Eideard

Scientists hope to show that stem cell replacement can slow, stop, or even reverse damage caused by the disease of the central nervous system.

Some 100,000 people in Britain suffer from MS, with symptoms that can include dizziness and lack of balance, muscle spasms and blurred vision. It tends to get worse over time and there is no cure. However, later this year an international £10 million trial of up to 200 volunteers will begin looking at the effects of stem cell transplantation.

The participants, including 13 in Britain, will have stem cells harvested from their own bone marrow and grown in a laboratory before being re-injected into the bloodstream.

MS is caused by the immune system attacking a protective substance around nerve fibres called myelin. Where this happens scars, called lesions, are left behind. The hypothesis is that the stem cells will target these lesions and repair the damage…

Paolo Muraro, lead researcher on the study, based at Imperial College, London, said: “This is the first time that researchers from around the world have come together to test stem cell therapies in MS in such a large-scale clinical trial…

Just another positive avenue of experimentation now that most of the superstitious interruptions to such research have been set aside. The Brits have had less interference than physicians in the United States and we can only hope American voters won’t return us to the darkness of faith-based “science” again in the next few years.

Sami Chugg, 45, was diagnosed with MS in 1998 and it slowly began to attack her ability to move. The incurable disease stops the body’s nerve cells communicating and she was soon so ill she was permanently bed ridden.

But she is now back on her feet after trying a treatment called Bee Venom Therapy (BVT).

The treatment involves holding a bee in a pair of tweezers and deliberately stinging an area of skin on the patient’s body…

Sami says she was stung around 1,500 times in eighteen months and says it has given her her mobility back…

The alternative treatment remains unproven by evidence-based medicine but it has been used to treat other wasting diseases and arthritis…

She said: ”There are three locations we used for the stings, above the shoulders, the middle back, and then the lumbar area. It’s all centred around your spine.

I have no comment on the results from one case – and nothing to compare it to, no eval from double-blinds or placebos. One person believing in their cure is good enough for that person. And for that, I’m glad Sami Chugg is feeling better, reacquired mobility.

Thanks, wok3

Debbie Purdy and Omar Puente
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A woman with multiple sclerosis has made legal history by winning her battle to have the law on assisted suicide clarified.

Debbie Purdy wanted to know if her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her end her life in Switzerland. Five Law Lords ruled the Director of Public Prosecutions must specify when a person might face prosecution.

Ms Purdy, 46, from Bradford, said she was “ecstatic” at the ruling and she had been given her life back…the Law Lords’ decision was “a huge step towards a more compassionate law”…

“The decision means that I can make an informed choice, with Omar, about whether he travels abroad with me to end my life because we will know exactly where we stand.”

No one has been prosecuted for assisting someone’s death, although the law says they could potentially face 14 years in prison…

Ms Purdy said she would like to see the policy distinguish between “what is acceptable and what isn’t” so people in situations like hers could make decisions about what to do.

The Law Lords also said she had the right to choose how she died, under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

One of those areas where European Law is centuries ahead of the United States.

Another couple decades of battling with the backwards religious institutions that still exert unreasonable control over politicians – if not the state.