Stem Cells: Ideology Or Science?

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.

Subtle twisting of the wording there. I have to hand it to you, your deviousness is more clever than most who post on the topic!

First of all, the claim that two paths of research of equal potential should advance at the same rate if one receives public funds and the other does not, is absurd.

Second, the possibilities that research might take a while and there might not be as much promise as earlier hoped don’t mean they are paths that shouldn’t be pursued.

And as humorous as it is to hybrid techniques, that often is what leads to successes or to broadening of the application of technologies. A person advocating magnetic storage or optical storage could point to the magneto-optical drive as “not pure,” but it is still in use today—and so are both the magnetic and optical storage technologies.

"The claim that two paths of research of equal potential should advance at the same rate if one receives public funds and the other does not, is absurd."

Oh, quite true. A wealth of public subsidy going to one option will often dry up funding to other options, simply because the amount of money is not infinite. By way of analogy, if Obama succeeds in getting huge subsides for his fave energy options (wind, photovoltaics, whatever) do you suppose there will be much money left over for new efficient coal technologies?

Obviously not. Even the "old" efficient coal technologies, like fluidized bed combustion, will be forced out when the Obamagreen choices are fully funded, cost-effectiveness be damned.

But check this out: the "wealth" of public funding is going to ECSR, not to provably therpeutic Adult Stem Cell research.

California (now in dire financial straits) committed three billion dollars to ESCR.

The disgraced former Governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey, established the state-funded Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey with tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Even in 2008, Massachusetts authorized one billion taxpayer dollars to fund ESCR.

They have produced nothing, not one damn thing, of therapeutic value, and yet those are funds that truly promising Adult Stem Cell rsearchers are NOT going to get.

Ordinarily, such a bias in public funding enriching one option (ESCR) would starve the other options (like Adult Stem Cells) into garbled, fragmentary projects. But interestingly, Adult Stem Cell research is so dramatically productive, that they are surging ahead without the kind of "technology-whiskey-sexy" government-funded glamor which has been pumped into ECSR.

The fact that private research centers and investors are still going gung-ho for the Adult Stem Cell research is truly stunning testimony to the fact that they know where the cures are coming from.

That's because embryonic stem cells ARE DANGEROUS:

Fetal stem cells cause tumor in a teenage boy

By Coco Ballantyne in 60-Second Science Blog

Feb 19, 2009

In May 2001, Israeli parents of a nine-year old boy with a crippling disease that left him wheelchair-bound took their child to see doctors in Moscow. In a highly experimental procedure that was presumably unavailable in their home country, those doctors injected fetal stem cells into various regions of his brain.

The boy’s parents—they aren’t named in a report describing the case in this week’s PLoS Medicine—must have been desperate. The nine-year old suffered from ataxia-telangiectasia, a childhood disease that causes degeneration of parts of the brain that control muscle movements and speech. The symptoms include slurred speech, poor balance, impaired immune function, and the appearance of red spider veins called telangiectasias in the eyes, ears or cheeks.

There are no treatments for the disorder and the prognosis is dim; patients usually only make it into their teens or early twenties, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. While it's unclear exactly what the Russian doctors were trying to achieve (the researchers who wrote the case report were not involved in the stem cell therapy), they must have been hoping that the injected cells would restore some function in his brain, or at least slow the disease progression. The boy went back for injections in 2002 and 2004, although it's not clear from the report whether his condition improved as a result.

Then he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005. That tumor, it turns out, grew out of the stem cells, obtained from at least two aborted fetuses, used in his brain.

The tumor was benign, doctors safely removed it, and it has gradually been growing back since the surgery. But this is the first-known case of a brain tumor caused by a brain stem cell therapy, according to the report—a phenomenon scientists have predicted in the pages of Scientific American and elsewhere. The theory is that because these stem cells are fetal cells, they are designed to proliferate and give rise to new tissue, which means they have the potential to produce tumors. The case, write the authors of this week’s case study, should serve as a warning that more research is needed to gauge the safety of these novel therapies.

Other stem cell experts echo their concerns and worry that scientists don't yet understand exactly how stem cells used in such treatments behave once inside the body. Treating neurological disorders with stem cells from fetal brains is a "great scientific goal to pursue," but there is simply not enough evidence from animal studies, let alone human studies, to prove it is safe or effective for treating these diseases in children, says Sean Savitz, a neurologist at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

> 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.

I would say that the ESC field has brought this problem onto themselves - too much hype, too many promises mostly unconnected to reality.

Long term, even if science manages to catch up to the hype, it is extremely unlikely that ESC will ever become a viable therapy. The problem is economics. ESCs require human oocytes, probably many human oocytes (no one knows how many because the procedure is not working yet). If the patient happens to be a reproductive-aged female, she will be able to contribute her own oocytes. Every one else will rely on donations.

On the other hand iPS have the same potential as ESCs without any moral issues and without the problem of oocyte donation.

ESC is interesting scientific research and when it’s done on animals it does not have to include any moral issues. The work on ESCs generated a lot of useful knowledge that can now be applied to iPS. Ultimately, however, it is iPS and not ESC that will become medically viable.

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.