"Well for 1 its proven not to work. It causes tumors and adult stem cells have show far more promise in helping people with MS then Embryonic Stem Cells."
That statement is not totally accurate, in fact it is probably misleading. ESCR is a relative new field when compared to Adult Stem Cell Research. It is still in the developmental/research phase so it hasn't been proven "not to work". We don't know yet if it will work but it offers additional promise because of the differentiating and proliferating properties of ESC vs ASC.
April 23, 2002, 8:45 a.m.
Spinning Stem Cells
A damning reporting pattern.
By Wesley J. Smith
he pattern in the media reportage about stem cells is growing very wearisome. When a research advance occurs with embryonic stem cells, the media usually give the story the brass-band treatment. However, when researchers announce even greater success using adult stem cells, the media reportage is generally about as intense and excited as a stifled yawn.
As a consequence, many people in this country continue to believe that embryonic stem cells offer the greatest promise for developing new medical treatments using the body's cells — known as regenerative medicine — while in actuality, adult and alternative sources of stem cells have demonstrated much brighter prospects. This misperception has societal consequences, distorting the political debate over human cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and perhaps even affecting levels of public and private research funding of embryonic and adult stem-cell therapies.
This media pattern was again in evidence in the reporting of two very important research breakthroughs announced within the last two weeks. Unless you made a point of looking for these stories — as I do in my work — you might have missed them. Patients with Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis received significant medical benefit using experimental adult-stem-cell regenerative medical protocols. These are benefits that supporters of embryonic-stem-cell treatments have yet to produce widely in animal experiments. Yet adult stem cells are now beginning to ameliorate suffering in human beings.
Celebrity Parkinson's disease victims such as Michael J. Fox and Michael Kinsley regularly tout ESCR as the best hope for a cure of their disease. Indeed, the Washington Post recently published a Kinsley rant on the subject in which the editor and former Crossfire co-host denounced opponents of human cloning as interfering with his hope for a cure. Yet as loudly as Fox and Kinsley promote ESCR in the media or before legislative committees, both have remained strangely silent about the most remarkable Parkinson's stem-cell experiment yet attempted: one in which researchers treated Parkinson's with the patient's own adult stem cells.
Here's the story, in case you missed it: A man in his mid-50s had been diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 49. The disease grew progressively, leading to tremors and rigidity in the patient's right arm. Traditional drug therapy did not help.
Stem cells were harvested from the patient's brain using a routine brain biopsy procedure. They were cultured and expanded to several million cells. About 20 percent of these matured into dopamine-secreting neurons. In March 1999, the cells were injected into the patient's brain.
Three months after the procedure, the man's motor skills had improved by 37 percent and there was an increase in dopamine production of 55.6 percent. One year after the procedure, the patient's overall Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale had improved by 83 percent — this at a time when he was not taking any other Parkinson's medication!
That is an astonishing, remarkable success, one that you would have thought would set off blazing headlines and lead stories on the nightly news. Had the treatment been achieved with embryonic stem cells, undoubtedly the newspapers would have screamed loudly enough to be heard. Unfortunately, reportage about the Parkinson's success story was strangely muted. True, the Washington Post ran an inside-the-paper story and there were some wire service reports. But the all-important New York Times — the one news outlet that drives television and cable news — did not report on it at all. Nor did a search of the Los Angeles Times website yield any stories about the experiment.
More...
http://tinyurl.com/ya5e3v
Parkinson's Action Network - Talking Points
Embryonic stem cell research hasn’t yet led to any human therapies because the field is in its infancy, and because President Bush’s restrictions have forced federally funded investigators to work with one arm tied behind their back. Scientists didn’t succeed in deriving human embryonic stem cells until 1998, and the first Federal grants in this area weren’t awarded until 2002. It’s no surprise that more diseases are currently being treated with adult stem cells; adult stem cell research had a 30-year head start. The fact is, our Nation’s best scientists, including many Nobel laureates, and even many researchers who make their living on adult stem cell research, believe that embryonic stem cell research has a unique potential to ease human suffering.
http://tinyurl.com/y9hfyl
And we all know what that really meant in his terms -- ASC offers him no ability to flood the market with a patented product, and thusly line his pockets with millions of fetuses.
Scalability is a weak argument against ASC. That will be overcome long before ESC stops producing tumors.
And of course the moronic Bloomberg interviewer would not introduce the obvious question -- the very thing that limits ASC "scalability" is the very thing that ensures ASC treatments will never be rejected by the host donor!
Follow the money and you will learn that ESCapists are interested in two things, and two things only -- (1) fast money on the markets for what currently amounts to vaporware; and (2) codifying abortion, enabled & abetted by their DUm/MSM/Soros comrades.
Beneficiary of Adult Stem Cell Treatment for Parkinson's
Other than my Parkinson’s symptoms I was physically very active and fit. Because of this Dr. Levesque felt that I’d be a good candidate for an experimental treatment. He explained that he would take a very small tissue sample from my brain, removing its adult neural stem cells. He would then multiply and mature these cells into Dopamine Neurons, then inject these cells back into the left side of my brain. He proposed treating only the left side because it controls the right side of the body, the side with the most severe Parkinson’s symptoms.
Dr Levesque did not tell me that this treatment would permanently cure my condition. Science has yet to learn what causes Parkinson’s Disease, much less how to remove it. However, since this cell-replacement approach had never been tried in a human patient we hoped for the best. And since my only other realistic alternative was to continue growing worse until I eventually died, I decided to have the surgical procedures in 1999, one to remove the tissue and another to inject the cells. I was awake for both procedures, under local anesthesia.
Soon after having the cells injected my Parkinson’s symptoms began to improve. My trembling grew less and less, until to all appearances it was gone, only slightly reappearing if I became upset. Dr. Levesque had me tested by a Neurologist, who said he wouldn’t have known I had Parkinson’s if he had met me on the street. I was once again able to use my right hand and arm normally, enjoying activities that I given up hope of ever doing.
http://tinyurl.com/y9sd49