Pharmaceutical company facts

[NJmaverick]

http://bitsandpieces.us/2010/06/13/pharmaceutical-company-facts/

[MineralMan]

1. Well, if you look at the bottom of that flyer, it's spoiled by a

bogus claim of a diabetes cure. That puts the whole thing under question. Sorry, but quacks publish all sorts of things that are incorrect in order to sell whatever it is that they're selling.

I'd need independent confirmation of everything in this flyer before I'd believe any of it.

[Hannah Bell]

2. irving weissman

http://stemcell.stanford.edu/about/leadership.html

http://newspirates.com/?tag=httpwwwcolumbiaspectatorcom20090123scientist-r

[MineralMan]

7. Nothing on that Stanford page about Diabetes.

Nothing on the Wikipedia page about it either. The only places I could find a link to that was on questionable pages.

[Hannah Bell]

11. guess you didn't read the article from the columbia school paper

Weissman, a professor of pathology and developmental biology at Stanford University, spoke Wednesday and Thursday as part of the Columbia University Department of Religion’s Bampton Lecture series. The lecture series is modeled after a centuries-old Oxford series of the same name, and invites famous authorities in their respective fields to give talks on various issues of interest to the religious community.

In Wednesday’s lecture, Weissman laid out the conceptual foundation of his work—that stem cells are rare, self-renewing, and can regenerate body tissues. Weissman repeatedly expressed frustration that while many of his discoveries seemed to hold remarkable potential for life-saving treatments, commercial or regulatory hurdles have prevented his scientific research from benefiting human beings.

One example is Weissman’s mid-’90s research on type I diabetes, in which he demonstrated the ability to fully cure type I diabetes in mice using stem cells. But even though the experiments avoided political controversy by using so-called adult stem cells, which do not come from embryos, Weissman ran into a road block when pharmaceutical companies refused to sponsor clinical trials. The therapy went nowhere. Weissman implied that the pharmaceutical companies had put profit over principle, preferring to keep diabetes sufferers dependent on costly insulin than to cure them once and for all.


http://www.grg.org/IWeissman1.htm

We have shown in diabetic mice that a stem-cell transplant from a genetically resistant donor permanently blocks the autoimmune reaction that kills insulin-producing cells. Such stem-cell transplants also block autoimmune reactions in models of Multiple Sclerosis and Lupus. And stem-cell transplanted hosts can for life accept tissue, organ, or cell transplants from the stem cell donor without any anti-rejection drugs.

So we come to the problem. It would certainly be of great medical benefit to open these ‘platform technologies’ by NT to produce pre-defined stem cell lines. Imagine if we had and could distribute to the best and the brightest, a juvenile diabetes stem-cell line, or a Lou Gehrig’s Disease stem-cell line. Today, the best and the brightest in the US cannot receive or use such cell lines. It doesn’t make senses to me. What makes even less sense is the bill proposed to criminalize all aspects of producing, studying, and even developing treatments using the NT stem-cell technology. If this turns out to be like the recombinant DNA example, which we regulated rather than banned, tens of thousands of human lives are at stake. In my view, whoever of you acts to ban this research is responsible for the lives it could save.

[MineralMan]

13. Hmm...a guy has to wonder why a medical researcher is

addressing the Religion department. Find me a paper regarding this in a medical journal, not a religion lecture. I did read that article, in the NewsPirates blog. Blogs. Sorry, but I don't take data from blogs.

If you can find a legitimate article on his research in a legitimate journal, I will go and read it. Nothing in the Columbia article is a quotation from Weissman. It's all unattributed statements.

[Hannah Bell]

14. it's from the columbia spectator. the pirates is a news aggregator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Daily_Spectator

NewsPirates has been a “wannabe” project of mine for several years. Now, thanks to a fortuitous twist of fate, I have the time to make it a reality.

I will be providing a unique look at the world through the eyes of a person who has been a working journalist for more than 30 years.

