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Posted on 07/13/2004 1:18:23 PM PDT by cpforlife.org
by Steven Ertelt LifeNews.com Editor July 12, 2004
Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- Two new studies are providing further argument that embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary because adult stem cells are not only more ethical, but more effective as well.
Researchers at the Tufts-New England Medical Center reported last week that that unborn children may be giving their mothers the gift of life.
As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers have uncovered evidence that fetal stem cells may be migrating from the developing unborn child to diseased tissue and organs in the mother's body.
Evidence of the curing work of the fetal stem cells has been found in the livers, spleens, and thyroids of pregnant women.
Dr. Diana Bianchi is the chief of medical genetics at the hospital and was the lead author of the paper on the research.
She told the Boston Globe newspaper, "If we can prove these are stem cells, and harvest them from the blood or tissue of a woman who's been pregnant, they could have therapeutic potential for that woman, her children and perhaps even unrelated individuals."
That could change the entire debate over embryonic stem cell research, Dr. Bianchi said, because the fetal stem cells could be taken from the blood or tissue -- ethical sources -- and make the cloning destruction of human embryos unnecessary.
Meanwhile, yet another study shows that adult stem cells taken from bone marrow can improve the hearts of patients who have suffered heart attacks.
Dr. Helmut Drexler, of the Medical University of Hannover in Germany, said Friday that the adult stem cells improved the heart's function.
"Our results lend support to the concept that ... bone-marrow cells can be used to enhance ... functional recovery in patients," he wrote in The Lancet medical journal.
According to a Reuters report, the patients receiving injection of the stem cells showed a 7 percent improvement in heart function while a control group receiving a placebo showed an improvement of less than one percent.
In August 2001, President Bush issued an executive order prohibiting the federal funding of any new embryonic stem cell research because of the destruction of human life involved.
Some scientists and members of Congress oppose his decision and they have rallying behind legislation that would direct tax dollars to the research, which is opposed by the pro-life community.
Please let me know if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
And let's not forget that cord blood is packed with fetal stem cells.
And let's not forget that cord blood is packed with fetal stem cells.
Related
Pregnant Women "Inherit" Some Characteristics of Their Children
http://www.gentlebirth.org/archives/maternalBond.html
And sometimes that cord blood can really help someone. Like it did my friend.
If you know someone that is having a child please tell them it's a good idea to have the cord blood taken, frozen and kept. In Abi's case she lived just a little bit longer because of that.
Why on earth isn't the President or his people talking about the potential of adult stem cell usage? Engage the "other side" on this, educate the voting public, take back an issue the Dems seem set to try and bash the GOP with this fall.
The silence---save for what I read here on FR---is deafening.
Paging Ron Reagan....
Paging Ron Reagan....
Pleeease, NO. I prefered it when he was not on the radar. Michael is the true Reagan--IMO.
I agree. Point out, for example, the simple fact that so far NO tests with embryonic stem cells have had any success.
"Stem cell research"(which to Dems only means embryonic stem cells) is just another left-wing excuse to kill unborn children at any stage, and make it sound necessary and even virtuous.
Dr. Helmut Drexler, of the Medical University of Hannover in Germany, said Friday that the adult stem cells improved the heart's function.
"Our results lend support to the concept that ... bone-marrow cells can be used to enhance ... functional recovery in patients," he wrote in The Lancet medical journal.
According to a Reuters report, the patients receiving injection of the stem cells showed a 7 percent improvement in heart function while a control group receiving a placebo showed an improvement of less than one percent.
Every report that comes out just makes this decision look all the more wise.
"adult stem cells are not only more ethical, but more effective as well."
I had a leading stem cell reseacher tell me this as well and that there is no reason yet to get into fetal cell research - adult stem cell research has so much more to offer and to discover. But, he also said the fetal stems allowed by Bush have been mostly used and damaged.
Well, he's got a lot on his plate right now, but we can be spokesmen in his place. Whenever the subject comes up, inform those with whom you speak about the good results coming from adult and cord blood cells and the failures of the embryonic program! There is plenty of private research money, but the fact that it is not attaching itself to embryonic stem cell research says a lot about how unsuccessful it has been.
We need to help the President; he can't be everywhere all the time, but we can make a difference where we are!
Adult stem cells work there is NO need to harvest babies for their body parts.
Adult Stem Cell Research More Effective Than Embryonic Cells
Embryo Vivisection and Elusive Promises Act--California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative
Stem Cells Not the Priority for Alzheimer's
The Stem Cell Cover-Up By Michael Fumento
Lies About Fetal Stem Cell Research [Free Republic]
Stem cells without benefit of embryos
Michael Fumento Interview [DDT, Global Warming, Fuel Cells, Stem Cells, AIDS, Biotech, AD/HD, Etc.]
