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‘Reprogrammed’ stem cells to be tested in people with Parkinson’s
- commandlinefan 8y agoI lost the hearing in one ear in a car accident when I was a kid (nerve damage) - I keep hoping that these advances will allow me to regrow my eardrum some day.
- aaavl2821 8y agoThere are two companies working on regenerative medicine and gene therapy to preserve and restore hearing: Akouos and decibel therapeutics. Not sure if they're working on stuff related to your condition but there's a lot of money behind the research and it seems promising
- magnetic 8y agoIs there no option to rebuild an artificial ear drum? Is your ossicular chain also shot? Regrowing your ear drum is not going to resolve nerve damage, though: it'll deal with conductive hearing, not sensorineural. I'm sure you know this already. As someone who is losing hearing due to a degenerative disease, I am sympathetic. The worse part of it for me is the severe tinnitus that came along for the ride. It is challenging in so many different ways, not the least of which is that it is completely invisible from the rest of the world.
- coltonv 8y agoI see a lot of negativity that technology is going to stagnate in the next few years, often out of the "we were supposed to have flying cars by now" vein. But stuff like this makes me feel we may be in for some of the greatest medical revolutions in generations over the next few years. CRISPR/CAS9, full genome sequencing, stem cells, we're going to start seeing the real results from these over the next decade, and if that means my Mother can have her parkinson's cured, I'm incredibly optimistic about the future.
- wpasc 8y agoI hope so, I think there's some valid arguments that forms of technology have stagnated (flying cars is not one of them). All power to medical progress though!!
- Razengan 8y agoAside from medicine, technology in general is arguably already "good enough" for most people. Hopefully we can focus on making social/ethical progress soon as much as we have in technology. There are still many places and practices in the world that someone from the "first world" would have a hard time believing.
- gumby 8y ago> Aside from medicine, technology in general is arguably already "good enough" for most people. That was true in the 1960s as well. People often don't know what they want until it's old hat.
- Razengan 8y agoI mean somewhat objectively, not people's perception of it. Today a person can communicate with anyone anywhere instantly, be almost anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, or get almost everything they would ever need in their entire life without leaving their house. Sure we had planes and telephones in the '60s, and maybe we'll have teleporters and artificial telepathy in the future, but you know what I mean.
- dwaltrip 8y agoI don't think it's possible to be purely objective about this. It's a question of values and meaning. I think there are many things that will change in the coming centuries that will foster people's values and give them greater meaning. Of course, bad stuff will happen too. Such is life.
- MiddleEndian 8y agoWhile medical stuff is very exciting and is still basically in its infancy, I think there's a lot to be done for technology even in the "developed world." Internet infrastructure generally limits upload rate for consumers in home internet and mobile internet is heavily capped. Both of these heavily limit one's ability to communicate. A recent popular example of the latter would be the issue where the firefighters in California had their data run out. SLAs or not it's a clear example of how our communications infrastructure is lacking. Transportation infrastructure is has a lot of room to grow, only a few cities in the United States have functional subways, and many are researching new ways to easily move large numbers of people in a dense area. These are tied together as well in that better internet will allow for more remote working so even in denser areas people may not need to all commute simultaneously.
- msie 8y agoI thought this would have been done 5 years ago.