I wrote the other day about the hype merchant, William Neaves of the Stowers Institute, continuing to tout embryonic stem cells–which he usually intentionally confuses with human cloning–as moving on the fast track to provide cures:

The rapid pace of advances in embryonic stem cell research means that day when this science can be translated into cures is drawing near,”

But Alan Trounson, the new head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine states that despite Californians borrowing $7 billion (including interest) to fund ESCR and human cloning research, cures may be 25 years away. From the story:

The same day that President Bush won a second term, California voters approved a bold plan to pour $3 billion of taxpayers’ money into stem cell research over the next decade. Supporters argued the investment would save millions of lives through new medical therapies, generate millions of dollars in added tax revenue, cut healthcare costs by billions, and create thousands of high-paying jobs.

Three years later, Californians are still waiting for some results. Until recently, most of the money was tied up in lawsuits. And even now that the tap is flowing, proponents acknowledge it could take years, if not decades, for the grants to pay off.

“It’s too early,” said Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency charged with administering the stem cell funds. “There are very few substantial developments [in medical science] that have happened in less than 25 years. There have been some, but they tend to be rare.”

Of course, when the propounders of Proposition 71 in CA wanted Californians to dole out of their pocketbooks and into “the scientists’,” they too hyped CURES! CURES! CURES!. But now, with the money in the bank so to speak, suddenly the promised benefits are decades away.

But at least Trounson is finally telling the straight scoop. Don’t hold your breath for Neaves to be so honest. You might faint.

I just learned about this blog, “Medical Futility,” that tracks futility care cases. The author is a law professor named Thaddeus Pope who, from what I have seen of his entries, clearly supports Futile Care Theory.

In reading his entries, it validates my belief that the twin ideological beliefs behind Futile Care Theory are a feeling of repugnance about the lives of people with profound disabilities and a utilitarian view that maintaining their lives is, therefore, a waste of money.

In this entry, Professor Pope reports that medical students apparently believe it is wrong to sustain the lives of patients diagnosed with PVS. He doesn’t comment, but based on the next entry, he no doubt approves.

Professor Pope seems to support cutting off all patients’ with profound cognitive disabilities–meaning feeding tubes for those who need no other interventions–because of the cost of their care:

I happened to notice the following dollar figure in a medical malpractice case being tried in Wisconsin. The Madison County Record reports that Christina McCray was undergoing a right hand carpal tunnel surgery in 2001 when she was over-sedated by the anesthesia team, causing her to become bradycardic, hypotensive and hypoxic which caused severe and permanent brain damage. She is now in a PVS. One of McCrary’s expert witnesses, Jan Klosterman, a certified life care nurse planner testified that McCrary’s medical bills will average $250,000 per year–totaling $8.4 million if she lives another 30 years.

What does this have to do with medical futility? It permits one to perform a back-of-the-napkin calculation of the cost of inappropriate care. If it costs $250,000 to treat one PVS patient for one year, and there are around 25,000 PVS patients in the United States, then the total cost exceeds $6 billion per year–more than the entire federal portion of the SCHIP program. That is a considerable amount of money to so deplorably misspend.

Never mind that such expert calculations were part of a litigation in which the plaintiff’s lawyer is duty bound to make the damages appear as high as possible. The point is that if futilitarians get their way, and if PVS is deemed a condition for which it is inappropriate to provide sustenance, we are looking at the mass dehydration of tens of thousands of patients against their families’ desires, and perhaps against their own advance directives. Is the country really ready for that?

If that prospect ever became an imminent reality, I have no doubt that we wouldn’t resort to mass dehydration to rid us of these useless eaters, but instead would opt for the lethal injection as more humane. Cheaper too. Now, let’s see. Dehydration takes 12-14 days. The cost of the care for those days for all of the patients would amount to the tens of millions. Yup. Inject them. We have better uses for that money.

Scores of doctors have been slain, cancer patients have to hunt down their own drugs _ even IV fluid is in short supply. On Tuesday, a former deputy health minister and the head of the ministry’s security force will stand trial, a year after they were accused of letting Shiite death squads use ambulances and government hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings. (Washington Post)

It’s a new way to push for patient safety: Don’t pay hospitals when they commit certain errors. Medicare will start hitting hospitals where it hurts in October, and other insurers are hot on the trail. (The Associated Press)

Essentially, “synthetic biologists” hope to make cells act more like computers and less like biological systems. To understand why they would want cells to act less like biological systems, it helps to understand some recent history of human genetics research. (Boston Globe)

In the complex, expensive and emotionally charged world of fertility treatment, doctors are sounding a call to arms to reverse the soaring rate of multiple births. (New York Times)

In the past couple of months there have been reports of breakthroughs in embryonic stem cells research - with one group of scientists indicating they had derived embryonic stem cells from adult skin cells and another group reporting they could cultivate stem cells from embryos without destroying the embryo. (Temple Daily Telegram)

Less than a dozen years after Dolly the sheep became the world’s first cloned mammal, grocers and restaurateurs are digesting the fact that milk and meat from cloned animals could soon filter into their supply chains. (San Francisco Chronicle)