Good Old Socialized Medicine?
Daniel nearly sprained his own arm patting socialized medicine on the back for inventing islet cell therapy. Ho-hum, been there done that. Still, since they are being heavily subsidized by capit ... um, non-soc ... er, how about less-socialized medicine?, then we shouldn't expect them not to hit a single every now and then. Especially when most of the experimentation and discovery of what doesn't work has been done for them (i.e., more subsidization). Finding out what doesn't work may actually be the more important part of innovation, if you can accept Thomas Edison's authority on the subject.
According to the UMM article, "Islet cell transplantation has been performed since the late 1970s, but a group of Canadian doctors improved the method several years ago." I wonder where it was first developed? Ugh, I see that the federal NIH is a Johnny-come-lately to the party, just as the other socialized medical researchers are.
More history here, here ("The vast majority of islet transplants have taken place in the United States, while 60 were performed in Germany and 30 in Italy"), and here (the actual publication of the Edomonton Protocol used in the UK). The immunosuppression drugs daclizumab, sirolimus, and tacrolimus were supplied to the Edmonton researchers by Roche (US)), Ayeth-Wyerst (US), and Fujisawa (Japan). Well, batting .333 in the majors is considered quite good (I'm assuming that Japan also has mostly- or all-socialized medicine, but I could be wrong).
Questions - are the UK experiments another disappointment in the making, given that that seems to be the history of islet transplants (though apparently not with the Edmonton Protocol)? What about the shortage of donors?
According to the UMM article, "Islet cell transplantation has been performed since the late 1970s, but a group of Canadian doctors improved the method several years ago." I wonder where it was first developed? Ugh, I see that the federal NIH is a Johnny-come-lately to the party, just as the other socialized medical researchers are.
More history here, here ("The vast majority of islet transplants have taken place in the United States, while 60 were performed in Germany and 30 in Italy"), and here (the actual publication of the Edomonton Protocol used in the UK). The immunosuppression drugs daclizumab, sirolimus, and tacrolimus were supplied to the Edmonton researchers by Roche (US)), Ayeth-Wyerst (US), and Fujisawa (Japan). Well, batting .333 in the majors is considered quite good (I'm assuming that Japan also has mostly- or all-socialized medicine, but I could be wrong).
Questions - are the UK experiments another disappointment in the making, given that that seems to be the history of islet transplants (though apparently not with the Edmonton Protocol)? What about the shortage of donors?
Labels: health-care, politics
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