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HYPERLINK "http://www.stemcellnetwork.ca/partners/jdrf/news/articles.php?id=27"http:// www.stemcellnetwork.ca/partners/jdrf/news/articles.php?id=27 With the Parkinson's community hard on the advocacy trail to allow federal money to be used for stem cell research for therapeutic cloning it occurred to me that there are several questions that need to be asked. 1. With a 8 to 25 percent misdiagnosis rate of the disease, meaning that between 120,000 to 375,000 of us (based on the guess of 1.5million diagnosed in the US)currently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease do not have the dopamine cell loss producing our parkinsonism symptoms, will stem cells that can become dopamine cells help in these cases? 2. How expensive would stem cell therapy be and would insurance companies cover it? 3. If/When stem cell treatment for Parkinson's becomes available will it be necessary to use the PET SCAN prior to treatment to ensure that the parkinsonism is dopamine cell death? I ask this because Deborah Setzer had been flown to Cedars Sinai to be evaluated as a candidate in Dr Lévesque's stem cell clinical trials (using ones own stem cells to repair the dopamine cell death). However when she got there he ordered a PET SCAN and found that her parkinsonism was not dopamine cell death (true PD) and thus stem cell therapy would not help her. 4. Stem Cell therapy using ones own stem cells for other ailments is currently already being successfully used. Dr Levesque of Cedars Sinai has done work in this area with reported great results with a Parkinson's patient (Dennis Turner). Any idea on how Mr Turner is doing since the implants 2 years ago? Last report I saw was he was 80% recovered. Also what is the status of those trials and why is more attention not placed on this process vice the controversial embryonic stem cell? --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.670 / Virus Database: 432 - Release Date: 4/27/2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn