Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Stem Cells - Treatment or Trickery in Today's World.

I have heard about a clinic in Tampa, FL that will give a client "stem cell treatment" intravenously and by nebulizer to treat COPD. For only $7,500, a person can receive a temporary treatment. A temporary treatment for an incurable condition...hmm.  Repeat treatments are half price. How nice. 

I want to bring a website, closerlookatstemcells.org to the attention of anyone looking to access or even learn more about the option of stem cell therapy in today’s clinical arena. Stem cell research promises great advances in medicine. But those advances are still only promises. Do I think stem cell research is useful? YES! Do I think stem cell therapy has reached treatment status for COPD? NO!

Say what you will about the FDA, it is still the organization that protects Americans against fake cures and false promises. Snake oil can’t get FDA approval, and neither, at this time, can stem cell therapies for COPD. There is a saying about the mills of God: that they turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. The FDA is kind of like that and although I would like to see more innovative treatments for COPD, I am encouraged by recent FDA approval of an inhaled drug combination with no steroid component and other new therapies. Tests are being conducted at universities and teaching hospitals across the country and around the world;  research scientists and physicians are plugging away diligently at new treatments for COPD sufferers. 

I am willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoying a movie about aliens from deepest space, but that doesn’t mean I look for spacemen at the corner store. Expecting a cure for COPD from stem cell therapy today, means suspending disbelief at  a “space alien in line at the corner store” level. 

People with chronic incurable conditions like COPD are sitting ducks for charlatans with “cures the FDA and AMA will not sanction, because they are in the pay of the big drug companies.” 

If you want to support stem cell research and other research for COPD you might want to join the COPD Foundation Patient Powered Research Network Registry and volunteer for a COPD research study yourself. By signing up at the PPRN Registry you will join your health history and experience with COPD to those of thousands of others to expose trends and influence the direction of future research. You will also be given the chance to participate in other trials and studies that can directly influence the course of your disease. No one will ever make you participate in anything - your information and interest in the process is assistance enough to make a world of difference. 

Go to copdpprn.org today to register for the COPD PPRN Registry and keep hoping for a cure. Please read the consent form and data-sharing agreement carefully. The network will only include people who choose participate in the study. If you do not sign the consent form and data-sharing agreement, you will not be in the network. Remember that stem cell treatment for COPD is still in the - hopefully not too distant - future. If you would like to know more about the PPRN or have more questions about stem cell research, you may speak to a trained patient or caregiver associate, toll-free at 866-316-2673. It might even be me :)

Monday, October 6, 2014

Monday afternoon not on La Grande Jattte.

Being part of a clinical trial or study is an opportunity to include  one’s own experience in what may be considered a pointillist rendition of disease and management plans that can produce a nuanced picture of the effect of specific medical models and the processes being used, unused or discarded to identify and treat the conditions being portrayed. 

The success or failure of an evaluation or treatment option does not stand or fall alone or perch only on a two dimensional x/y graph model but it is at its most comprehensive  when seen with the added dimensions of predicted and observed outcomes; both in real time and as as reported over time following the initial trial. This creates a picture out of the contradictory and complementary interplay of results laid down like spots of paint on a canvas.

Having made that assertion, it remains the individual points of color in the painting and the individual questions and quantifiable results in many many individual study experiences which result in the visual coherence that provides both the outline and detail of the “big picture.” 

This is the place at which I want to emphasize to individuals with COPD (still unaware perhaps that their particular speck of color is important and will change over time, always influencing the picture) the idea that they matter. 

I participated in one study of treatment options for the psychosomatic response to the COPD diagnosis and experience. I have been evaluated and turned away from Lung Volume Reduction Surgery and excused from involvement in a clinical trial for a non-invasive lung volume reduction medical procedure, either of which could have radically changed the nature of my condition for better (or for worse). Each time, the information gathered and the data added from my personal situation influenced the whole picture of COPD, as seen around the world.  Even though I recognized early on that this was bigger than me, I was disappointed - very seriously disappointed to be turned down for participation in the lung volume reduction study that I thought might change my life. Ironically that study was scrapped, before the first person was given the procedure (after they disqualified me) and the company is not even still doing business under the name used in that study any where that I could find in a cursory on-line search. 

I have currently been accepted for initial screening in my second try for a lung volume reduction procedure trial evaluating another treatment option for folks with COPD and other debilitating lung diseases and conditions. It’s a big picture.