Posted on 06/24/2010 12:00:21 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In 2006, radio host Rush Limbaugh decided to take on Michael J. Fox in the debate over embryonic stem-cell research in 2006. Limbaugh’s position was it was window-dressing for a rationalization of abortion and chest-thumping by the left when it is adult stem cells that hold the true promise.
Rush Limbaugh said so in 2006. That is coming true today.
The debate was over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. President Bush was the first president to make embryonic stem cells available for research. Liberals wanted more. Democrat Claire McCaskill rode public ignorance on the issue and Michael J. Fox’s ads to the Senate.
Limbaugh mocked Michael J. Fox’s appearance in a political ad.
According to the Washington Post, Limbaugh said: “He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act… This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.”
That is a terrible thing to say.
Rush Limbaugh apologized for that remark, as well he should. The reality of Parkinson’s is chilling.
But being an invalid does not exempt one from the debate. And Rush Limbaugh went on to say: “Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democratic politician.”
If I had Parkinson’s, I would do the same.
Except, I would have checked it out. And adult stem cells — not embryonic — are where the action is.
In an ad for Democrat Tim Cardin, Michael J. Fox said: “Stem cell research offers hope to millions of Americans with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But George Bush and Michael Steele would put limits on the most promising stem cell research.”
That was patently untrue. Both men supported this research and Bush, as I said, made embryonic stem cells available for research.
That was the debate. Embryonic versus adult. Unfortunately, most of the media glossed over that distinction. The Washington Post story I cited did not even use the word “embryonic.”
Embryonic stem cells carry major bioethics baggage that liberals casually brushed aside of being of no import.
This week, the Associated Press reported on progress on the stem cell research front.
Adult stem cells, not embryonic, were used.
The left moves on. Conservatives are left looking to be unscientific when — once again — conservatives were correct and liberals were wrong.
Why is that? One side plays on emotions, while conservatives use logic.
By the way, talk of embryonic stem cell research died down once Democrats took over Congress. It is as if this were an issue created for one political season and then abandoned.
The Associated Press report:
LOS ANGELES – Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells — a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday.
The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.
“This is a roaring success,” said ophthalmologist Dr. Ivan Schwab of the University of California, Davis, who had no role in the study — the longest and largest of its kind.
Stem cell transplants offer hope to the thousands of people worldwide every year who suffer chemical burns on their corneas from heavy-duty cleansers or other substances at work or at home.
The approach would not help people with damage to the optic nerve or macular degeneration, which involves the retina. Nor would it work in people who are completely blind in both eyes, because doctors need at least some healthy tissue that they can transplant.
In the study, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers took a small number of stem cells from a patient’s healthy eye, multiplied them in the lab and placed them into the burned eye, where they were able to grow new corneal tissue to replace what had been damaged. Since the stem cells are from their own bodies, the patients do not need to take anti-rejection drugs.
Adult stem cells have been used for decades to cure blood cancers such as leukemia and diseases like sickle cell anemia. But fixing a problem like damaged eyes is a relatively new use. Researchers have been studying cell therapy for a host of other diseases, including diabetes and heart failure, with limited success.
Adult stem cells, which are found around the body, are different from embryonic stem cells, which come from human embryos and have stirred ethical concerns because removing the cells requires destroying the embryos.
Currently, people with eye burns can get an artificial cornea, a procedure that carries such complications as infection and glaucoma, or they can receive a transplant using stem cells from a cadaver, but that requires taking drugs to prevent rejection.
The Italian study involved 106 patients treated between 1998 and 2007. Most had extensive damage in one eye, and some had such limited vision that they could only sense light, count fingers or perceive hand motions. Many had been blind for years and had had unsuccessful operations to restore their vision.
The cells were taken from the limbus, the rim around the cornea, the clear window that covers the colored part of the eye. In a normal eye, stem cells in the limbus are like factories, churning out new cells to replace dead corneal cells. When an injury kills off the stem cells, scar tissue forms over the cornea, clouding vision and causing blindness.
In the Italian study, the doctors removed scar tissue over the cornea and glued the laboratory-grown stem cells over the injured eye. In cases where both eyes were damaged by burns, cells were taken from an unaffected part of the limbus.
