Word: parkinsons
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...Paul VI before him, explicitly forbade the Cardinals to so much as chat about the matter of the next Pontiff. Still, in the media, candidates cropped up, and lately the speculation has grown intense, fueled by John Paul's declining health--at almost 81, he shows the symptoms of Parkinson's disease--and by a flurry of Vatican activity. Last month 44 Cardinals were installed, and in May the princes of the church will again travel to Rome for a wide-ranging discussion on Catholicism in the new millennium...
...when the first results of the trials appeared in the Journal last week, researchers found themselves mired in an even deeper flap. The surgery did help some patients a little, partially alleviating the rigidity and slow movements typical of Parkinson's. But for others, that improvement came at a price: a year or more after the operation, about 15% of patients developed uncontrollable writhing, joint flexing, chewing and other movements. At least one person was so debilitated that he could no longer eat and had to be fed through a tube...
...answer is that Parkinson's is such a devastating disease that sufferers and their families are desperate for a cure. Drugs can alleviate the symptoms, but not retard the progressive death of brain cells. That's why fetal-cell transplants were first proposed and why some doctors were already performing the operation on patients who could afford it (cost: as much as $40,000). The researchers in the controversial study were doing what scientists are supposed to do: conduct a rigorous study to determine whether a treatment actually works...
...that results are in, some press accounts have breathlessly painted the episode as an unmitigated disaster. But that's not really true. Knowing that fetal cells can grow successfully in a patient's brain is a major step forward. And, says Dr. Thomas Freeman, a Parkinson's expert from the University of South Florida, "it's naive to think that you can do a medical intervention in people with end-stage disease and not have complications...
...even proponents agree that fetal cells alone won't eradicate Parkinson's--if only because there aren't nearly enough fetuses to do the job. Scientists are looking instead to stem cells, unspecialized cells that eventually turn into every tissue in the body. "That," says Dr. Gerald Fischbach, former head of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, "could be a renewable resource." Unfortunately, stem cells are most easily harvested from human embryos, and that means the controversy underlying the Parkinson's surgery isn't about to go away...