A lot of the stem cell debate has been spun to ridicule pro life types, and to accuse Bush as hardhearted for “politicizing” science. One result of the spin has been that the very real and widespread successes with adult stem cells get little publicity, while the press tends to hype scientifically limited “breakthroughs” by companies who seek to benefit from state tax funding for their research.
Yet stem cells (adult, umbillical cord, from miscarriages, or from embryos) have the potential to be as helpful a breakthrough as Penicillin or vaccines in saving lives.
The reason for trying to use embryonic stem cells was that they were less mature and were thought to be easier to mold into the cells you needed to make an organ or to fix a damaged organ. They also produced less of an immune response than adult tranplants. But their DNA wouldn’t match, so although embryonic stem cell research was touted as a cure all, the dirty little secret is that you would probably have to clone (i.e. put in the correct DNA) to have it work.
So voila, just clone…but cloning is complicated: open a tiny cell, take out the nucleus and put a new nucleus in… but it’s not a perfect match…the Mitochondrial DNA still doesn’t match.
Ironically, there are ways to clone without destroying embryos: called the “vigin birth” method, you take DNA from an adult cell, stick it into an egg, zap it and voila, instant pre embryo tissue that probably doesn’t have the ability to be an embryo.
The problem is that either method doesn’t always work, so you’d need a lot of eggs or pre embryos to get enough cells to use.
Yet each egg has to come from a woman, and since the going rate for an egg is twenty thousand in Boston, the scientists would have probably started an “egg providing” business similar to the transplant businesses that exploit poor people in Asia.
So although Catholics and some Evangelical Christians object to the embryonic stem cells (but maybe not to the virgin birth clones), there is still a major ethical problem: Few articles bring it up, but most religions agree the Big Guy thinks that rich people exploiting the poor is a no no, and most good Marxists would agree.
So now we have an alternative that can let you supply your own stem cells.
The new discovery is being published online today in Cell, in a paper by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, and in Science, in a paper by James A. Thomson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Thomson’s work received some federal money….
The reprogrammed cells, the scientists report, appear to behave very much like human embryonic stem cells but were called “induced pluripotent stem cells,†meaning cells that can change into many different types.
So how important is this?
Well, the UKTelegraph suggests that having a cheaper, abundent and genetically matched stem cell essentially puts the clone industry out of business– and probably eliminates the major impetus in making animal/human chimeras (i.e. to use as organ donors).
And adult stem cells are already being used widely for many disease. Getting the adult stem cells to go back to an even earlier stage opens the possibility of regrowing organs and healing injured organs.
Still a question is if the adult stem cells will degenerate into cancer (a problem with embryonic stem cells also). But as a whole, the field now has a cheaper and more abundent source of stem cells.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. Her webpage is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket, and she writes medical essays at HeyDoc Xanga Blog.Â
1 user commented in " Stem cell breakthrough and why it’s important "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackBeing a supporter of Obama, the bottom up strategy is very appealing. Opening up the ideas of the American people is exciting. Only problem is how do you get these ideas to Obama to make sure at least he has the opportunity to look at them. Doesn’t matter if he adopts them in it’s entirety, but it will start a conversation that involves the American people. It will start a conversation to problem solve the problems we have facing us from this failed administration and congress.
It’s time to turn the page on the primary and start thinking about what we need to do to communicate ideas to our next President Obama. The main thing I am concerned with is to expedite Stem Cell Research and how we can get the best medical minds in the world to work on this and cures for devastating diseases and chronic illnesses. Right now the medical community all over the world is working in silos and a lot of redundant effort is taking place. We need a medical community that recognizes this and pool their resources and findings to expedite this effort. How we do it is up for discussion. We need to declare War on something that really matters like incurable diseases and chronic illnesses. We need to establish another Manhattan project except this time with no secrets. We need to pour all the resources we can into this and invite the world community to join us. I have a feeling that they are answers that just may be a lot simpler than we have imagined. We just haven’t found it yet. If we pursue this we will be solving two major problems, one being extending and improving the quality of life and the other being potentially driving down the enormous health care cost of our future. If we as a country took a lead role in this our reputation could improve. At least it would help it improve.
Right now the medical community is divided into basically two groups: clinicians and research in silos. Clinicians makes decisions based on predetermined protocol. These protocols are based on statistics, one answer fits all. This is more of a shotgun approach for patient treatment. This is a paradigm that even the medical community realizes will not make tremendous strides over the next several years. We are waiting on these silos in research to answer the problem. Only problem is the goal is to make money not save and improve lives. President Kennedy set a standard as to what this country can do when we set our mind to it. When President Kennedy said the United States would have a man on the moon by the end of the decade he challenged the American people. This same challenge needs to take place now for medical breakthroughs. To me, it’s critical because we are not going to be able to pay for our medical future we way we are going now.
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