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Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

baltimoresun.com

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Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#11

Post by icelancer »

Zarel wrote: post #9

The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted. Relevant comments include: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo... > This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the ophthalmology equivalent…

The fact no one is following the usual steps of clinical studies doesn't mean the treatment is guaranteed to be quackery. Not saying he's a legit doctor but that criticism is a separate problem.

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#13

Post by gruez »

icelancer wrote: post #11
Zarel wrote: post #9

The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted. Relevant comments include: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo... > This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the ophthalmology equivalent…

The fact no one is following the usual steps of clinical studies doesn't mean the treatment is guaranteed to be quackery. Not saying he's a legit doctor but that criticism is a separate problem.

But the parent comment never claimed that the treatment is guaranteed to be a quack, only that the claim shouldn't be trusted in it's current state. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. By not following proper procedures for the trial, that evidence isn't there.

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#14

Post by narrator »

Zarel wrote: post #9

The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted. Relevant comments include: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo... > This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the ophthalmology equivalent…

There's a epistemology problem in modern science.

There was a reddit AMA a while back about some guy who was paralyzed and got stem cell treatments in China and can walk now[1]. In the thread nobody believed him, especially all the people chiming in with lots of credentials. The thread is really sad. The rule seems to be, if the U.S gatekeepers didn't approve it, it doesn't exist, no matter the empirical evidence.

Liz Parrish's gene therapy to increase her telomeres is another example of this. No matter how many labs measured her telomeres before and after, in some people's minds it's not science because it didn't go through the relevant gatekeepers.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/k1hts/i_am_a_28yr_old...

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#15

Post by ekianjo »

iokevins wrote: post #3

A separate thought: Patients searching for and trying traditional and non-traditional solutions. From the article: "...a doctor pointed her to https://clinicaltrials.gov/ , the National Institute of Health's clearinghouse of studies. There she found Dr. Jeffrey N. Weiss in Margate, Fla., who was enrolling blind patients in an unorthodox stem cell study." This seems to have occurred after the patient pursued "...Chine…

Shouldn't the treatments you refer to be called "traditional" instead of "non-traditional"? Most of what we do in Western medicine is modern and not ancient.

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#16

Post by icelancer »

gruez wrote: post #13
icelancer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact no one is following the usual steps of clinical studies doesn't mean the treatment is guaranteed to be quackery. Not saying he's a legit doctor but that criticism is a separate problem.

But the parent comment never claimed that the treatment is guaranteed to be a quack, only that the claim shouldn't be trusted in it's current state. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. By not following proper procedures for the trial, that evidence isn't there.

Someone going from "blind" to "not that blind" is definitely something worth investigating.

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#17

Post by daveguy »

tim333 wrote: post #10
Zarel wrote: post #9

The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted. Relevant comments include: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo... > This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the ophthalmology equivalent…

It seems to have worked for the girl in this case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVYi4sdEKeQ No one's claiming she's making it up as far as I can tell. I think it's a shame these kind of things aren't tried more.

You don't have to claim the girl is making it up for the result to be untrustworthy. There is a reason placebo controlled double blind trials are used in modern medicine. That amount of rigor is required to be certain that the observed effect wouldn't have just happened. People can get better because the human body is good at self-regulation. The placebo effect is also a real effect. The standard set for modern medicine is that the treatment must be better than the placebo effect.

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#18

Post by raverbashing »

narrator wrote: post #14
Zarel wrote: post #9

The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted. Relevant comments include: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo... > This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the ophthalmology equivalent…

There's a epistemology problem in modern science. There was a reddit AMA a while back about some guy who was paralyzed and got stem cell treatments in China and can walk now[1]. In the thread nobody believed him, especially all the people chiming in with lots of credentials. The thread is really sad. The rule seems to be, if the U.S gatekeepers didn't approve it, it doesn't exist, no matter the empirical evidence. Li…

> The rule seems to be, if the U.S gatekeepers didn't approve it, it doesn't exist, no matter the empirical evidence.

This, as they say, they measure it by peer-review and empirical results. Which is fine if access to journals was easy enough for Chinese results to get everywhere.

And don't make any mistake, the NIH syndrome is hard in science. Any paper from outside of US/Canada,Australia/NZ and Western Europe is more likely to become a cup holder than anything else

Re: Woman's blindness apparently reversed by stem cell treatment

#19

Post by zer00eyz »

narrator wrote: post #14
Zarel wrote: post #9

The comments on the corresponding Reddit thread suggest this shouldn't be trusted. Relevant comments include: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4kctsl/blind_wo... > This is an advertisement puff piece about a "treatment" that nobody believes to work. There's not even a plausible mechanism as to how a retro bulbar injection of mesenchymal stem cells could regenerate axons. It is the ophthalmology equivalent…

There's a epistemology problem in modern science. There was a reddit AMA a while back about some guy who was paralyzed and got stem cell treatments in China and can walk now[1]. In the thread nobody believed him, especially all the people chiming in with lots of credentials. The thread is really sad. The rule seems to be, if the U.S gatekeepers didn't approve it, it doesn't exist, no matter the empirical evidence. Li…

This list includes a few nobel prize winners:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-experimentation_in_medici...

The fact that these folks driven to test on them selves is a fair indication of how bounded the box can be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Forssmann

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

Are two great examples of folks going way out of the box to prove a point, and seeing reward for it.

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