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Morris Chestnut has a career 'cuz he's not just leading-man handsome but
also tall (and come off another half a foot taller than his actual
height), and of course dark. He's an older version of a cover model for
a Harlequin romance.

On this episode, they don't make him appeal to his female audience.
Instead, the title character is jealous of Chestnut's body and thinks of
a cheat so he doesn't have to spend hours a day working out and never
eating carbs, like Chestnut.

He used CRISPR a la the episode title because that's a legitimate use of
the technology.

In an amazing coincidence, Watson treats a patient with Sickle Cell,
constantly in and out of hospital. Of course she has a rare form of the
disease that no hemotologist has ever seen outside of a textbook. Her life-threatening symptoms are of course progressing even more rapidly
than a typical patient experiences.

We get a woke lecture about the unfairness that the only two available treatments are hideously expensive and it's unfair that it's
unaffordable, but then we learn that the "better" treatment requires
killing off a patient's immune system, rendering females infertile (and susceptible to all sorts of infections but this isn't discussed).

So Watson just decides to rewrite her genetic code as he happens to know
a guy who has CRISPR technology, apparently the home version.

Watson can't be bothered with a clinical trial. He goes right for human experimentation.

(I was watching with my mother. She asked me why human experimentation
without FDA approval is illegal. I reminded her that she'd recently
watched The Island of Doctor Moreau movie adaptation.)

The guy with the home CRISPR machine has no trouble re-writing her
genetic code, which is apparently super-easy, not even a problem.

The hospital director, who had assigned the patient to Watson, is
immediately suspicous of her immediate improvement and has three blood
draws obtained, which she then carries around in her lab coat pocket for
the rest of the episode, only to discard untested. 'Cuz not
refrigerating blood samples won't scew up test results or anything...

Watson uses Shinwell and not his team because he's committing a crime,
but one of the twins figures it out anyway and the rest of the team
demands an explanation. The back-stabbing neurologist (who has seemingly stopped treating Watson for his traumatic brain injury) documents
Watson's crimes while covering up her own, trying to get her lover into
a clinical trial without disclosing that she's her lover.

I thought Moriarity was going to extort Watson as he's spying on him
through the robot (which Shinwell set up last episode), but that's a
dropped plot point or something.

Because the writers don't try too hard, we get no discussion whatsoever
of the moral implications of human experimentation. It's simply illegal
the way Watson did it. Why should he be prevented from rewriting genetic
code? He just knows it's going to work! It's all FDA bureaucrats denying
a treatment that would help African blacks.

The other thing they forgot to discuss: They completely forgot to test
her for pregnancy because she had an IUD. (I find this impossible to
believe as a pregnancy test is routine for any woman of child-bearing
age. They don't assume birth control devices don't fail.)

She's pregnant and this led to complications.

The patient is overjoyed that she's pregnant. She had the IUD because
she didn't want to become pregnant due to all the treatment she'd been receiving for her chronic condition.

Watson's genetic-code rewrite DOESN'T affect her genetic material. Women
are born with all the eggs they are going to produce. If she's a carrier
of the Sickle Cell trait, then one has to assume her offspring will
likely carry the trait.

It's too bad the patient couldn't obtain advice on genetics from a
specialist.

This episode was less awful than previous episodes.

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[snip]

CRISPR is actually way, way, too easy to set up. Not quite
as simple as the Hollywood version, but suffice to say every
biologist looking at the Big Picture cringes at what could
happen if a Bond Villain decides to get involved.

Oh, and yes, this really does seem to be a miracle treatment
for Sickle Cell patients. There was a puff piece about
five years ago on Sixty Minutes, and they actually pulled
that once per decade valid story.

Way, *WAY*, too expensive and very limited supply. There
was talk last year, pre-election, of getting it the same
Special Casing in Medicare that "End Stage Renal Disease",
aka ESRD, aka kidney dialysis and transplant... gets, but,
well, that was before the election.


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[sull fnip]

The very real treatment, which Sixty Minutes puff pieced
on five years ago, just had another Big Success:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/sickle-cell-anemia-cure-new-york/

Note it's still _extrememly expensive_ (although the only people,
at least publicly, who've gotten it haven't paid directly [a])
and the numbers who've been treated (again, at least publicly)
barely crack the double digits.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there was a strong movement
to get this the same Medicare "Special Casing" that End Stage
Renal Disease ("ESRD", kidney dialysis/transplant) gets (that
is, full coverage [b]) prior to last year's election, but then,
well, the election.

[a] I've seen rumoured reporting of people who have, indeed,
paid out the millions of dollars, but no details. I wouldn't
be surprised if this is happening.

[b] to be clear, this still leaves lots of expenses and
a miserable life, but it's a Big Step for these folk.




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_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
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[snippppppppp]

since we've had some periodic postings on this topic,
there's a claim by a small company that they have
a significantly cheaper (although still expensive [a])
"cure" (as in, once you've gottn it you no longer
have sickle cell or... the distant relative Thalassemia.

Oh, and also easier to scale up production.

However, they add that Big Pharm, combined with Big Hospital,
have conspired to keep them locked away.

[a] $750 thousand versus two and three million.

https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/can-a-fathers-quest-to-save-his-son?r=5fi3g0



--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
[email protected]
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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