After regaining sight, Presque Isle native touts stem cell treatments

[jpak]

http://bangordailynews.com/2016/04/23/news/aroostook/after-regaining-sight-presque-isle-native-touts-stem-cell-treatments/

Doug Oliver says that he knows what it’s like to go blind and see again, and he wants others to have the same chance.

“I’m seeing very well and am likely to enjoy this vision for the remainder of my lifetime,” said Oliver, a 1980 Presque Isle High School graduate who was diagnosed with a rare form of blindness 11 years ago.

The degenerative disease, malattia leventinese, affects some 10,000 Americans, and it upended and reshaped Oliver’s life. He was working as a social services director in New Hampshire when, after almost driving into four pedestrians in two different crosswalks one day, he realized he was having trouble seeing. In 2008, he said he stopped driving after being diagnosed as legally blind, which in the U.S. constitutes a visual acuity of 20/200 or worse.

He said he gave up his job, and went from earning $90,000 to less than $30,000, working part-time at Walgreens and qualifying for Social Security Disability Income. In 2010, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, for its warmer climate, its public transit and an open position at a Walgreens, and he soon met his second wife, Ann, who also would be his guide.

<more>

but..but..but.. stem cells are the DevilsOwn...

yup

[WhiteTara]

1. 21st century medicine is incredible

I'm glad to see this helped this man and maybe 1000s of others.

[StarTrombone]

2. Do you really think that using a person's own bone marrow stem cells is evil?

I've never heard of that before.

[Igel]

3. Some people are fact-lite.

They heard * banned stem cell research and others were against it, so that meant all hESC research.

Of course, what the screaming print taketh away the merely large print giveth and the small print funded, so using adult stem cells may have been given dedicated NIH funding for the first time, but the screaming print said "no research."

Having dedicated research funding for a set number of pre-established hESC lines was new, but the screaming print said "no research." And "no research" means no research.

There may have been private schools, institutions, companies doing hESC research using stem-cell lines not approved for federal funding involved in perfectly legal research, but the screaming print said "no research." So since such research was illegal, how could anybody do it?

The screaming print was, of course, in big, coarsely drawn letters using orange crayon.

It's like the people against GMOs and such, but who weighed in positively on the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in genetic engineering. GMOs and genetic modification, bad, evil. CRISPR and "genetic engineering" are hunky-dory.