Stem Cell Research

Obama to reverse Bush-era stem cell policy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29586269/

Excellent.


Abner

 

I personally couldn't understand the whole premise behind a federal funding ban anyway.

 

It's quite simple, really. It was based on the premise that the government should not be funding something that many people find to be morally repugnant. The free market was free to continue with this research if it chose to.

 

You folks do realize that you're applauding a policy that legalizes using the parts of murdered babies (via abortion) for scientific research correct? Personally it makes me sick to my stomach. I miss Bush so much already.

 

I think it crosses an ethical line that we should never cross. Here is an excellent article that discusses the issue called "The Dogma of Mad Science"...

http://townhall.com/columnists/RobertKnight/2009/03/09/the_dogma_of_mad_science

My favorite quote from the article...

“Even for strong backers of embryonic stem cell research, the decision is no longer as self-evident as it was … In fact, during the first six weeks of Obama's term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and diabetes, are obsolete. The most sobering: a report from Israel published in PLoS Medicine in late February that shows embryonic stem cells injected into patients can cause disabling if not deadly tumors. .. [this case] is neither an anomaly nor a surprise, but one feared by many scientists.”

 

This policy will help save people's lives and help those that are suffering. I miss bush not at all. Good riddance.

 

I understand that under the Bush edict researchers could not use any facility or equipment whose original purchase included federal funds.

This type research will have three broad outcomes:
1. It results in cures for some diseases,
2. It results in a dead end so researchers will pursue alternate paths
3. It is inconclusive so funding may dry up (ferderal or otherwise).

A few years ago California voters approved a ballot measure to spend several billion dollars in stem cell research.

 

I echo that feeling.

Abner

 

It is unlikely to make any difference. The insistence on using embryonic stem cells always rested on the argument that they were pluripotent, capable of becoming any kind of cell. That superior claim no longer can be made with the spectacular discovery in 2007 of "induced pluripotent stem cells" (iPS), which was the laboratory equivalent of the airplane. Very simply, iPS cells can be produced from a skin cell by injecting genes that force it to revert to its primitive "blank slate" form with all the same pluripotent capabilities of embryonic stem cells. Put simply, embryonic stem cells are not even necessary now.

The iPS discovery even prompted Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, to abandon his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers "may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate."

 

This is one decision of Obama's that I can whole-heartedly support.

It's unfortunate that the whole subject of stem cell research has become so politicized as to render it almost unrecognizable. I don't think that the right's objections to embryonic stem cell research are convincing. And I don't think that the left's turning these stem cells into a panacea is convincing either.

There does seem to be tremendous potential in the line of inquiry though, which is why I strongly support it. But there are going to be lots of technical hurdles to overcome.

The prospect of stem-cells starting tumors and cancers isn't the least of them. Cells can be induced to act like stem-cells by knocking out some of their internal constraints and controls, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Controlling stem cells is going to be a challenge. Their behavior needs to understood in terms of developmental biology. And that's where embryonic and induced stem cells might turn out to be very different.

My guess is that effective stem-cell treatments are still many years off.

 

You're serious, right? Ending research will ensure no one derives help. Playing Politics with scientific issues until they are forced to disappear will ensure no one is helped.

 

Yes, I'm completely serious. Did you not read what I wrote? Look, I want miraculous new treatments to come along just as much as anyone, however, I am able to take a step back and look at the whole picture. The reality is that embryonic stem cells are not considered to even be necessary now, even by many scientists. I never said that we should end research. The free market has been free to pump money into embryonic research all along. Just recently, the nearly-bankrupt State of California pumped billions into such research. Unfortunately, the results have been dismal, at best.

 

Interesting assertion, is this perhaps the result of a personal assumption since the scientists haven't regrown a human arm yet or?

 

Stem cells don't come from murdered babies.

They come from a lump of about 25 to 30 undifferentiated cells from fertility clinics that weren't implanted and just get thrown away anyhow.

 

Stem cells may be retrieved from umbilical cords, blood, and bone marrow in addition to embryos.

 

True. I guess it is best to just throw them away. That makes sense.

Abner

 

Please re-read the part I wrote about tumors. Unless you're a fan of tumors, I would call that dismal.

 

What I read was:

That seems to me to be a statement about stem cell research in general but perhaps more specifically about non-federally funded research or maybe just California State funded research?

 

Actually, to a scientist "dismal results", while disapointing, are good. It shows that a particular research path is maybe a dead end and that some different approch is needed. In the process knowledge is usually gained - and techniques and equipment are developed.
I know a young lady who spent 6 years identifying a new biological molecules in the hopes it might lead to a cancer cure - it did'nt - and her disertation and published papers will alert future researchers not to follow this path. She earned her Ph.D. and is now doing her post-doc in another area that may prove beneficial to agriculture and maybe contribute to climate change science, or lead to a dead end.

 

Yes, but adult stem cells are different that embryonic stem cells and have different limitations and uses.

http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics5.asp