Researchers followed the patients for an average of three years and some as long as a decade. More than three-quarters regained sight after the transplant. An additional 13 percent were considered a partial success. Though their vision improved, they still had some cloudiness in the cornea.
Patients with superficial damage were able to see within one to two months. Those with more extensive injuries took several months longer.
“They were incredibly happy. Some said it was a miracle,” said one of the study leaders, Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena’s Center for Regenerative Medicine in Italy. “It was not a miracle. It was simply a technique.”
The study was partly funded by the Italian government.
Researchers in the United States have been testing a different way to use self-supplied stem cells, but that work is preliminary.
One of the successful transplants in the Italian study involved a man who had severe damage in both eyes as a result of a chemical burn in 1948. Doctors grafted stem cells from a small section of his left eye to both eyes. His vision is now close to normal.
In 2008, there were 2,850 work-related chemical burns to the eyes in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Schwab of UC Davis said stem cell transplants would not help those blinded by burns in both eyes because doctors need stem cells to do the procedure.
“I don’t want to give the false hope that this will answer their prayers,” he said.
Dr. Sophie Deng, a cornea expert at the UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute, said the biggest advantage was that the Italian doctors were able to expand the number of stem cells in the lab. This technique is less invasive than taking a large tissue sample from the eye and lowers the chance of an eye injury.
“The key is whether you can find a good stem cell population and expand it,” she said.
Of course liberals brushed the ethics issue aside as if it was of no import...that's because ethics are of no import to liberals.
Given that Michael J. Fox has admitted (in a book) to NOT taking his meds in a prior Senate hearing, perhaps Rush didn’t need to apologize.
Snake Oil of the 21st century.
Here’s an article from 1992 celebrating that Clinton would allow Fetal Tissue research:
http://tiny.cc/rr3y7
Worldwide, most fetal tissue research has focused on Parkinson’s disease, using brain cells from aborted fetuses to replenish disease- damaged brain cells that produce dopamine, a brain chemical necessary for movement.
“[Alberto Hayek] said he has spent the years of the funding blackout perfecting ways of isolating the insulin-producing cells from fetal pancreases and testing fetal tissue implants in mice and rats.
He published findings this year showing that, in rats, injections of fetal pancreatic cells cured diabetes, which is a deficiency in the metabolism-regulating hormone insulin. The rat pancreatic cells, injected into the adult rats’ bloodstream, settled in the lungs and produced insulin there, where it worked just as well as when coming from the pancreas, Hayek said.”
Has there been even a microscopic advancement in the past 18 years and billions of dollars spent on this?
posting for retrieval later
bump
His explanation was more detailed, but I'm not a physician, so it was lost on me. But, the SHOCK from Oprah was palpable. She was stunned the good doctor didn't think that embryonic stem cells were of much or little scientific value, at least with respect to providing cures for illness.
We're catching up. The MSM has been "found out" and are going broke floundering around trying to figure out how to "carry the water" and not look like abject idiots after all is said and done....(a stretch for sure).
Totally true by Dr.Oz. Embryonic cells mutate into ANYTHING. Since they are so non-specific for the intended disease, it’s the equivalent of injecting live cancer cells into a person.
“Embryonic” stem cells are the beginning of an entire human being after it starts with only two cells.
By the time a fetus has existed for nine months his cells have differentiated into organs, bone, skin, etc. Even though the cell expansion has only been happening for up to nine months, the stem cells are now known as “adult” stem cells.
But people think “grown-up” when they hear “adult” so they can be persuaded to believe that the “embryonic” cells are superior for lab manipulation.
However the truth is the earliest cells which have all the knowledge necessary to help that human being live for 100 years, not having been differentiated yet, cannot be controlled in a laboratory. They have more power to change than a lab scientist can stop. Hence, they grow as cancers.
It is kind of like people believing that human endeavor can change the climate of the earth, when they know that we cannot control tomorrow's tornado or drought.
Magical thinking based on incomplete facts.
words have meaning bookmark.
That’s good that they’ve made some nice breakthroughs with adult stem cells. But I wouldn’t be so quick to say that embryonic stem cells hold no potential for research, moral and ethical aspects aside.
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