The religious right considers the destruction of the embryo as if it were a human being. That theory is simply not true. These cells are in a dish, the egg was fertilized with a cell not sperm, and the embryo cannot become a human being.

Back to the old "when does a human being get his right to life?" argument. It's ironic that Jim's life was saved by adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells.

“I had an adult stem cell transplant known as a bone marrow transplant.” Chippendale

There are no restrictions on adult stem cells, they have been used since the 50's.

This character, both really, are morons.

We should not have to destroy human life in order to study it

Snake Oil Ron Reagan’s dishonest presentation.

Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's

Adult stem cells work there is NO need to harvest babies for their body parts.

Adult Stem Cell Research More Effective Than Embryonic Cells

Embryo Vivisection and Elusive Promises Act--California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative

Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's

The Stem Cell Cover-Up By Michael Fumento

Lies About Fetal Stem Cell Research [Free Republic]

Stem cells without benefit of embryos

Michael Fumento Interview [DDT, Global Warming, Fuel Cells, Stem Cells, AIDS, Biotech, AD/HD, Etc.]

SELLING LIES (Stem Cell Myths exposed by Michael Fumento)

FREE Book on Stem Cells and Cloning in understandable language

Unborn Children May "Cure" Mothers' Diseases Via Fetal Stem Cells

Alzheimer's gene therapy trial shows early promise

Alzheimer's disease, MedlinePlus

Drug slows advanced Alzheimer's disease

*In 2000, Israeli scientists implanted Melissa Holley's white blood cells into her spinal cord to treat the paraplegia caused when her spinal cord was severed in an auto accident. Melissa, who is 18, has since regained control over her bladder and recovered significant motor function in her limbs - she can now move her legs and toes, although she cannot yet walk.

This is exactly the kind of therapy that embryonic-stem-cell proponents promise - years down the road. Yet Melissa's breakthrough was met with collective yawns in the press with the exception of Canada's The Globe and Mail. Non-embryonic stem cells may be as common as beach sand.

They have been successfully extracted from umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat, cadaver brains, bone marrow, and tissues of the spleen, pancreas, and other organs. Even more astounding, the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep successfully created cow heart tissue using stem cells from cow skin. And just this week, Singapore scientists announced that they have transformed bone-marrow cells into heart muscle.

Research with these cells also has a distinct moral advantage: It doesn't require the destruction of a human embryo. You don't have to be pro-life to be more comfortable with that.

*In another Parkinson's case, a patient treated with his own brain stem cells appears to have experienced a substantial remission with no adverse side effects. Dennis Turner was expected by this time to require a wheelchair and extensive medication. Instead, he has substantially reduced his medication and rarely reports any noticeable symptoms of his Parkinson's. Human trials in this technique are due to begin soon.

*Bone marrow stem cells, blood stem cells, and immature thigh muscle cells have been used to grow new heart tissue in both animal subjects and human patients. Indeed, while it was once scientific dogma that damaged heart muscle could not regenerate, it now appears that cells taken from a patient's own body may be able to restore cardiac function. Human trials using adult stem cells have commenced in Europe and other nations. (The FDA is requiring American researchers to stick with animal studies for now to test the safety of the adult stem cell approach.)

*Harvard Medical School researchers reversed juvenile onset diabetes (type-1) in mice using "precursor cells" taken from spleens of healthy mice and injecting them into diabetic animals. The cells transformed into pancreatic islet cells. The technique will begin human trials as soon as sufficient funding is made available.

*In the United States and Canada, more than 250 human patients with type-1 diabetes were treated with pancreatic tissue (islet) transplantations taken from human cadavers. Eighty percent of those who completed the treatment protocol have achieved insulin independence for over a year. (Good results have been previously achieved with pancreas transplantation, but the new approach may be much safer than a whole organ transplant.)

*Blindness is one symptom of diabetes. Now, human umbilical cord blood stem cells have been injected into the eyes of mice and led to the growth of new human blood vessels. Researchers hope that the technique will eventually provide an efficacious treatment for diabetes-related blindness. Scientists also are experimenting with using cord blood stem cells to inhibit the growth of blood vessels in cancer, which could potentially lead to a viable treatment.

