Jemima Harrison has sent me a link to something that is completely new to me, which is the use of stem cells to cure some serious canine problems, especially hip dysplasia in aged dogs.
This appears to be pretty miraculous stuff, and as Martin Bashir at ABC News notes (video link and a lot more information here), this is no longer experimental therapy: It's available right now.
It's not cheap -- about $2,500 -- but a heck of lot cheaper than operating on two hips, or even one hip.
And if we can do this with dogs now, what will we be able to do with humans into the future if we allow science to continue apace?
Thank God Barack Obama has greenlighted stem cell research to continue apace.
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Stems Cells Might Fix Dysplasia in Your Aged Dog
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5 comments:
Excellent!
I'm glad we live in a country that no longer officially demonizes science, and these breakthroughs can be available to us.
These things are very important for our future economic success.
This got extensive coverage back in 2007. Here's a link to Itchmo's story.
http://www.itchmo.com/stem-cell-therapy-for-dogs-and-horses-2841
At least until he signed it right back out again two days later. But that was "old business".
Fortunately, Vet-Stem derives from adult stem cell research, which was never covered by either version of the federal funding restriction, so it's not affected.
-LabRat
I'm dubious. They are very vague about exactly what they do to the adipose tissue before they inject it. They have a lot of local news features -- no doubt generated by their PR department -- on their website up-front, but it was hard to find the scholarly papers about what they were doing.
The list of scholarly papers seemed to be mostly basic science stuff, not directly relevant to dogs, and not clinical trials of this procedure.
I haven't had much time to look at it; I'm going to delegate the project to my slightly less ornery half.
The video of the GSD is nice, but we are talking weeks out from the procedure -- and I've seen an adequan injection do as much or more in the short-medium term.
If it works, $2,500 is very reasonable when you consider the post-op you'd avoid with hip replacement.
mythreepups.blogspot.com
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