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Stem Cells Treat Spinal Injuries and Brain Tumors
Neil Halelamien writes "At the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting this past weekend, some very exciting results (from experiments on rats and mice) were discussed regarding the potential for human embryonic stem cells to treat injured spinal cords, brain tumors, and Parkinson's. Besides the possible health benefits, this adds fuel to the discussions leading up to the US election and the US's current attempts to have the UN ban therapeutic cloning worldwide."
Most of one of the articles focused on the USA's attempt to make human cloning illegal world-wide, regardless of it's purpose. Now why can't Bush and his chronies simply focus on America? Stop bullying around the rest of the world and fix your own problems and legislate your own people.
Ok here it is. I hope this can influence some voters in the coming election. The debate over human stem cell usage is not a debate over stem cells, it is a debate over where the stem cells are derived from. This is the debate. Here is what is being argued. President bush says that adult derived stem cells can be used in place of embryonic stem cells. Senator Kerry says that this is not the case and embryonic stem cells have greater potential. Here is a bit of research i have done from reading papers found on medline. Noone to date has shown that adult derived stem cells are capable of producing neurons in an injured spinal cord. It has been shown that embroyonic derived stem cells can however. This is the problem. I have very much oversimplfied this as I am not sure that most of you want to read the details, but the fact is that if you listen to President Bush, you might think that adult cells can be used to cure spinal injury. There is no current evidence for this. There is evidence that embryonic cells can be used to do it. President Bush is not telling the public the whole truth. I do not know the ins and outs of war and I do not want to pretend to be an expert on the subject of war so I do not know how much he is lying to us or not, but I do know that he has not told us the truth on this subject (I am currently doing some of these studies in rats) and I find myself having quite a bit of distrust for anything he says becasue of it and the way he presents himself. Please, if you are American and want to further advance science, do not let him get re-elected. He is hindering the advance of a field and many people may benefit from the research if it can be conducted. Go and vote!!!
"...if all the reviewers think the same"
Yes, this is one weakness in the peer review process... when you come with a discovery or method that goes in the face of most of what is believed you will face some HUGE inertia, and your work might never get public in this sort of review.
Which forces you to be precise, concise, bring proofs and a methodology that can be reproduced by someone else...
Otherwise, you get Microsoft'like reviews saying "We are the Best, don't even look at alternatives", ie I say whatever the marketing dept thinks will sell the best.
ALL review systems have flaws. But systems WITHOUT review possibly have them all.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Well I'm not a biologist but it strikes me as not terribly surprising given that the former study involved transplanting human stem cells into the mice whereas the latter involved the presumably more compatible transplantation of murine cells.
"That point made, you can no longer claim that stopping federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is giving up on treatment or cures for said degenerative diseases.."
If your point had been that comprehensive research had already been done into both approaches and proved that embryonic stem cell research is a dead end and that completely satisfactory cures using adult stem cells have been demonstrated and are about to appear on the market, then your conclusion would seem reasonable.