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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!!!
Links here:
Olfactory Bulb Stem Cells And Lou Gehrig's Disease
Jefferson Scientists Find New Way To Convert Adult Human Stem Cells To Dopamine Neurons
These are studies published in the last two weeks that successfully demonstrate that adult stem cells can be used for treatment of diseases such as Lou Gehrig's and Parkinsons. What is significant is that they are non-destructive techniques that do not require the destruction of the host provider... AND they will not be rejected by the person being treated or require the extensive anti-rejection treatments that using foreign stem cells to treat an individual would require.
In fact the study using mice can be directly compared to a similar study using embryonic stem cells:
Human Spinal Cord Cells Help Rats With Lou Gehrig's Disease
The embryonic stem cell study only allowed the mice to survive an additional 11 days... while the adult stem cell study allowed the mice to live an additional two months! In mouse years that is a huge difference... 11 days or 60 days? which treatment was more successful?
The real point is that valid and successful research is being carried out that does not require the destruction of embryos... this is not to say that there isn't something to be learned from embryonic stem cell research, there is BUT and this is a big BUT... IT SIMPLY ISN'T THE ONLY VALID RESEARCH OPTION AVAILABLE.
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.. in fact IMHO without the ban some of these approaches may not have been considered due to the perceived superiority of using embryonic stem cells.
'nuff said.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.