Saw an interesting presentation on Stem Cell research today, by Gary Friedman of NJSCREF. He told us about Stem Cells treatments and the process of tissue banking. He was at HKS to see how our software would fit in with his project, but I have some notes on what I learned about stems cells in general.

• Everything you know about stem cells from the newspapers/TV is wrong.
• You have heard a lot about embryonic stem cell research in the news, but none about non-embryonic (i.e. cord blood, bone marrow.) Why? It's old news mostly. Bone marrow transplants to treat blood cancers are 20 years old. Also there is lots of money invested in embryonic stem cell research, many companies holding lots of patents, and they make more press releases etc.

Embryonic stem cells - pros and cons

• PRO - Matches the recipient exactly (if cloning was used to create the embryo)
• PRO - Cells are undifferentiated and grow under lab conditions. So you can make as many as you need.
• CON - Cells grow under non-lab conditions also. I.e. Cancerous tumors in 25% of monkeys implanted with human embryo cells. Not good
• CON - Most of the technologies are patented.

Dr Friedman believes that Embryonic stem cell treatments will ultimatly fail. 1) They will NEVER receive FDA approval due to the tumor problem. 2) It is a voilation of federal law to buy or sell human tissue, so how will those companies collect their patent revenues? 3) The cost is too high, it costs about $50,000 to produce one unit of embryonic stem cells (the amount needed for a single treatment), and the insurance companies have standardized on a payment of $20,000 for a stem cell unit (for existing things like BMT). 4) Oh yeah and those ethical issues.

But non-embryonic stem cells have a supply problem right? This is what Dr Friedman is trying to fix right now. There are 4 Million births in the US every year. If even a small percent of those would donate the cord & placental blood, that would make a big difference. The other source he is attacking is orthapedic surgery. There are about 1 million surgerys every year where a bone is cut. During those surgeries, they throw away approx 1 liter of bone marrow. 1 liter of BM can provide enough stem cells for 3 stem cell transplants.

This is just a summary from what I remember. Go visit Dr Friedman's web site.

This was on slashdot, but I don't want to loose the link. Good rules on how to write bad software.

A great little piece from Joel on Software about how to priortize features in a software project.

The linked article is about the federal deficit, and why it doesn't matter, since the government can make money at will. This is an interesting concept, that I need to read more about.