any thoughts on stem cell questions?

[tomberdine <tomberdine@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

HYPERLINK
"
www.stemcellnetwork.ca/partners/jdrf/news/articles.php?id=27
 

With the Parkinson's community hard on the advocacy trail to allow federal
money to be used for stem cell research for therapeutic cloning it occurred
to me that there are several questions that need to be asked.

1. With a 8 to 25 percent misdiagnosis rate of the disease, meaning that
between 120,000 to 375,000 of us (based on the guess of 1.5million diagnosed
in the US)currently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease do not have the
dopamine cell loss producing our parkinsonism symptoms, will stem cells that
can become dopamine cells help in these cases?

2. How expensive would stem cell therapy be and would insurance companies
cover it?

3. If/When stem cell treatment for Parkinson's becomes available will it be
necessary to use the PET SCAN prior to treatment to ensure that the
parkinsonism is dopamine cell death? I ask this because Deborah Setzer had
been flown to Cedars Sinai to be evaluated as a candidate in Dr Lévesque's
stem cell clinical trials (using ones own stem cells to repair the dopamine
cell death). However when she got there he ordered a PET SCAN and found that
her parkinsonism was not dopamine cell death (true PD) and thus stem cell
therapy would not help her. 

4. Stem Cell therapy using ones own stem cells for other ailments is
currently already being successfully used. Dr Levesque of Cedars Sinai has
done work in this area with reported great results with a Parkinson's
patient (Dennis Turner). Any idea on how Mr Turner is doing since the
implants 2 years ago? Last report I saw was he was 80% recovered. Also what
is the status of those trials and why is more attention not placed on this
process vice the controversial embryonic stem cell?


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