SELLING LIES (Stem Cell Myths exposed by Michael Fumento)
FREE Book on Stem Cells and Cloning in understandable language
| Alzheimer's gene therapy trial shows early promise | Drug slows advanced Alzheimer's disease |
*In 2000, Israeli scientists implanted Melissa Holley's white blood cells into her spinal cord to treat the paraplegia caused when her spinal cord was severed in an auto accident. Melissa, who is 18, has since regained control over her bladder and recovered significant motor function in her limbs - she can now move her legs and toes, although she cannot yet walk.
This is exactly the kind of therapy that embryonic-stem-cell proponents promise - years down the road. Yet Melissa's breakthrough was met with collective yawns in the press with the exception of Canada's The Globe and Mail. Non-embryonic stem cells may be as common as beach sand.
They have been successfully extracted from umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat, cadaver brains, bone marrow, and tissues of the spleen, pancreas, and other organs. Even more astounding, the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep successfully created cow heart tissue using stem cells from cow skin. And just this week, Singapore scientists announced that they have transformed bone-marrow cells into heart muscle.
Research with these cells also has a distinct moral advantage: It doesn't require the destruction of a human embryo. You don't have to be pro-life to be more comfortable with that.
*In another Parkinson's case, a patient treated with his own brain stem cells appears to have experienced a substantial remission with no adverse side effects. Dennis Turner was expected by this time to require a wheelchair and extensive medication. Instead, he has substantially reduced his medication and rarely reports any noticeable symptoms of his Parkinson's. Human trials in this technique are due to begin soon.
*Bone marrow stem cells, blood stem cells, and immature thigh muscle cells have been used to grow new heart tissue in both animal subjects and human patients. Indeed, while it was once scientific dogma that damaged heart muscle could not regenerate, it now appears that cells taken from a patient's own body may be able to restore cardiac function. Human trials using adult stem cells have commenced in Europe and other nations. (The FDA is requiring American researchers to stick with animal studies for now to test the safety of the adult stem cell approach.)
*Harvard Medical School researchers reversed juvenile onset diabetes (type-1) in mice using "precursor cells" taken from spleens of healthy mice and injecting them into diabetic animals. The cells transformed into pancreatic islet cells. The technique will begin human trials as soon as sufficient funding is made available.
*In the United States and Canada, more than 250 human patients with type-1 diabetes were treated with pancreatic tissue (islet) transplantations taken from human cadavers. Eighty percent of those who completed the treatment protocol have achieved insulin independence for over a year. (Good results have been previously achieved with pancreas transplantation, but the new approach may be much safer than a whole organ transplant.)
*Blindness is one symptom of diabetes. Now, human umbilical cord blood stem cells have been injected into the eyes of mice and led to the growth of new human blood vessels. Researchers hope that the technique will eventually provide an efficacious treatment for diabetes-related blindness. Scientists also are experimenting with using cord blood stem cells to inhibit the growth of blood vessels in cancer, which could potentially lead to a viable treatment.
*Bone marrow stem cells have partially helped regenerate muscle tissue in mice with muscular dystrophy. Much more research is needed before final conclusions can be drawn and human studies commenced. But it now appears that adult stem cells may well provide future treatments for neuromuscular diseases.
*Severed spinal cords in rats were regenerated using gene therapy to prevent the growth of scar tissue that inhibits nerve regeneration. The rats recovered the ability to walk within weeks of receiving the treatments. The next step will be to try the technique with monkeys. If that succeeds, human trials would follow.
*In one case reported from Japan, an advanced pancreatic cancer patient injected with bone marrow stem cells experienced an 80 percent reduction in tumor size.
* In separate experiments, scientists researched the ability of embryonic and adult mouse pancreatic stem cells to regenerate the body's ability to make insulin. Both types of cells boosted insulin production in diabetic mice. The embryonic success made a big splash with prominent coverage in all major media outlets. Yet the same media organs were strangely silent about the research involving adult cells.
Stranger still, the adult-cell experiment was far more successful - it raised insulin levels much more. Indeed, those diabetic mice lived, while the mice treated with embryonic cells all died. Why did the media celebrate the less successful experiment and ignore the more successful one?
* Another barely reported story is that alternative-source stem cells are already healing human illnesses.
*In Los Angeles, the transplantation of stem cells harvested from umbilical-cord blood has saved the lives of three young boys born with defective immune systems.
