Singer Don Ho Saved By Stem Cells

"Legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho says he could barely walk, let alone sing, and would have been a "goner" without an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart earlier this month in Thailand."

"The 75-year-old singer underwent a new treatment that hasn't been approved in the United States. It involves multiplying stem cells taken from his blood and injecting them into his heart in hopes of strengthening it."

"The experimental procedure he underwent was developed by TheraVitae Co., which has offices in Thailand and laboratories in Israel, where Ho's stem cells were sent to be multiplied. The therapy was supervised by Dr. Amit Patel, a heart surgeon from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center."

Unless you're at least as old as I am, you've never heard of him. I hadn't heard anything about him myself for years, because it seems he retired 40 years ago. Boy, I wish I could've retired when I was 35 like he did.

Anyway, his celebrity is not why I posted this. Reading the article brought to mind three issues, all leading up to the fact that he was forced to seek treatment outside the U.S., just to save his life.

The first is the fact that stem cell research has gotten such a bad rap in this country, primarily due to ignorance of the research and it's potential, as well as the influence of religious objections to a small portion of the research involving aborted fetuses. It didn't help matters to have the President side with the self-rightious crowd, effectively slowing down medical progress. Like it or not, this society was created to cater to multiple religious cultures as well as the non-religious. We can't afford to allow one religious opinion to dictate medical or governmental policy. Too often lately, upon being exposed to technical, scientific information, instead of learning more about it and educating ourselves on exactly what's going on, we fall back on listening to religious rhetoric that would have us all revert to the middle-ages, which is less mentally taxing.

The second issue is the result of all those foreign doctors that have been traning in the U.S. over the years. Many have returned home taking their expertise with them, to help their own people. Many have decided to go home because their own people need them more than we do. Places like Thailand and India. Both those countries are now boasting of first-class medical facilities with American trained doctors. They are also boasting of a sharp raise in American patients too. Because everything is so much cheaper in countries like those, they've managed to start a growing medical institution that will rival that of the U.S. one day, but at only a fraction of the cost to the patients. In fact, it's so cheap, that many Americans are taking advantage of those facilities, because to do so here would bankrupt them. They're finding that inspite of very cheap prices for everything, even major procedures, they get access to the best medical equipment and trained personel that money can buy. They can also get access to procedures and medicine that isn't allowed yet, or banned in the U.S.

And that leads into the third issue............

This is why it's so important to get a grip on medical costs here. It doesn't matter at all how state-of-the-art we are in health care, if no one can afford it, or get treatment that has already saved countless lives in other countries, here at home. We need to purge agencies like the FDA and others that have essentually become partners with the very corporations they're supposed to monitor and regulate. We can no longer tolerate the excusses for the extremely high cost of even basic health care. You would think, that with all the technology we have, that we should be among the healthiest people in the world, but it's just the opposite. Along with our marketing-induced lifestyles, all common ailments, are now being labeled as diseases, which has led to all those ads you see, that if you've payed attention, don't claim to cure anymore, but instead instruct usage for the rest of your lives. With something as simple as heartburn, you're now told to take brand-X daily, not just when and if you need it. Just watching TV ads over the last several years, you can see how the drug companies are intent on having each and every one of us taking at least one (expensive) presciption drug on a regular basis for the rest of our lives. It's either that, or we go back to using less expensive, or even free, remedies that have worked for thousands of years, that required neither insurance, nor a second mortgage.

Funny how a little article can get me started....