Woof Jason:
I held off commenting for a bit to see if anyone else more knowledgeable than I had something to contribute, but it seems not.
I had a terrible knee accident in 1992 that snapped my ACL, PCL and lateral collateral ligaments which were replaced by cadaver tendons. It took the doctors three major operations to get it more or less right, plus over six years to straighten out the alignment issues that resulted (lots of dislocation of the sacrum, and right pelvis).
But I digress-- the point being that I have kept a interested layman's eye on all this. Speaking only from this very limited perspective, I simply would vouch for the benefits of avoiding surgery and rapid rehabilitation. The longer the process takes, the more your posture and stride are affected-- and it can be devilishly hard to get things lined up again.
In closing, a political comment: In the early 1990s then First Lady and now Senator Hillary Clinton spearheaded an effort to nationalize (a.k.a. 'socialize') health care. In my clear and strong opinion, this would have been an unmitigated disaster. Apart from the matter of costs (PJ O'Rourke "If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it is free!") there was the matter that Saint Hillary and her crew had determined that there were "too many" specialists and that the government would have to put a brake on that.
In other words, the continuing extraordinary progress in this area would have been brought to a halt. In my case if this plan had been put into effect 10 years earlier, the capabilities of the doctors to replace my snapped ligaments with cadaver tendons would never have been developed and I would have been a near-cripple for life.
Woof,
Crafty Dog
