
Miraculous New Spray On Skin Technology Treats Burns Without Scars - ph0rque
http://singularityhub.com/2011/06/14/miraculous-new-spray-on-skin-technology-treats-burns-without-scars/
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dstorrs
I really want this to work, but it seems too good to be true, which bring my
Dubious Dave side to the front:

 _Sources: Avita Medical, Wikipedia, New South Wales Dept. of Health_

 _Image credits: Avita Medical_

If it's actually been successful at treating "thousands of patients in Canada,
the UK, France, Germany, and Australia (among many other countries)", why is
New South Wales the only potentially medically-reliable / non-conflicted
source? Why do all of the source links go to top level pages instead of
specific data?

I really hope that it's real and that they get the approvals, though.

~~~
zinkem
Here's a news posting from an academic site:
<http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/news/article.asp?qEmpID=328>

Not exactly what you asked for, but I think this is the research institute
where some or all of this technology was developed.

The skin gun was featured on an episode of National Geographic a few months
ago. This and other types of organ replacement using adult stem cells are
becoming a reality very quickly.

Many biologists think the next 50 years will yield advancements in bio-tech at
the pace we've seen advancements in computers in the last 50. I think its
pretty exciting.

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giberson
Does any one know if this technology, or other technology like skin grafts can
be applied post scaring? IE, is it possible to remove severely scarred skin
(by cutting it off) and then use skin grafts to replace it?

Just wondering if these technologies can be backwards applied to existing skin
damage, or if they need to be executed relatively soon after initial skin
damage.

~~~
chime
Check out <http://www.kelo-cote.com/> \- it is FDA approved. It is one of the
products we made at my past job. It is not a miracle cure but it works.

~~~
lupatus
Any idea about how well it works with stretch marks?

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maxharris
From the article:

"Now that you know how ReCell works and all the promise it holds, here’s the
bad news: it’s currently not FDA-approved for use in the US! The website of
Avita Medical claims that FDA approval is pending, but it’s not clear why it
hasn’t been approved yet. Having been used successfully on thousands of
patients in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, and Australia (among many other
countries) should help convince the FDA that this is a proven and worthwhile
medical advancement."

If I had a serious disfiguring burn right now, I would want the freedom to
choose for myself whether or not this is something I want to try. The
principle is: it's my life, not some committee's. The responsibility for
deciding what I do with my own body is ultimately mine.

Our laws should reflect this fact.

~~~
merraksh
"Committees" are in place to check whether these results are sound. Letting
people use their "freedom" do to themselves as instructed by a post on the
Singularity Hub may lead to some of them die, for instance of some unexpected
allergy.

~~~
bh42222
I really don't like it when the government passes laws meant to protect me
from myself.

Obviously out of about 6+ billion people on the planet some are gullible and
some make bad decisions, but I think we should have the freedom to be stupid,
dangerously stupid too as long as its only dangerous to ourselves.

Robin Hanson recently wrote about bicycle helmets versus climbing Everest. It
turns out that the death rate for attempts to climb Everest is higher then the
death rate from not wearing a bicycle helmet. But we have strong laws for
helmets, yet anyone can attempt to climb Everest.

Not only is the government protecting people from themselves, but it
hypocritically seems to prefer to regulate average folk over well of
adventurers. Think about other highly dangerous fun that is expensive and
perfectly legal.

This is mostly silly and a bit sad, but it has a very serious side when it
comes to medical technology.

The way any technology advances is by trial and error. By taking longer to put
some new treatment on the market and get large scale feedback, we accomplish
two things.

1\. In the short term we may well save some lives. 2\. In the long term we
certainly slow down progress and this costs a lot of lives.

We save a few in the short therm, to kill many in the long term.

This would be quite rational IF someone else was forcing medial experiments on
us!

But when WE are willing to take the risk, the government is restricting our
current freedoms, and killing our future children/grandchildren.

You think I'm overstating the case? Image if modern regulatory approval was
applied to penicillin? I guarantee a lot of lives with severe penicillin
allergy would have been saved. I also guarantee A LOT more people would have
died before penicillin finally made it to market. Image your ancestors died
due to a simple bacterial infection while penicillin was being approved.

But wait! That was just the delay in penicillin, now image that all other
antibiotic progress was equally delayed, as it would be. Actually the delays
compound so everything is delayed a little bit longer.

Now can you see why taking longer to approve new treatments has a such a
terrible long term cost?

~~~
Someone
Counterargument: imagine if every doctor and crackpot could attempt to sell
his 'medicine' to everybody. Imagine you having to pick what works from a
zillion possibilities. Imagine your ancestors died because they believed some
snake oil salesman.

Imagine if everybody could buy as much penicillin as they wanted. Imagine
bacteria getting resistant in 1950 or so, and you getting pneumonia in 1955.

Imagine having something like this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstilbestrol#DES_daughter...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstilbestrol#DES_daughters)
being fairly frequent, and not being able to figure out what is causing it
because there are just too many variables involved (the guy selling your
medicine may not be able to control the dose good enough, nobody tracks
interactions between medicines, etc)

~~~
maxharris
_"Imagine you having to pick what works from a zillion possibilities."_

But this is precisely what every one of us has to do every day. That's life!
Right now, I could drive in an unlimited number of directions, buy ice cream,
go to a movie, climb a tree, read a book, run out of the room screaming, etc.
There are an infinite number of actions available to me. Solving these kinds
of problems is what your brain is for!

No thing in the universe is omniscient: not any group, individual, imaginary
deity, etc. Ultimately, there is no reason to trust in anything but your own
mind and senses. It's _your_ life, and _you_ have to choose. When people
_forcibly_ stop you from doing your own thinking and acting upon it, your life
is being stifled: it's less than it could be.

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JoeAltmaier
Written as a marketing piece. But the technology seems impressive.

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rmah
This is an aussie company traded on the aussie exchange as AVH and in the US
pink sheets as AVMXF. Their quarterly report shows just under $1mil in
revenues with substantial losses.

They do not yet have FDA approval in the US but is conducting clinical trials.
If they're smart, they'll sell their tech to a larger US firm for
distribution.

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stevetjoa
One company, Remedium Technologies, is developing something similar -- a foam
spray to control bleeding: <http://www.remediumtechnologies.com>

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brianbreslin
this I'm pretty sure was mentioned here before:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173420>

