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How the world got lost on
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January 2, 2013: by Bill Sardi
In a free market, with an un-manipulated news media and a medical establishment open to less problematic and more economical cures, the announcement today by Dr. Stuart Richer OD, PhD, Director of Ocular Preventive Medicine at the Eye Clinic, James A Lovell Federal Health Care Center – North Chicago, would have been splashed on the front page of newspapers throughout the world.
The public would have stood in fascination at the prospect of damaged tissues in their brain, heart or eyes simultaneously repaired without invasive techniques. The idea of not having to wait decades to apply this discovery would have caused telephone lines across the world to become overloaded. But that is not the world we live in today.
Dr. Richer’s discovery is arguably one of the most significant in the archives of molecular medicine. Cells at the back of the human eye that do not normally regenerate (retinal pigment epithelial cells), along with other cells that have a slow renewal rate, exhibit rapid regeneration and repair via molecularly induced survival of stem cells.
Stem cells are those specialized cells that can morph into brain, muscle, liver, heart or eye cells and survive if the free-radical-induced storm that typically accompanies inflammation is quelled.
Survival of internally produced stem cells was, for the first time, accomplished by use of an available oral nutriceutical mixture (Longevinex®) that resulted in restoration of the retinal architecture, as evidenced by direct photographic images, which resulted in rapid restoration of vision in some cases.
While Dr. Richer did not directly visualize stem cells themselves, which requires sophisticated technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging, there is no other plausible reparative mechanism that explains the regeneration of absent or damaged cells at the back of the eyes. Magnetic resonance imaging is only practiced with laboratory animals as it exposes human subjects to tracer chemicals and radiation.
In the shadow of Dr. Richer’s discovery is a looming industry of start-up companies preparing to make billions of dollars harvesting stem cells from a patient’s own skin or blood cells with the intention of injecting them back into the patient.
The problem is, high-tech cures are bankrupting modern medicine. Medicare alone faces $60 trillion of unfunded future expenses. Wall Street is littered with start-up ventures that pay no heed to practicality or affordability.
Doctors eagerly wring their hands in anticipation of making fortunes instilling stem cells into damaged tissues in the heart, brain, liver and other organs and tissues. There are obvious problems with such approaches as the brain and heart, for example, are internal organs not easily accessible for injection of stem cells.
In 2007 the state of California distributed $45 million in research grants to approximately 20 state universities and nonprofit laboratories for stem cell research. At stemcellstocks.com you can find out about investment opportunities in stem cell technology. There are reports of advances in stem cell technologies, but many of these new ventures are still unprofitable. Most stem cell products today are sold purely for research purposes, not for applied treatment of patients.
The government of the Bahamas says off-shore stem cell companies have the potential to jump-start a $100 million medical tourism industry there.
The financial industry defines stem cell therapy as the infusion, injection or transplantation of whole cells into a patient for the treatment of a disease or condition. Dr. Richer’s discovery pours rain on the stem cell party.
It is a great day for the maimed, near-blind and disabled, but not a great day for Wall Street. How will this discovery be handled by the news media? It’s a discovery that cannot be completely ignored, given the existence of the internet. Google News just dispatched news of Dr. Richer’s discovery around the globe on the first day of 2013.
Earlier this year researchers had already reported on the use the red-wine molecule resveratrol, administered prior to instillation of stem cells into damaged animal hearts, which facilitated survival of these unspecialized cells that then developed into heart muscle cells that improved the blood-pumping action of a damaged heart.
Concerns over whether delivery of stem cells to damaged tissues would foster the growth of cancer stem cells were allayed when it was shown resveratrol promotes the die-off of cancer stem cells.
Only recently has it been theorized that small antioxidant molecules like resveratrol could be used to promote survival of internally-produced stem cells. However, the idea of using small natural molecules to promote survival of endogenous (internally derived) stem cells is not even mentioned in a January 2013 update on stem cell research. Investors in stem cell technologies are likely to be stunned by this development.
Dr. Richer first reported on his regenerative research three years ago when he documented the recovery of vision of an 80-year old male accompanied by measurable improvement in mental function as well.
This suggests, instead of instilling stem cells into each and every damaged organ and tissue, that a global stem cell response can be activated. Simultaneous survival of internally produced stem cells in the heart, brain, eyes and other tissues could benefit patients who have experienced multiple-organ damage.
The same formulation of natural molecules used in Dr. Richer’s research has been shown to help repair and regenerate damaged tissue in animal hearts. The results of this heart study were further validated by microRNA analysis to measure the gene-switching effects of this therapy. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) performed this microRNA analysis.
In that NIH microRNA analysis it was shown that the nutriceutical employed by Dr. Richer inhibits the undesirable budding of new blood vessels (called angiogenesis) about six-fold better than plain resveratrol. That would be most desirable at the back of the eyes where new abnormal blood vessels can invade the visual center of the eyes (macula) and permanently impair vision. (This malady is called wet macular degeneration.)
However, in a seemingly miraculous way, resveratrol has been demonstrated to simultaneously do the exact opposite in the heart. Resveratrol beneficially increases growth factors and budding of new blood vessel capillaries in the animal heart following a heart attack.
How all this newly-reported science gets sorted out by a scientific community that is bent on building a highly profitable stem cell industry using patentable technology cannot be foreseen.
Up till now, modern medicine has delivered a litany of cures and treatments that have wildly driven up the cost of medicine. Dr. Richer’s oral therapy would cost pennies compared to injected stem cells and would theoretically work on multiple organs and tissues simultaneously. Would doctors employ such an economical therapy that doesn’t generate extra income for them?
The nutriceutical formula being used by Dr. Richer has been reported to improve the vision of otherwise hopeless patients with wet macular degeneration when injected medicine has failed. But eye doctors have expressed little interest in this approach, presumably because it excludes them from fees paid to inject medicine directly into the eyes.
Needy patients may be left to find and implement this non-prescription type of molecular medicine in an unguided way. That is the current state of affairs for desperate macular degeneration patients whose vision has failed to respond to injected medicines.
Longevinex®, the nutriceutical selected for use by Dr. Richer, has been used safely by thousands of patients since 2004.
Longevinex® has submitted animal and human toxicity data to the FDA as part of a petition to the Food & Drug Administration that it be allowed to proceed with a human study without having to file a costly new drug application that would delay approval of this therapy for at least two years. During that time span thousands of senior Americans will have failed injected drug treatment and progressed to permanent blindness.
#### © 2013 Bill Sardi, ResveratrolNews.com Not for posting on other websites.
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