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Hi, Bruce! Much of what you said at least partly in jest is true: Drugs and devices (like DBS) have to be approved by FDA, but procedures (like pallidotomy) don't have to be. I find that scarey! Most likely, the porcine transplants have some type of patent attached that would prevent any hospital from performing the procedure without permission, but the critical point is that you don't WANT just any hospital performing surgery on you, particularly something as experimental as neurotransplants. This is much like the good advice I see on the list for patients to see a movement disorder specialist, not just an internist or family practice doc, especially when medications get to be hard to manage as they so often do. Even pallidotomies have failed all too many times due to the improper placement of lesions, etc. and they have been around since the 40s. Carole Cassidy P.S. Regarding government funding, NIH does fund some programs open to corporations and it's not uncommon for academic researchers or independent institutes like us to collaborate with business. We have done this repeatedly in both basic and clinical research studies. At 02:38 PM 7/6/98 -0400, you wrote: >Jim, it's interesting to me to hear that this is the work of a bio-medical >company, presumably without government involvement. I am just posing >rhetorical questions here, wondering if you will. No need to answer - >you're probably packing for Russia. Just please keep in mind, that while >all are very happy for you, especially after seeing your before and after on >TV, ultimately it's not enough for us. We want in too!! Anything about >anything you can ferret out in the coming months will be greatly >appreciated!! > >I don't know too much about these types of firms - except the were hot on >Wall St. and some fizzled, but what i'm wondering is how do they cash in on >Jim's procedure and thus make it profitable enough for them to "go to >market" with their product which we could all buy. I wonder if it's the >procedure itself they would patent, or do they engineer a change to the >neural tissue to make it work, or work better. >Couldn't any hospital, theoretically, do human neural tissue implants? Is >so why can't any animal hospital (just kidding!), hospital take some pig >fetus's & have a go at it, under the eye of the FDA also, of course. I >realize I am missing something > >