All apologies, but I’m not sure the dog food commercial people are really in much error here.
Domestic dogs and gray wolves are generally considered conspecific and the domestic dog seems to have derived ( primarily ) from Middle Eastern populations of the gray wolf ( with later admixtures from other populations ). So dogs are domesticated Canis lupus deriving from undomesticated Canis lupus fairly recently in geological time ( maybe 15,000 years ago ).
This is distinct from say coyotes and gray wolves, who are closely related but different species ( Canis lupus vs. Canis latrans ), deriving from a common ancestor - probably Canis leprophagus from back in the miocene ( splitting from each other by about 1.8 million years ago ).
Sounds good! Avastin has the benefit of being a hell of a lot cheaper and pretty much the same thing as Lucentis, so I’m hoping that works out for him just fine.
And yeah, if they can do an anti-VEGF injection instead of laser, you definitely want that.
(Sorry to be nosy, I work in ophthalmology research at a hospital, specializing in retinal stuff. We just completed an eyedrop-based wet AMD study but sadly it was ineffective. Real shame since we would have liked another option for our patients.)
Are all your kitties going to be in the bridal party?
FWIW I used to feel much the same way about contacts but the disposable ones are pretty easy to use. That being said, I now wear glasses- I think there is a time limit a lot of people are prepared to put up with contacts.
Ignorance fought. Thanks. I thought I had read in the past about being descended from more of a wild dog / dingo sort of animal, but obviously my memory is faulty.
I cannot beLIEVE a pharma company would name an eye product “Avastin” without considering the pirate implications.
“Yarr, cap’n, what happened to yer eye?”
“Avast, in the crow’s nest last Tuesday, a seagull crapped in me eye!”
“How’d that make yer go blind, though?”
“Well, it was me first day with a hook fer a hand.”
PLEASE tell me that an eyepatch is part of the recovery process!
ShallowEnd, in adults it is not that big a deal - the visual pathways in your brain are already laid down. Not so in kids. Ambylopia is a functional visual deficit caused by mis- or disuse of the eyes during early childhood, which is when your eyes and your visual cortex are maturing and learning to work together. When a little kid has something wrong with their eyes, like cataracts or strabismus, it can mess up the organization of their eyes and their brain, resulting in lifelong visual deficits. This is why it is so important to tackle eye problems early on.
An aside about eyes: When you are born, your vision is crap at 20/400. It’s not until ages 3-5 that vision reaches adult levels (hopefully) approaching 20/20.
This site has a neat pic about the progression of visual acuity over the first year of life (even though they misspell ‘ambylopia.’) Over the first two years of life, the optic nerve is myelinated, and the visual cortex undergoes serious development. The fovea, which is the most sensitive part of your retina, responsible for your highest area of visual acuity, matures by about age four.
So, while this is all theoretically interesting and all, I have no idea if surgery is the gold-standard of treatment for an “occasionally” wandering eye in a three year old. I just wanted to chime in with some the eye talk.
It’s not an “eye product” per se. It started as a colon cancer drug, and it’s not even FDA-approved for use in the eye but it might as well be.
Boring sciency blah blah blah -
Bevacizumab, aka Avastin, was initially FDA-approved for the treatment of colon cancer, and has been approved for other diseases in which its main function - the shutting-down of abnormal blood vessel growth (like that which feeds cancer tumors) - is useful. (There was some controversy a few years ago in which it was FDA-approved for breast cancer treatment, and then with more studies, the FDA withdrew its approval since there seemed to be a lack of real benefit in cases of advanced breast cancer.) In the case of “wet” age-related macular degeneration, crazy growth of blood vessels inside the back of the eye causes leakage of fluid from those vessels, and this leads to blurred vision and damage to the eye. So injections of Avastin into the eye can shut down that growth, help clear up the leakage, and hopefully lead to improved/restored vision.
It’s been shown in studies to be similar in safety and efficacy to a similar eye-specific FDA-approved drug (Lucentis) for similar eye problems, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper due to its use in other diseases. The NEI/NIH even funded a big head-to-head study called CATT (Comparison of Age-Related Macular Degeneration Treatment Trials) comparing Avastin with Lucentis and found at one year of treatment that there weren’t really that significant of differences between the two in their results. So because of that research, there are insurance companies that will pay for “off-label” use of a cheaper drug that’s functionally equivalent.
OK, so why isn’t it FDA-approved in the eye? Well… Lucentis (the eye-specific FDA-approved treatment that costs around $2K a shot) and Avastin (costs maybe 5% of that when in an eye-appropriate dose) are made by the same pharma company, and Lucentis has been shown to have a stronger ability to knock out those factors which are causing the crazy growth. So tell me, what motivation does the company have to go through trials (which, I hasten to add, will cost them probably tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and several years of effort) that would get FDA approval for Avastin in the eye? This is why the federal government went ahead and approved the CATT trial, run by a coordinating group at a university and studied at research clinics all over the US.
Why did my brain forget we needed feta until after I got home from the supermarket? And why does my husband’s evil brain torture him with migraines? He’s finally found some meds that mostly head off the pain but they make him loopy. And oh and fuck yourself library. I paid for that book after my youngest spilled water on it over a month ago. When I show you the cashed check, do not tell me you’re still not sure I paid for it. You can also fuck yourself for stocking “books” by Kardashians and not my book, you insufferable, censoring assholes.
Well, dogs are more or less descended from wolves, tho not the one in the ad, but really? You expect intelligence on dogs from a company trying to tell you they can be perfectly healthy on kibble?
Sigh. I wish I could still wear contacts, but since I’m now in trifocals…
This is such an piddling rant it’s not even funny.
It’s just that after after almost a year of steady, actual money-making employment for me, and several months of almost full time for my SO, we were looking at the first paycheck where a substantial portion of his and a good chunk of my paycheck could go into the savings account, and not be swallowed up into the ether of bills and food.
What’s in the mail? Wedding invitations. In another country.
We’ll go, we’re happy for them, we’ll love the party and seeing all our friends. I’m even looking forward to it, and I’ll get to see another part of my other birth-nation, plus I love travel. I’m not ranting about going to the wedding, of course we’ll go.
I was just so happy finally having some money dammit. Aaarg. And it feels so useless, because we’ll be flying straight after work on friday, and back home sunday. I mean, for that kind of money, we’d like to spend some time away, you know? But I have work monday, and I really can’t take time off just now. Bugger it all.
It started as a colon cancer drug, and it’s not even FDA-approved for use in the eye but it might as well be.
