Posted on 11/11/2006 7:20:07 PM PST by cryptical
Not as much. And adult stem cells are getting more and more promising all the time.
Give some time. The first ESC strain was not isolated until 1998.
Heck given enough time we might find that they solve the problems of world hunger, reverse global warming, and bring peace and harmony to the world. But the hype is waaaay ahead of the science.
I favor funding for both. I can understand ethical objections, but not the pretense that an (approximately) ten year old technology is worthless because it isn't as developed as a (approximately) 40 year old technology.
If everyone who wants to conduct ESC research was modest, factual, and cautious in their claims about the potential gains from the research, I'd agree with the argument that it is unfair to compare two technologies that show such obvious developmental disparities. Given your handle (retMD) I'm assuming you might have some professional acquaintance with the mechanics of ESC research in particular and health, medical, and biological research in general. If so, then you may have had similar experiences as mine where researchers are not modest, factual, and cautious, but rather create highly arguable claims by taking shaky data and building a highly inferential chain of reasoning to arrive at a conclusion that a cure for Alzheimer's may be just around the corner. I don't do ESC, but I know how to build a rationale for scientific funding. The ESC community frequently crosses the line. The best proof of this is not found just in reading the 25 pager, but in the political activity of these researchers. Science don't need no stinking polls.
I suspect that ESC is going to end up as a major cover story in the next edition of "Money, Politics, and Science" written by someone like Daniel Greenberg.
Please realize that I'm agreeing with the basic premise of your argument. The big problem isn't with comparing Older Brother with Younger Brother, but that Younger Brother is writing checks he can't cash.
Alzheimers, Parkinson's, paralysis from spinal cord injuries, to name a few.
I have heard the "Alzheimer" claim oft repeated and disputed several times as well. For one, Rick Weiss, the medical reporter of the Washington Post wrote: “of all the diseases that may someday be cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer’s is among the least likely to benefit.”
We could find better pharmaceutical treatments for people a lot faster if they'd just let the pharma companies run around recruiting people for human guinea pigs with no care given to whether or not they'd be harmed in the studies. But that would be creepy wouldn't it? Just sacrificing people for the advancement of science? Not real ethical, huh?
Just because some advancement may or may not be derived from a scientific inquiry does not give the scientist the ethical right to experiment willy-nilly upon a person. Pro-lifers hold that embryos are persons and should thus be protected from willy-nilly experiments. The egos of the researchers notwithstanding.
Finally, many times "possible advancements" are used by people who have a dog in the fight (remember how animals living in the Brazilian rainforest were going to provide us with the cure for cancer?). In this case, people with dogs in the fight include NARAL, medical researchers, and anyone who would love for us to shed that pesky Judeo-Christian ethic which holds us back from the brave new world they envision. Thus, the "possibility" that no one will ever have to suffer from diabetes again is so amazingly wonderful that we just should absolutely sacrifice our ethics on the altar of progress. Right?
Safety concerns about injecting stem cells into humans mean that regulatory agencies are unlikely to approve human tests of the vaccine
Are the fundamentalists running the regulatory agencies, too?
I mean, after all, what's a teratoma or two when there are Hollywood celebrities to cure?
If so, then you may have had similar experiences as mine where researchers are not modest, factual, and cautious, but rather create highly arguable claims by taking shaky data and building a highly inferential chain of reasoning to arrive at a conclusion that a cure for Alzheimer's may be just around the corner.
I'm not on the research end, but I agree completely that researchers are frequently not modest, factual and cautious. I've been around long enough to recall hype for various promising technologies, and as we both know, many of them didn't pan out. I remember hearing about "gene therapy to cure genetic diseases within ten years" when I was a med student - a long time ago.
A researcher in pursuit of grants can be ruthless, but I don't see the ESC people as any worse than many others. I've also seen that the media often hypes such things far beyond what most researchers actually say, and advocacy groups for victims of the disease are worse about it - desperate for any hope. The problem, of course, is that we never know which will pan out and which won't until someone does the research.
No, it's not. There are many causes and several kinds of lung cancer.
This story isn't very clear. It appears that the ESCs express(produces and presents outside the cell) a protein that is also present in cancer cells. I would guess the same effect could be had by making the vaccine with cancer cells. They are attempting to ID the protein responsible. Once that's done, they can genetically modify a bacteria to produce it in bulk to make vaccine.
I wonder what would happen if we could get them as a fuel additive.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.