Interesting Reporting on Stem Cell Research

Adam's Apple

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Apr 25, 2004
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Embryonic Stem Cell Research Unneeded
By Deroy Murdock, Scripps Howard News Service
13-OCT-05

NEW YORK -- Once upon a time, you were an embryo. Had researchers "harvested" your stem cells, you never would have learned to read or kissed your mom and dad goodnight. Indeed, you never would have been born, and your life would have been squandered for nothing. Embryonic stem cell research has yet to produce a single cure, while adult stem-cell research already treats 65 diseases and benefits human patients, not just lab rats.

Thankfully, medical innovation does not require Frankencells to be created by destroying microscopic-Americans. The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics in Washington (stemcellresearch.org) and Comment on Reproductive Ethics in London (corethics.org) are among the organizations trumpeting the triumphs of adult stem-cell research (ASCR).

_ Since 1993, 1,801 individuals have received stem-cell-rich umbilical-cord blood from New York Blood Center alone. These have included 66 with lymphoma and 1,150 leukemia patients. NYBC supplies non-embryonic cord blood to 90 transplant facilities across America and 86 overseas.

_ "I haven't felt better in myself for 30 years," Englishman Richard Lane told The Guardian last March. "I have to pinch myself to ensure I am not dreaming." After receiving three transplants of normal pancreatic islet cells from a deceased donor, Lane's type-1 diabetes stopped, as did his insulin injections. "It's almost like being a totally different person," he said.

According to King's College Hospital professor Stephanie Amiel, "Eventually this could mean the end of insulin dependence for all type-1 diabetes sufferers."

The Lancet, a British medical journal, reported last April on a 56-year-old Japanese mother whose donated pancreatic islet cells have healed her 27-year-old daughter's insulin-dependent diabetes.

_ The August 2004 issue of Lancet discussed the replacement of a German mouth-cancer patient's removed jawbone. Using his own stem cells, doctors spent seven weeks growing him a new mandible around wire mesh. Once implanted, he tested it by biting into a frankfurter. He soon resumed eating normally.

_ Adult stem cells have helped about 60 paraplegics and quadriplegics regain sensation and movement. Stem cells from their own nasal cavities helped spinal-injury victims Laura Dominguez, Susan Fajt and Erica Nader walk with braces. Similar treatments empowered six Russians to boost their mobility. Bedridden for 19 years, South Korea's Hwang Mi-Soon stepped gingerly with a walker one month after doctors injected cord blood into her damaged spine. "This is already a miracle for me," she told London's Daily Telegraph last Nov. 30.

_ Blind people now can see, thanks to doctors who extract stem cells from patients' own eyes, then culture healthy tissue to repair their corneas. "I feel like a human being again," Deborah Catlyn told the Telegraph last April. She regained her sight after losing it in 2002 when a woman at a nightclub threw acid in her face. Catlyn is one of 20 Britons who this ASRC procedure has enriched. It was developed at Hyderabad, India's Prasad Eye Institute, where some 200 blind people have been treated, most successfully.

ASCR's medical breakthroughs render inexcusable Congress' efforts to fund ESCR. With dilemma-free treatments already curing patients, why on Earth did the GOP-controlled House of Representatives last May 24 approve federal funds to slice tiny boys and girls into laboratory specimens?

for full article:
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=MURDOCK-10-13-05
 
You're welcome. Like the article stated, embryonic stem cell research has yet to produce a single cure for disease, while adult stem cell research has multiple results to its credit. There is no need for embryonic stem cell research to be funded by taxpayer dollars. If those supporting this kind of research want it supported, it should be done with private support. The rest of us should give our full support to adult stem cell research. We should tell our elected representatives that if they have a mind to fund stem cell research with taxpayer dollars, then it should be adult stem cell research where results have been, and are being, obtained.
 
Less call for use of embryonic stem cells on horizon...
:clap2:
Adult Stem Cell Breakthrough Will Transform Medicine, Doctor Predicts
February 7, 2014 - A scientific breakthrough that enables researchers to create adult stem cells much faster and easier will radically transform the way medicine is practiced, predicts Dr. Marc Darrow,assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California/Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine.
“It will be the standard of care,” said Darrow, who teaches regenerative techniques utilizing platelets and adult stem cells to medical residents at UCLA, and who has been using the same techniques to treat patients with joint, tendon, ligament and muscle injuries in his own LA clinic. Darrow explained that in the past, creating stem cell lines was a very tedious procedure which required “using a pipette to take nuclear material from one cell to put into another.” But an article published January 29th in the peer-reviewed journal Nature describes a new technique for creating undifferentiated adult stem cells by immersing blood cells in an acid bath for half an hour.

Biologist Haruko Obokata, a stem cell researcher from Japan’s RIKEN Center of Developmental Biology, then injected the acid-stressed, florescently-tagged blood cells into a mouse embryo, where they created entire organs – including a beating heart. It’s amazing. I would have never thought external stress could have this effect,” said study co-author Yoshiki Sasai. (See STAP cells.pdf) “The generation of these cells is essentially Mother Nature’s way of responding to injury,” added co-author Charles Vacanti, director of the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham Women’s Hospital. “Our bodies make stem cells all day long and that’s probably what’s keeping us alive, by regenerating tissue. The whole field of medicine is moving into regenerative medicine,” Darrow told CNSNews.com.

And despite the fact that most insurance does not cover stem cell therapy, he predicted: “This will become the new medicine sometime soon.” “I mean right now, surgery is still the king, but I see terrible results from surgery. I see patients every single day who have surgeries that have failed. In fact, there are [insurance company] diagnoses such as ‘Failed Back Syndrome.’ What does that tell us? It tells us there’s enough of those surgeries that don’t work that I wouldn’t want to have one.”

In contrast, Darrow said, stem cell therapy is “the easiest, simplest and cheapest form of medicine that I know of to regenerate tissue, get rid of pain and return function.” And with the newly discovered procedure, which he warned is still in the research phase, “it’ll be very quick and very easy to repair body parts." “This is the crest of a wave that’s going to become a tsunami," he predicted. "I’ve been pushing for this stuff for 16 years...and there’s guys like me out there that teach at universities and the younger docs are going for it. It’s going to be the tsunami of the new form of medicine. There’s no way to stop it.” Another benefit is that the new technique utilizes only adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells, Darrow added. "That’s the good news,” he told CNSNews.com. “We don’t have to deal with embryos, which has a terrible political and moral controversy surrounding it.”

MORE
 
he's entitled to his opinion, i suppose… even when that "opinion" is counter to reality.

but what can you expect from someone who claimed saddam hussain had anything to do with 9/11.

if there are cures for illness… you use those cures….
 
Tell me about it. Nine years later and they still have no cure lol. What a racket.
 

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