“‘This [isolating stem cells from fat] could take the air right out of the debate about embryonic stem cells,’ said Dr. Mark Hedrick of UCLA, the lead author. The newly identified cells have so many different potential applications, he added, that ‘it makes it hard to argue that we should use embryonic cells.’” -- Thomas H. Maugh II, “Fat may be answer to many illnesses,” Los Angeles Times, 4/10/01
“With the newest evidence that even cells in fat are capable of being transformed into tissue through the alchemy of biotechnology, some scientists said they are beginning to conclude they’ll be able to grow with relative ease all sorts of replacement tissues without resorting to embryo or fetal cells…‘It’s highly provocative work, and they’re probably right,’ said Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas…Like many biologists, Olson believes that adult, fetal and embryonic stem cell research all merit support…it’s heartening, he said, that almost “every other week there’s another interesting finding of adult stem cells turning into neurons or blood cells or heart muscle cells. Apparently our traditional views need to be reevaluated.’” --Rick Weiss, “Human Fat May Provide Stem Cells,” The Washington Post, 4/10/01
“In a finding that could offer an entirely new way to treat heart disease within the next few years, scientists working with mice and rats have found that key cells from adult bone marrow can rebuild a damaged heart—actually creating new heart muscle and blood vessels…Until now researchers thought that stem cells from embryos offer the best hope for rebuilding damaged organs, but this latest research shows that the embryos, which are politically controversial, may not be necessary. ‘We are currently finding that these adult stem cells can function as well, perhaps even better than, embryonic stem cells,’ [Dr. Donald] Orlic [of the National Human Genome Research Institute] said.” --Robert Bazell, “Approach may repair heart damage,” NBC Nightly News, 3/30/01.
“[Dr. Donald] Orlic said fetal and embryonic stem cell researchers have not been able to show the regeneration of heart cells, even in animals. ‘This study alone gives us tremendous hope that adult stem cells can do more than what embryonic stem cells can do,’ he said.” --Kristen Philipkoski, “Adult Stem Cells Growing Strong,” Wired Magazine, 3/30/01
“Like several other recent studies, the new work with hearts suggests that stem cells retrieved from adults have unexpected and perhaps equal flexibility of their own, perhaps precluding the need for the more ethically contentious [embryonic] cells.” --Rick Weiss, “Studies Raise Hopes of Cardiac Rejuvenation,” The Washington Post, 3/31/01
“Umbilical cords discarded after birth may offer a vast new source of repair material for fixing brains damaged by strokes and other ills, free of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of fetal tissue, researchers said Sunday.” --“Umbilical cords could repair brains,” Associated Press, 2/20/01.
"PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, has succeeded in ‘reprogramming' a cell -- a move that could lead to the development of treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Scotland-based group will today announce that it has turned a cow's skin cell into a beating heart cell and is close to starting research on humans... The PPL announcement...will be seen as an important step towards producing stem cells without using human embryos." --"PPL follows Dolly with cell breakthrough," Financial Times, 2/23/01
“Because they have traveled further on a pathway of differentiation than an embryo’s cells have, such tissue specific [adult] stem cells are believed by many to have more limited potential than E[mbryonic] S[tem] cells or those that PPL hopes to create. Some researchers, however, are beginning to argue that these limitations would actually make tissue-specific stem cells safer than their pluripotent counterparts. University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Glenn McGee is one of the most vocal critics on this point: ‘The emerging truth in the lab is that pluripotent stem cells are hard to reign in. The potential that they would explode into a cancerous mass after a stem cell transplant might turn out to be the Pandora’s box of stem cell research.’” --Erika Jonietz, “Biotech: Could new research end the embryo debate?” Technology Review, January/February, 2001.
cpforlife.org,Prolife bump.
cute new graphic.
Women with benign pituitary tumors (prolactinomas) sometimes have spontaneous resolution after pregnancy. Interesting.
That's the cutest ping I ever saw.
Ammo for scoffing at Ron Reagan the Lesser when he has the gall to address the Demwit's convention as an "expert"
Adult Cells Do It BetterAdult stem cells have already been used for more than 20 years as bone-marrow transplants to reconstitute the immune systems of patients with cancer and to treat blood cancers such as leukemia. Using the body's own stem cells means the immune system's rejection reflex will not be aroused. Adult cells are far closer to commercial application, which is crucial to venture investors. Given the long lead times necessary to gain approval for new medical technologies, if a company can't get significant results in four to six years, it's generally beyond the scope of a venture capitalist's interest. In addition to speed, venture capitalists look for a "technology platform" broad enough to support multiple indications for the same product. While the embryonic cells are rumored to have broad potential, so far only adult stem cells have demonstrated wide uses.
by Scott Gottlieb
The American Spectator
June 2001
Stem Cells Used in Heart RepairDoctors said Wednesday they are attempting an experimental procedure to heal a teenage patient's heart by infusing it with the boy's own blood stem cells. It could take months to know whether it works, but doctors say they are already seeing encouraging results... Animal studies have shown that stem cells - the body's building blocks for all types of tissue - can be injected to grow new muscle and blood vessels, and researchers have expressed hope that the research could eventually help repair human hearts and other tissue... Stem cell researchers not involved in the experiment said they knew of no similar research in humans. There already is some evidence, however, that stimulating stem cell production alone can cause tissue regeneration, without having to inject cells into a particular area.
by David Goodman
3/06/03
AP
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