*Bone marrow stem cells have partially helped regenerate muscle tissue in mice with muscular dystrophy. Much more research is needed before final conclusions can be drawn and human studies commenced. But it now appears that adult stem cells may well provide future treatments for neuromuscular diseases.

*Severed spinal cords in rats were regenerated using gene therapy to prevent the growth of scar tissue that inhibits nerve regeneration. The rats recovered the ability to walk within weeks of receiving the treatments. The next step will be to try the technique with monkeys. If that succeeds, human trials would follow.

*In one case reported from Japan, an advanced pancreatic cancer patient injected with bone marrow stem cells experienced an 80 percent reduction in tumor size.

* In separate experiments, scientists researched the ability of embryonic and adult mouse pancreatic stem cells to regenerate the body's ability to make insulin. Both types of cells boosted insulin production in diabetic mice. The embryonic success made a big splash with prominent coverage in all major media outlets. Yet the same media organs were strangely silent about the research involving adult cells.

Stranger still, the adult-cell experiment was far more successful - it raised insulin levels much more. Indeed, those diabetic mice lived, while the mice treated with embryonic cells all died. Why did the media celebrate the less successful experiment and ignore the more successful one?

* Another barely reported story is that alternative-source stem cells are already healing human illnesses.

*In Los Angeles, the transplantation of stem cells harvested from umbilical-cord blood has saved the lives of three young boys born with defective immune systems.

“‘This [isolating stem cells from fat] could take the air right out of the debate about embryonic stem cells,’ said Dr. Mark Hedrick of UCLA, the lead author. The newly identified cells have so many different potential applications, he added, that ‘it makes it hard to argue that we should use embryonic cells.’” -- Thomas H. Maugh II, “Fat may be answer to many illnesses,” Los Angeles Times, 4/10/01

“With the newest evidence that even cells in fat are capable of being transformed into tissue through the alchemy of biotechnology, some scientists said they are beginning to conclude they’ll be able to grow with relative ease all sorts of replacement tissues without resorting to embryo or fetal cells…‘It’s highly provocative work, and they’re probably right,’ said Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas…Like many biologists, Olson believes that adult, fetal and embryonic stem cell research all merit support…it’s heartening, he said, that almost “every other week there’s another interesting finding of adult stem cells turning into neurons or blood cells or heart muscle cells. Apparently our traditional views need to be reevaluated.’” --Rick Weiss, “Human Fat May Provide Stem Cells,” The Washington Post, 4/10/01

“In a finding that could offer an entirely new way to treat heart disease within the next few years, scientists working with mice and rats have found that key cells from adult bone marrow can rebuild a damaged heart—actually creating new heart muscle and blood vessels…Until now researchers thought that stem cells from embryos offer the best hope for rebuilding damaged organs, but this latest research shows that the embryos, which are politically controversial, may not be necessary. ‘We are currently finding that these adult stem cells can function as well, perhaps even better than, embryonic stem cells,’ [Dr. Donald] Orlic [of the National Human Genome Research Institute] said.” --Robert Bazell, “Approach may repair heart damage,” NBC Nightly News, 3/30/01.

“[Dr. Donald] Orlic said fetal and embryonic stem cell researchers have not been able to show the regeneration of heart cells, even in animals. ‘This study alone gives us tremendous hope that adult stem cells can do more than what embryonic stem cells can do,’ he said.” --Kristen Philipkoski, “Adult Stem Cells Growing Strong,” Wired Magazine, 3/30/01

“Like several other recent studies, the new work with hearts suggests that stem cells retrieved from adults have unexpected and perhaps equal flexibility of their own, perhaps precluding the need for the more ethically contentious [embryonic] cells.” --Rick Weiss, “Studies Raise Hopes of Cardiac Rejuvenation,” The Washington Post, 3/31/01

“Umbilical cords discarded after birth may offer a vast new source of repair material for fixing brains damaged by strokes and other ills, free of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of fetal tissue, researchers said Sunday.” --“Umbilical cords could repair brains,” Associated Press, 2/20/01.

"PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, has succeeded in ‘reprogramming' a cell -- a move that could lead to the development of treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Scotland-based group will today announce that it has turned a cow's skin cell into a beating heart cell and is close to starting research on humans... The PPL announcement...will be seen as an important step towards producing stem cells without using human embryos." --"PPL follows Dolly with cell breakthrough," Financial Times, 2/23/01

“Because they have traveled further on a pathway of differentiation than an embryo’s cells have, such tissue specific [adult] stem cells are believed by many to have more limited potential than Embryonic Stem cells or those that PPL hopes to create. Some researchers, however, are beginning to argue that these limitations would actually make tissue-specific stem cells safer than their pluripotent counterparts. University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Glenn McGee is one of the most vocal critics on this point: ‘The emerging truth in the lab is that pluripotent stem cells are hard to reign in. The potential that they would explode into a cancerous mass after a stem cell transplant might turn out to be the Pandora’s box of stem cell research.’” --Erika Jonietz, “Biotech: Could new research end the embryo debate?” Technology Review, January/February, 2001.

George W Bush supports all adult stem cell research and also embryonic stem cell research, so long as it doesnt destroy human life.

How does that impinge on what this man wants to have done?

"The religious right considers the destruction of the embryo as if it were a human being. That theory is simply not true. These cells are in a dish, the egg was fertilized with a cell not sperm, and the embryo cannot become a human being."

Is this true? If the egg that was "fertilized" with the cell (not sperm?) is put back into the womb with proper care would it not eventually develop into a child? I am not a biologist - does anybody have any more info on this?

PING - Good substantive stuff.

we need to make clear that this is a case of bio-ethical science (Bush) vs politically expedient pseudo-science, pushed by Kerry at the behest of special interests (pro-therapeutic cloning researchers) and boobs (like Ron Reagan 'jr').

Fact is, 64% of Americans favor stem cell research.

And the point is? It hasn't made a difference that the majority of Americans oppose abortion so why should this "so called" fact make a difference.

And who said 64% of American support stem cell research?

The embryo referred to in the quote is both human and living. No biologist in his right mind will deny that. He knows very well what species that embryo belongs to and that those cells carry out the metabolic functions that occur in living tissue. That (experimental) embryo will never be born because those who fertilized it are not going to implant that embryo in a womb. They will instead use that embryo for experimental purposes and for "spare parts."

I will bet that most Americans are not aware of the difference between Embryonic and Adult Stem Cell Research.

The media portrays the Bush administration as being against ALL "Stem Cell" Research while neglecting to mention that it is only against the federal FUNDING of "Embryonic" stem cell research. The Media does not differentiate between the two and is attempting to portray this EVIL administration as against ALL so called "Stem Cell" research and denying all Americans of the cure from everything from cancer to AIDS.

Since this seems to be a thorny point of contention with a lot of voters, I thing we will need to do a little educating of the public about the differences and that this administration is only against the FUNDING of "Embryonic" stem cell research and not against the funding "Adult" stem cell research. And that the private sector would still be welcome to fund the "Embryonic" research without the aid of taxpayers money.

I know of people who are not going to vote because of this issue and I am sure that there are many others out there are are misunderstanding this issue. We must get this info out there even if it is only to win a few more votes. Considering the outcome of the last election this could mean the difference between win or lose folks.

To be fair, I heard this segment on the radio and James Chippendale made it very very clear that he was saved by adult stems cells, not embryonic ones.

And every single person on the Howard Stern show made it abundantly clear that they could not even come close to understanding the difference. In fact, they actually celebrated and laughed about their own intellectual inability to grasp the fundamental difference.

There are no restrictions on adult stem cells, they have been used since the 50's.

There are no restrictions on embryonic stem cell research either.

There is a lot of overt lying on this subject. The libs want to make this an abortion like polarizing issue.

We do not fund creating new cells or cell lines in procedures that involve ending the life of a fertilized egg or at any stage after, eg from fetuses.

Nothing stops this from being done using any other source of funds.

The federal government does fund embryonic stem cell research on previously established cell lines that were derived in manners that would not be funded today.

In fact the NIH promotes work on these cell lines quite vigourously, i.e. they solicit proposals and allocate funds for this quite extensively.