Posted on 02/20/2009 5:32:13 PM PST by Kaslin
Medical Advancement: It's the supporters of embryonic stem cell research who have politicized science. The desperation of a family and the pressure to produce results may have produced a medical tragedy instead.
As we noted then and do again, ESCR was not the "most promising" avenue of stem cell research. And no, that's not because of a lack of federal funds, but rather with the difficulties of controlling the embryonic stem cells and what they turn into.
Unfortunately, it's been almost impossible to have a rational debate about this. ESCR supporters view adult stem cell research as something pushed by pro-lifers whose real target is Roe v. Wade.
Adult stem cells culled from a patient's body solve the rejection problem of ESCs and have already been used in hundreds of treatments and therapies of patients. But embryonic, or pluripotent, stem cells can't seem to make it out of the laboratory.
They are called pluripotent because they can develop into any and every type of human tissue. That's why some scientists prefer them. Problem is, they're hard to control and tend to develop into one of the most primitive and terrifying forms of cancer, a tumor called a teratoma.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
The first human safety trial using embryonic stem cells has only just recently been approved. Kinda hard to compare “cure” numbers when one side hasn’t gotten onto the field.
Scan the available info and see ya around.
I guess you're not familiar with GWB's restrictions.
Well, despite them, and despite contamination of some of the extant lines, work has been progressing.
Because after millions of dollars spent and cutting-edge experiments on 5 continents, all it's been able to produce in vivo is tumors.
Wow...blood cells are tumors?
Scientists Make Red Blood Cells From Human Embryonic Stem Cells
And I am sure you're aware that research into embryonic stem cells was what allowed the de-differentiation work to go forward.
BFL
Do you know what "in vivo" means?
Yes, and you're right, I overlooked that part.
How about "Endothelial cells derived from human embryonic stem cells form durable blood vessels in vivo"?
The last link is fairly technical. I suggest reading at least up to the "Editors' Summary."
> I guess you’re not familiar with GWB’s restrictions.
If embryonic stem cell field was so promising it would be overflowing with private money and Bush’ funding restrictions would have been irrelevant.
LOL!
You do realize it’s not just funding restrictions, right?
> You do realize it’s not just funding restrictions, right?
Are you sure? Please clarify.
> How about “Endothelial cells derived from human embryonic stem cells form durable blood vessels in vivo”?
I am assuming that you did not actually read the article. This kind of publication is known as a “brief communication”, which means that while the results being reported are very exciting, they are preliminary. For example, there is no information whether any of the mice developed cancers.
Interestingly, Dr. Scadden, who was the senior author on this publication (the web site you referenced messed up the order of the authors), had a Newsweek article where he is very upbeat about the potential of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which are a type of adult stem cell.
Any restrictions that GWB was able to put in place were only applicable to the US. If embryonic stem cells were so wonderful, research performed in other countries would have produced some positive results (i.e. something other than tumors).
It also reminded me of a passage from the book When The Air Hits Your Brain by Frank Vertosik, MD (a neurosurgeon), which I cannot track down at the moment, in which he explained this kind of thing was likely due to the nature of fetal development.
Cheers!
There’s never been any funding from the Federal government for in vitro fertilization, and that industry has really suffered, hasn’t it?
Many of us did not want any funding for embryonic stem cell research, either. President Bush allocated the first money for human embryonic research from US taxes, playing Solomon by paying for those destroyed (without funding) under the Clinton administration’s policies, but saying in effect, “this much and no more.”
The only restrictions placed on human embryonic stem cell research were on Federal funding. Research on embryos created for the purpose of harvesting embryonic stem cells has continued with private funding all over the US and the world. None of them have done more than confirm or repeat previous work done either with the Federally funded lines, in animal models, or with non-destructive non-embryonic stem cells.
In fact, those limited Federally funded cells were used to confirm knowledge from animal experiments and then for the induced pleuripotent stem cells. No limitation proven, there.
