Bone marrow treatment used to combat inhibitors

According to a Children's Hospital of Wisconsin press release researchers there have shown success using patients' bone marrow to treat inhibitors.

The findings were published in the 1 October 2008 issue of Blood Journal.

From the press release:

"...investigators describe how a gene-modified bone marrow transplant can be used to initiate clotting in hemophilia. This type of approach may work in the 30 to 35 percent of hemophilia patients that have developed inhibitory antibodies against the missing clotting protein.

The bone marrow is removed from the patient and stem cells are treated with Factor VIII, a clotting factor, which is placed in the platelets. The marrow is given back to the patient, who then retains the essential clotting mechanisms to stop bleeding that otherwise would lead to complications."

Seven score and 5 years ago...

Today is the 145th anniversary of the Gettysburg address. Two hundred and seventy eight words, only 2 1/2 minutes to deliver yet in such brevity Lincoln relates the breadth and depth of the basic underpinnings of this great nation, this great experiment of representative democracy and federal governance.

In 2 1/2 minutes Lincoln conveyed just how unique, precious and fragile the United States of America was, is and will be. But inherent in its foundation is the principle of Liberty and the notion that "all men are created equal" that make it a concept embodied in a nation that is worth preserving, defending and dying for.

The words ring as true today are they did then.



Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.