Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping!
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Posted on 03/14/2007 12:55:59 PM PDT by cgk
Embryonic and adult stem cells offer similar protection against neurodegenerative disease, according to a landmark study in mice which has achieved a number of firsts with human stem cells. For the first time, rodents genetically predisposed to disease lived longer and healthier lives after receiving injections of the human cells, researchers claim.
“We have been talking about stem cells for a decade and no one had cured anything with stem cells before this,” comments Eva Mezey, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, US, who was not involved in the work.
In the new study, Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, US, and colleagues studied mice with a mutation in a gene called Hex. This mutation leads to a deficiency in an enzyme that breaks down fatty substances called lipids. As a result, these lipid molecules accumulate in the brain and spinal cord, destroying cells and causing the loss control over body movement. Mice with the disorder die prematurely, at around 120 days of age.
In humans, similar mutations in the Hex gene lead to illnesses such as Tay Sachs disease and Sandhoff’s disease, which lead to death within the first few years of life because no treatment exists.
A day after birth, the mice carrying mutant Hex genes received brain injections of human stem cells taken from discarded human embryos. Snyder’s team also injected a separate group of the mutant mice with stem cells taken from the brains of aborted human fetuses, which are sometimes referred to as "adult" stem cells because they can only develop into a limited subset of cells.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
It's terribly tragic that experimenting on the remains of aborted babies is considered ethically acceptable.
They are claiming their first "victory" in hESC research. This is the Burnham Institute in CA, who was one of the million-dollar recipients of Prop 71's handouts (and one of its financial supporters before passage).
Ping.
Words mean what I want them to mean -- Humpty Dumpty ("Alice in Wonderland")
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping list...
Even more notable - we're going to have to be wary of researchers trying to pass off "adult" stem cells from aborted fetuses as somehow being more morally-acceptable than those from killed embryos. Adult stem cells from people who were not harmed by their collection are the only adult stem cells anyone can ethically use.
Exactly.
Actually, you can ethically get embryonic stem cells from amniotic fluid and placentas. Sadly, the fetal tissue harvesting billion dollar plus industry is already driving abortion in many abortuaries. See the below FR thread for more and much more extensive information on the industry.
That is why this article was so stunning to me. I follow adult stem cell research somewhat closely, and to see this acknowledgement made me realize I have NO idea what these people are up to. I have long understood one of the reasons some of the pro-aborts fought for partial birth abortions/PBAs was so the valuable brain cells from the aborted babies could continue to be used for research. I did NOT know that those same brain cells were considered "adult."
In any event, we'll have to carefully craft the laws banning them, in order to get aound the intentional misuse of terms like "adult" in this specific case.
Worthless bastards are trying to confuse abusing the corpse of a dead baby with harmlessly extracting stem cells from adults.
Did you happen to catch this thread, m'Lady?
Ask a Geneticist (Answers a Question from a Middle Schooler)
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=163
"But the use of embryonic stem cells is controversial for a couple of reasons. First, some people think that it encourages abortion. A big misunderstanding is that most embryonic stem cells come from aborted fetuses. Aborted fetuses are not truly embryonic because they are much older and most of the stem cells have committed to becoming a specific type of cell. Essentially you get adult stem cells from aborted fetuses."
Thanks for the ping!
Stem cells from amniotic fluid and placentas are not considered embryonic stem cells. They are actually "adult" stem cells, although more versatile than most.
The embryonic stem cells scientists keep hoping they'll find some use for are those that come from very early, very little differentiated embryos.
Mrs VS
Our newspaper claimed that Tay-Sachs (cells don't break down fats, lacking a necessary enzyme) is the same kind of disease as Parkinson's (cells stop making dopamine), as Alzheimer's (cells make abnormal proteins), as cerebral palsy (hypoxic brain injury before birth) and as autism (complex, poorly understood, over- and under-development of various parts of the brain.)
What evil, manipulative lies - they're possibly on the verge of treating one kind of brain illness, so all the cure for all the others is in reach, if we use embryonic stem cells.
If Tay-Sachs is treatable, with adult stem cells, what a cause fro rejoicing that will be.
Mrs VS
You can google 'embryonic stem cells in amniotic fluid' and read many more articles covering this very recent discovery.
Thanks for the link! That is very cool - a cell type that confounds assumptions.
Mrs VS
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