The fact that Dr. Faustman and her staff have received their first
installment of funding from IF, are actively hiring folks to do the
work, and are now starting to test the automated blood assay machine
with real blood samples from diabetic blood donors now constitutes
the "start" of the trial. Actual work on PEOPLE won't start for
another 18 months. I think this is responsible for the conflicting
dates.

Regarding the spleen cells... the 3 (maybe 4 now?) replicating labs
were successful in replicating everything that Dr. Faustman did, with
the exception of the spleen cell connection that she published. In
the interview on dLife, she did mention this, but not explicitly.
She talked about how the labs agreed with her work, except for WHERE
the new islets originated was in dispute (she thinks the spleen, the
other researchers speculated that they were in the pancreas all
along, but not enough of them, or whatever reason, due to the
autoimmune attack.) She mentions it by saying she thinks they
were "exogenous" (from outside the pancreas) and they say they
were "endogenous" (from inside the pancreas).

She went on to say if you are a diabetic mouse, or human, you don't
care where the regenerated cells are coming from. I, for one, agree
with that. I don't care if it comes from my daughter's big toe, so
long as regeneration occurs when the autoimmune attack is halted, and
she doesn't have to take insulin injections, count carbs, poke her
finger, face complications, etc. anymore. They all agreed that
regeneration happens....

What sets Dr. Faustman's work apart from ALL the other mice cures is
a couple of things. She was indeed the very first to halt the
autoimmune attack. This is a big reason why the other NOD mice cures
failed in humans. You can regenerate cells (like INGAP) all you
want, or you can transplant them, but if you don't stop the
underlying disease process, they will all eventually fall the same
way the original islets did, which is what happened in people with
all the other cures.

Also, in the other "successful" mouse experiments, they proceeded to
human trials after a very small amount of successes (less than 10
mice in most cases). Dr. Faustman has replicated this over and over
again in hundreds of mice.

Finally, you must define "cure". To me, a cure means you have a
treatment for some period of time, and then you are better forever.
This is exactly what happened with Dr. Faustman's two-legged
protocol. The mice got better, and lived out their lives without a
recurrence. If I'm not mistaken, this has never happened before
either.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Stacy Lavery
Team Maryland Captain, JLN Campaign



--- In nathanfaustmantrials@yahoogroups.com, "joshualevy"
<joshualevy@...> wrote:
>
>
> During the interview, text on the screen said that human trials
> would start in 2007, but the Lee I site says fall 2008. Does
> anyone know why two different dates? Was the interview recorded
> long ago, for example? Or does the web site need an update?
>
> Also, I thought it was interesting to compare what Faustman
> says now, compared to the press releases issued years ago.
> She never said "Spleen" in her dLife interview, but the previous
> research descriptions touted Spleen cells as the key research
> contribution.
>
> Finally, I think the claim that this is the first research to
> cure type-1 in NOD mice is a stretch. I don't remember if she
> claimed this, or the interviewer did. But my memory is that
> type-1 has been cured a couple of times in NOD mice over the
> last few decades, but none of these cures worked in people.
> (Although I don't have the details in front of my brain.)
>
> Joshua Levy
>