Talk:Denise Faustman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Science and academia work group.

I'll add more details here, but for now:

The edit I reverted was extremely biased.

1. Removed information about how Giving Freund's adjuvant alone has been known to cure type 1 diabetes in NOD mice for many years.
This fact alone seriously questions the validity and novelty of Faustman's work.
To simplify, previous research: NOD + Freund's = Cured
Faustman's research is now: NOD + Freund's + Islets = Cured
2. Removes excerpt from Science that discredits faustman
There's a good quote from the Science article (the first two sentences, actually), that describes how the recently published
research by Dr. Faustman failed.
3. Removes reference from New York Times/Media mischaracterizing faustman
The New York Times article, published the same day as the Science article, is on the same topic as the Science article,
and references all of the newly published papers, but clearly does not accurately portray ANY of them.
A better quote from the Science article is:
"because the three groups could not detect spleen-derived beta cells, and because treatment
with CFA and islets alone yielded the same results as when spleen cells were added to the mix,
the groups attribute these cures to CFA and temporary islets."
I'm leaving some of the modifications in, but they're equally sketchy.
Science has commented on the proposed BCG trials:
"The problem now, says George Eisenbarth, executive director of the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, is that using CFA to cure mice is probably not relevant to humans. CFA's effects on mice have been studied for years, and a related but less toxic substance, the tuberculosis vaccine BCG, has failed to counter human diabetes. Faustman is raising money through the Iacocca Foundation to test BCG again (Science, 27 August 2004, p. 1237). Diabetes experts disagree whether, in light of these new findings, additional experiments with BCG should be considered."

[edit] Edits by Caravass May 25, 2006

EDITS UNDER 'RESEARCH'

Re: Edit in paragraph beginning with "Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca..." in which the clause, "[JDRF] whose reviewers raised serious issues about the proposed work" was deleted:

A. I do not think that JDRF reviewers' comments are publicly available. If not, then I do not see how this statement, that the reviewers raised 'serious issues,' can be verified.
B. JDRF and Faustman issued a joint statement in two letters on April 8, 2005 about the fact that JDRF did not provide funding for her to pursue the type 1 diabetes "cure" work. Please see: http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=103404. Peter van Etten of JDRF writes, "The research application by Dr. Faustman and Dr. David Nathan was one of many regeneration proposals the JDRF reviewed last year. It was also one of many that we chose not to fund. That decision reflects the judgment of our review boards on one particular research project; it does not reflect a change in JDRF’s significant focus on, or ongoing support for, regeneration science. Dr. Nathan and Dr. Faustman’s request to JDRF was for only a fraction of the funds necessary to initiate her clinical trials."

Re: Edits on BCG:

A. BCG is used a certain doses as a preventive tuberculosis vaccine; at other doses it is used in the treatment of bladder cancer. See: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a682809.html
B. Faustman is building equipment in her lab that she hopes can help her evaluate what dose, if any, of BCG might be therapeutic.

EDITS UNDER 'THE DEBATE/COMMUNITY RESPONSE'

Re: Comments by previous poster (above) and Previous removal of the statement that "Giving Freund's adjuvant alone has been known to cure type 1 diabetes in NOD mice for many years":

A. While Freund's adjuvant (CFA) (along with numerous other interventions), has been know to "cure" NOD mice, these were only early stage/pre-diabetic mice, not end-stage mice. Frend’s adjuvant when administered to hyperglycemic mice can stall the disease, but is not a cure (no permanent elimination of disease, i.e., no T cells in the pancreas, no disease transfer and no chance of disease recurrence). In Faustman's work, CFA + spleen cells matched for MHC class I and self peptide was beneficial in end-stage (hyperglycemic) mice. This was part of what was novel, in addition to the fact that she saw regeneration of the islets.
B. As with much research, Faustman's concepts have yet to be proven in humans. Previous poster speaks about "Faustman's failure." From all of the available data, it seems that her apprach is very much under debate and is at the center of a lot of politics, but I don't yet see any failure. In fact, a review of the abstracts being presented at the American Diabetes Scientific Sessions June 2006 shows that a group from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Tran et al. Poster 1202-P) has in fact replicated her work--including halting type 1 diabetes and another autoimmune disease (Sjogren's syndrome) in an NOD model, as well as noting a contribution from a splenic stem cell. Overall, I would argue that it is really too early to draw any conclusions or try to discredit this research.
C. Previous poster talks about NYTimes (Byline: Gina Kolata) "mischaracterizing" the research. The Wall Street Journal (Byline: Sharon Begley) ran a similar article as the NYTimes. The Science article the previous poster refers to (Byline: Jennifer Couzin) is, similarly, a newspiece run in Science, not a peer reviewed paper. (The three papers from the JDRF-funded labs that ran on March 24, 2006, when all of the above mentioned articles ran, were peer-reviewed). I think it would be a fair, NPOV conclusion to say that the different angles seen in these stories reflect the wider debate over this research in the academic community. I do agree to keep in the quotes from Science that above poster has suggested.

Using the word "Mischaracterizing" is really not NPOV. Caravass 16:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Added info on NIH. Can't link directly to ADA abstract for Tran et al. 1202-P, only search page. Caravass 14:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)