Lanza’s article last month on human cloned embryos using human and animal oocytes was an eye-opener for some of us, because of the number of research centers and researchers credited. (As well as surprising us that ACT had indeed successfully cloned at least 50 human embryos, with 19 going to the stage at which it was possible to harvest stem cells.)( http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2009/02/human-cloned-embryos.html and http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2009/02/human-animal-embryos-dont-work-for-stem.html )
Interestingly, Dr. Scadden, who was the senior author on this publication (the web site you referenced messed up the order of the authors),
You're right, it did...that's bizarre. Sorry for posting that one instead of the actual publication link. Actal citation is:
Wang ZZ, Au P, Chen T, Shao Y, Daheron LM, Bai H, Arzigian M, Fukumura D, Jain RK, Scadden DT. "Endothelial cells derived from human embryonic stem cells form durable blood vessels in vivo." Nat Biotechnol. 2007 Mar; 25(3):317-8. Epub 2007 Feb 25. doi:10.1038/nbt1287[...] he is very upbeat about the potential of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which are a type of adult stem cell.
...as am I. I hope you realize that one path of research does not preclude the other. In fact, the results of embryonic stem cell research has led to advances in adult stem cell research, and we might find different uses for the two sources.
At no point did GWB restrict embryonic stem cell research. He was the first President in history to fund it, for researchers working with extant cell lines. If researchers wanted to find funding from Universities, States, investors, private industry, whatever, there were no restrictions at all on ESCR.
Do you think the Federal taxpayer-funded trough is the only font of scientiifc inquiry?
And don't you think there would be investors scrambling to put up their own money for ESCR if there were a decent chance it would result in valuable and profitable therapeutic advances?
From the Wall Street Journal:
James Thomson, the first scientist to derive stem cells from a human embryo, made this point clearly just a few weeks ago: "I don't want to sound too pessimistic because this is all doable, but it's going to be very hard." He added, "those transplantation therapies should work but it's likely to take a long time."
"Leading British stem cell expert Lord Winston has been even more blunt: "I am not entirely convinced that embryonic stem cells will, in my lifetime, and possibly anybody's lifetime, for that matter, be holding quite the promise that we desperately hope they will."
Bottom line: private investment money for ESCR has been, at best, a trickle because of the remoteness of the possibility that it will ever pay off. Because as I said, after millions of dollars spent and cutting-edge experiments on 5 continents, all it's been able to produce in vivo is tumors.
Wow...blood cells are tumors?
I said "in vivo".
From the article you cited: "US scientists have developed an efficient way to make mature red blood cells on a large scale using human embryonic stem cells to make young red blood cells and then maturing them in the lab. "But they haven't given them to people and see if they survive," added Shurin.
Later in the article: "One big problem will be the immune system, which will pick up things like the wrong kind of sugars on the surface of the red blood cells. If they don't match what it is expecting, it will treat the red blood cells as unwanted foreign agents and kill them. There's a lot of work to do, said Shurin..."
There's a certain fey humor in the fact that the de-differentiation work they did with these embryonic cells was, in a sense, irrelevant because it was followed by a series of complex procedures to make the cells behave like adult cells and then remove the immune-triggering characteristics. Which wouldn't have been necessary in the first place if they had started with the hypothetical patient's own autologous hemotopoietic stem cells.
Snort.
> Sorry, but science often operates incrementally and if you are going to play games with the wording to keep backing away from statements, then we could have done the same with adult stem cell research.
The science does operate incrementally and not without mistakes. The problem with the publication you cited is not that it was a brief note, but that it has not been followed-up by a full article. I did a search on Scadden and could not find anything relevant. It is, of course, possible that some of his collaborators took it upon themselves to do follow-up research without his participation. That would be highly unusual and would raise another red flag. However, you are welcome to do your own search and prove me wrong.
BTW, that citation link was cool - I did not realize you could embed EndNote links.
This is not my field of study and I am not on top of what is being followed up by whom. My point is simply that many of those against hESC research give a misleading picture. There are advancements, and though there haven't been floods of cures, there hasn't been nearly enough done to claim the research path is not succeeding.
BTW, that citation link was cool - I did not realize you could embed EndNote links.
:-)
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