In the news files you will those stories that are not found in the major media. My goal is to provide a source for you for those twisted stories that are often ignored by the mainstream media. This will be a place where some of the more obtuse connections between the powerful and the events of our world are explored.

http://newspirates.com/?page_id=2


Bampton Lectures in America at Columbia University
(3) 1950 – C. H. Dodd Gospel and Law: The Relation of Faith and Ethics in Early Christianity
(4) 1951 – Lewis Mumford Art and Technics
(5) 1952 – James B. Conant Modern Science and Modern Man
(6) 1953 – Alan Gregg Challenges to Contemporary Medicine
(7) 1954 – John Baillie The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought
(8) 1955 – Lionello Venturi Four Steps Toward Modern Art
(9) 1956 – Joel H. Hildebrand Science in the Making
(10) 1957 – Brock Chisholm Prescription for Survival
(12) 1959 – Anthony Blunt The Art of William Blake
(13) W. Barry Wood From Miasmas to Molecules
(14) 1962 – Paul Tillich Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions
(15) Northrop Frye A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance
(17) 1966 – Fred Hoyle Man in the Universe
(18) Alasdair C. MacIntyre The Religious Significance of Atheism
(19) 1968 – John Newenham Summerson Victorian Architecture: Four Studies in Evaluation
(20) Jacob Bronowski Magic, Science, and Civilization
(21) 1976 – Titian: His World and His Legacy
(22) 1977? – Anthony Kenny Faith and Reason
1983 – Steven Weinberg
(28) 1986 – Zellig Sabbetai Harris Language and Information
1988 – Robert Gallo
(29) 1991 – James Cahill The Painter's Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China
(33) 2001 – Archbishop Demetrios
Paul Ramsey Ethics at the Edges of Life: Medical and Legal Intersections
Paul Ricoeur, George H. Taylor, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bampton_Lectures

[NJmaverick]

4. MM while it may be questionable, what isn't questionable is that almost every new drug

treats rather than cures

[glinda]

8. Yup. No money in curing something. Try looking at Veterinary medicine too

as these same companies market to Vets. Right now I have almost a full upper shelf of medicines that were prescribed and either caused further damage to my pets or they took them off of them right away or the pet died and I could not use all of the medicines. They are also pushing tons of drugs for sleep "so-called disorders" and "stress" at Dental offices.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. OTOH..vet supply houses are a cheap way to get anti-biotics.

They sell them for bacteria in fish tanks.

[glinda]

19. What is a Vet Supply House????? Are you talking about stuff you

can buy at like Petsmart or something?

[MineralMan]

12. There's no doubt about that. The problem is that all the links

regarding this thing you posted lead to various blogs. At the real sites, like Stanfords, or Wikipedia, the man's stem cell research is mentioned, but nothing about any "cure" for diabetes. Why do you suppose that is?

Again, the only mention of this diabetes business is found on random blogs and alternative health sites. They're far from reliable sources.

Again, that bogus part leads me to be unable to accept the numbers in the other part of this.

[blondeatlast]

5. Agreed--as an insulin-dependent diabetic, if there were a cure, even Big Pharma

would jump at it because the health insurance industries would push hard on them to do so.

IDD is VERY expensive to treat. When I briefly considered a pancreas transplant, my insurance company approved--because the expense of the surgery and the andti-rejection drugs would be cheaper than treating the diabetes and the secondary comps. I think that says a lot.

[SOS]

16. Quack?

The last line says potential cure for diabetes. No bogus claim.

Here's some background on the "bogus quack":

Professor of Pathology and Developmental Biology at Stanford University
Director, Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine (2003 - present)

Honors and Awards:

Passano Award, The Passano Foundation (2009)
Rosentiel Award, Brandeis University (2009)
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008)
Robert Koch Award, Koch Foundation (2008)
Honoree of the Arthritis Foundation (2007)
California Scientist of the Year (2002)
Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1989)

[MineralMan]

3. Worse, the flyer's source is something called

www.onlineschools.org

Here's what they say on that website:

"Online Schools is education made fun. We're a bunch of guys who spend our free time trying to come up with informative and engaging informational graphics. Its our way of making the world a better place.

This is a labor of love - we hope you enjoy it (and if you do, let us know, it'll make us happy)."

A bunch of guys, eh? This whole thing is highly suspect.

[NJmaverick]

6. MM if you blow the picture up, they do provide a list of sources for their facts

[MineralMan]

9. I can't find any way to enlarge it. The link doesn't provide any way

either. Never mind. I'm just offering a skeptical point of view. I have enormous skepticism about everything related to healthcare that comes from the general internet.

[NJmaverick]

15. MM as a general rule of thumb you can enlarge or shrink a web page

with control + or control -

[Donnachaidh]

10. so the information contained is questionable because it is a *bunch of guys*?

If the founding fathers had labeled themselves in such a way, I guess that would turn that into instant toilet paper for you, yes? :sarcasm:

What a marginalization feat! Bravo! The messenger has funny clothes -- it's all BOGUS! :rofl:

[undeterred]

17. And the result is that lots of people don't get the medication they need

because its too expensive, especially when you don't have insurance.