Hello, there! I have been trying to get some things done today….I gave up as of about 30 seconds ago. Nothing is happening.
Wait…that’s a lie. Our Facebook group just hit 1,700 members! Congratulations to Lin and everyone who has worked to make that group a success. [Lin/Linda here: as of my typing, there are at 1,738. The 38 were added this past week!]
And while congratulations are going out, we should also send one to my former retina specialist who I am ever hopeful will be my new research director, Carl Regillo. Dr. Regillo was named to the 100 most influential ophthalmologists in the world list. I find that pretty impressive.
And moving right along, researchers are expressing “cautious optimism” concerning regenerative medicine (read “stem cells”) treatments for AMD. Vavvas of Massachusetts Eye and Ear clarifies they are transplanting “differentiated cells…derived most often from iPS cells” that were themselves derived from stem cells.”
IPS cells are induced pluripotent stem cells. They can be induced directly from adult cells. These cells are “regressed” back to a state that will allow them to reproduce theoretically forever and also to develop into any one of every potential cells in the body. Perfect for “replacement parts”.
In other words, iPS cells avoid the ethical dilemmas that can be associated with embryonic stem cells.
Vavvas cautions it is still early days for regenerative medicine and all of the hype may be just that. Hype. Testimonials and anecdotal “evidence” are not scientific.
Massachusetts Eye and Ear is reported to be blazing new territory by combining regenerative medicine with neuroprotection approaches. The second of these approaches involves attempts to slow down cell death.
Vavvas goes on to once again caution against false hope.
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines false hope as putting your faith in something that might not be true. Fair enough. I would agree the crazy headlines after Coffey published were more than a little over the top. I would agree we have miles to go before we sleep, to paraphrase Robert Frost. I would contend, however, that something that might not be true still has the potential for being true. And that allows me to hold out hope for a regenerative medicine treatment if not a cure.
What it comes down to for me is, you have to have hope in something. Being told you have a condition for which there is no treatment and no cure is, well, disconcerting, to say the least.
So which basket do you put your eggs into? Which treatment are you betting on to actually do something substantive for us? Or have you decided there really is no hope?
To quote another great poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, it is better to have loved and lost than to never to have loved at all. It just might be better to have false hope than have no hope.
Neal Burton in a 2017 Psychology Today article wrote that hope is an expression of confidence in life. It is the basis for virtues like patience, determination, and courage. Not bad. I can live with those outcomes.
So, yeah. I know we need to be cautious, but I still have hope. I still believe regenerative medicine is going to come through for us. Which potential treatment do you believe in?
Written August 15th, 2o18