MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Beginning: Start with a statistic of the amount of people with uncorrectable ocular diseases in the US, and then narrow in on the (combined) amount or percentage of people who have Age-related Macular Degeneration, Retinitis Pigmentosa, and Stargardt’s Disease. I will then lead into a short introduction of stem cell therapies, and how they may be used to treat these diseases.

Middle: The body of the paper will go into the current knowledge that we have of stem cell therapies, specifically for retinal degenerative diseases. I will have section headers that are of the three diseases listed above – under these headers, there will be a short description of the disease itself, and the efficacy of treatment with stem cells as shown in clinical trials. At the end of the middle part of the document, I will have a section on safety of the technique (this holds for all of the diseases, as the method of administering stem cells to the retinal area is standard as far as I can tell).

End: Discussion of what future physicians can look forward to as treatment options for patients with retinal degenerative diseases. These future treatments will probably be found most recently in clinical trials. I will also discuss a few papers that are working on refining the technique for administering stem cells to patients, and how the stem cells themselves should be treated before administration.

Logos: Data from the peer-reviewed papers on clinical trials, information on the biology of stem cells and the diseases, data from research aimed at refining the technique for using stem cells to treat retinal diseases.

Pathos: Vision loss is currently irreversible for these three retinal diseases. I will also have a short description of how vision is affected by these diseases.

Ethos: Credibility of the researchers, credibility of the institutions.

Structure: The body of my document will be split into sections defined by the three diseases: Age-related Macular Degeneration, Stargardt’s Disease, and Retinitis Pigmentosa

Goal: To inform future physicians about the emerging stem cell treatments for three retinal degenerative diseases.

A, nicely scoped plan. Good choices for the section heads, too. Start writing!

Try to look for information that will give timelines on these emerging treatments. Medical students will want to know approximately when such care will be possible for their patients.