do with AMD? Not much. I find it interesting. Knowledge is a good thing.
An informed populace is an empowered populace. An empowered populace is less gullible…and THAT gets me to my topic.
In real time, mid-March, there is a lot of hoopla about a ‘medical practice’ – and I use the term loosely – in Florida being shutdown for blinding three women with a stem cell ‘treatment’. These women also apparently paid top dollar for the ‘privilege’.
Using a lot of quotes here!
First point that absolutely everyone is emphasizing: stem cell therapy for AMD is NOT approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Therefore, all stem cell therapy is experimental and you should never, ever, EVER have to pay for an experimental treatment. They pay you. Lab rat status, remember?
The studies I am signed up for are through a big, international recognized medical institution. They are being replicated around the world and they are being paid for by multinational corporations. If some backwater, single site clinic is offering AMD stem cell treatments to you for a fee, make your excuses and get out of there.
Not sure how in Hades these people got listed on clinicaltrials.gov. Someone screwed up there. What they were doing was not reported as anywhere near decent, standard experimental procedure. [Lin/Linda: The clinicaltrials.gov website does have standards by which studies qualify for inclusion on the website but the NIH does not independently verify the scientific validity of each of the studies it lists. Their answer, which is in the article above about these 3 woman, is that they put a disclaimer with each study. So, it’s “buyer beware”.)
That said, also the knowledge is power stuff reiterated, I am going to start a short tutorial on what is basic experimental design. I will take several pages to do this so prepare for another mini-series. Consider yourself warned. Take a couple of days off or learn what a real experiment should look like. Your call.