Posted on 09/29/2002 8:41:45 AM PDT by Sabertooth
"Promise of Adult Stem Cells Put in Doubt," proclaimed UPI. "Study Deals Blow to Abilities of Adult Stem Cells," declared Scientific American in its online publication. "Study Finds Adult Blood Stem Cells Will Not Transform into Other Tissue Cells," insisted the Associated Press.
The fuss concerns an article in the highly respected journal Science detailing efforts of Stanford researchers to trace the development of blood stem cells after placing them into mice whose bone marrow had been destroyed. They reported that blood stem cells replenished marrow but appeared worthless for creating other tissues.
"Blood-forming stem cells from adults make blood," primary researcher Irving Weissman insisted to UPI. "They don't make brain; they don't make heart muscle or any of these things."
Such smugness from a scientist who should know a single study never proves anything. As it happens, a report published in Nature Medicine in November 2000 showed that such cells when injected into mice rebuilt liver tissue. A minor co-author of the piece was named Irving Weissman.
Weissman's sureness was just for show.
Indeed, "The Stanford paper is the one at odds with the bulk of the published literature," Indiana State University biologist David Prentice told me.
While nobody knows yet just how capable non-embryonic stem cells will prove, we know they will be extremely useful because they have been.
Ever hear of bone marrow or umbilical-cord-blood transplants? It's the stem cells in the marrow and blood that makes them work. They've been used therapeutically since the 1980s and now some 70 different diseases, primarily forms of leukemia, are treated with them.
True, these comprise direct infusions rather than the next step of "reprogramming" the stem cells outside the body to make them into various types of mature cells.
But there's tremendous progress here, too. As of last year, over 30 different anti-cancer applications alone involving non-embryonic stem cell therapies on humans had been reported in peer-reviewed medical literature. Over 100 non-embryonic-stem-cell experiments in animals have shown success against a vast array of diseases.
The very newspapers that now pooh-pooh adult stem cells were only days earlier reporting on the almost-miraculous cure of a Dutch child afflicted with "bubble boy syndrome." His immune system was worthless. But it was restored when stem cells from his marrow were removed, cultured, and injected back into him.
Even if blood stem cells were worthless for tissue, we'd still have other types of stem cells that have been cultivated not just from marrow and umbilical cords but also from placentas, amniotic fluid, skin, brains, spinal cords, dental pulp, muscles, blood vessels, corneas, retinas, livers, pancreases, hair follicles, and even liposuctioned fat.
Catherine Verfaillie and her co-workers at the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute recently published a report in Science's main competitor, Nature, suggesting that a certain type of marrow stem cells may give rise to almost any type of tissue in the body. They have isolated them from the marrow of mice, rats and people and so far have transformed them into cells of blood, the gut, liver, lung, brain, and other organs.
Yet time and again a single study like the Stanford one is shoved forward to show that non-embryonic-stem-cell therapy is the biological version of cold fusion. Why?
Some of the media coverage may reflect sheer ignorance. But Science and Weissman know better. They're both part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by those who see embryonic stem cell research and non-embryonic stem cell research locked in mortal combat.
The worse the non-embryonics look, the stronger the case for using embryonic stem cells. With every breakthrough in non-embryonic research comes the need to turn up the screech knob on the disinformation box.
That's because while the government can make grants on a whim, venture capital flows towards success. Thus almost all capital is going to non-embryonic research. Those working with embryonic cells are desperate for government funds.
It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Dr. Michael D. West, head of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., told the AP that the Stanford study indicates "stem cells from the bone marrow will not be a practical source for many cell types needed" to treat disease. That is, it wouldn't be surprising if the AP had told you West's company does research with embryonic stem cells.
Just as a 30-year-old panhandler will claim to be a Vietnam vet to shake money out of your pockets, those desperate for funding are obviously not above misrepresenting research to keep their labs running.
But whatever the promises of embryonic research, the actual applications are coming from non-embryonic stem cells. The miracles they have already performed are but little compared to those of which they are capable. We dare not let that progress be hamstrung by the politics of pork.
— Michael Fumento is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. where he's currently writing BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing our World.
They're people, but because they're not sentient they should not be given legal protection? What about comatose people?
That's what makes materialism impossible. A human being is a substantial form, not a purely material entity. The purely materialistic view of human nature gives us the errors of scientific reductionism like the category error you describe above. (And others like, if a person loses his arm is he 3/4 of a human being? Should he have 3/4 of his rights?) Essentially spiritual things (like thought/consciousness) cannot be reduced to the purely material (brain waves).
We are not insects that go through a metamorphosis which has on one side a caterpiller and on the other side a butterfly. Human development is a seamless day-by-day progression to what is inarguably a human person. I understand your arguement, and once believed in it, but have come to the conclusion that, in the absence of certainty, the only human choice is to chose life.
Indeed. The one point where I would criticize the Republicans' "partial-birth abortion" ban is that I don't think it properly stated its constitutional justification. States do, after all, have very broad powers in defining what types of homicide are or are not lawful; it is legal, for example, for a homeowner in Texas to shoot someone who is committing criminal mischief on his property in the nighttime, even when the criminal poses no immediate threat to the life of the homeowner. In other states, such action would be attempted murder (or second-degree murder, if the shooting proved fatal).
I don't know the best way to resolve the issue. Obviously it is just plain wrong that Roe v. Wade and follow-up decisions make it essentially impossible for states to restrict even "partial-birth" abortions, but I don't know the best way for Congress to return such authority to the states where it belongs.
It would certainly be morally wrong for someone to kill without justification something which 'may or may not' be a human being. On the other hand, should not the state, in order to charge someone with murder, have to prove that what was killed was actually a human being?
I don't think you'd have any trouble finding a jury of 12 people who would regard a 39-week fetus as a human being. Indeed, even without abusive voir dire one would have good luck picking such a jury at random. On the other hand, finding a jury which would regard a 1-week fetus as a human being would be another story. I don't think the state would be able to make a case to a jury except by excessively abusing the voir dire process.
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