Doctors at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills have discovered a new way to regenerate heart scar tissues after a heart attack. This is great news for people who want to still consume factory-farmed meats and tacos with shells made from Doritos.
This procedure is particularly controversial because it uses stem cells, apparently giving right-wingers who sternly oppose using human cell therapy heart palpitations — but in this case, the doctors are using the patient’s own stem cells, not embryonic cells.
According to Science Daily, one year after receiving the stem cell treatment, scar size was reduced from 24 percent to 12 percent of the heart in patients treated with cells (an average drop of about 50 percent). Patients in the control group, who did not receive stem cells, did not experience a reduction in their heart attack scars.
“While the primary goal of our study was to verify safety, we also looked for evidence that the treatment might dissolve scar and regrow lost heart muscle,” said Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, the director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute who invented the procedures and technology involved in the study.
“This has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks. Now we have done it. The effects are substantial, and surprisingly larger in humans than they were in animal tests.”
The real controversial part of this story is who gets rich off this clinical trial named CADUCEUS (CArdiosphere-Derived aUtologous stem CElls to Reverse ventricUlar dySfunction).
Initially, American tax dollars fully funded the project back in 2009 with help from private hospitals John Hopkins and Cedar Sinai, allowing access to its facilities. As the tests came back with positive results, your tax dollars again were funneled through the National Institutes of Health to go along with Cedar Sinai’s cash, which all helped John Hopkins patent the procedure and license it to Dr. Marbán’s private company.
Basically, your tax dollars have now made one man potentially wealthy and one hospital even wealthier and you still are without health care that matches the financial sacrifice your household fronts to private institutions. Weird huh?
