Slashdot Mirror
Paralyzed Woman Walks Again
mgv writes "It's been promised for years, but it's just become a reality. Stem cells taken from cord blood have enabled a paralysed woman in South Korea to walk again for the first time in 20 years. The details are on the Sydney Morning Herald Site which requires registration, but can also be seen on the World Peace Herald. Too late for Christopher Reeve, but not for the thousands of new injuries worldwide each year or the millions of paralysed people from other diseases in the world."
Perhaps this will help cool the American debate over embryonic stem cells.
Yes, Karen, you can get stem cells without harvesting embryos. No, really!
--
Every six seconds, another American hates Milkman Dan.
That's not interesting:
1. There is no ban on stem cell research in the US.
2. There has never been proposed or discussed a ban on stem cell research in the US.
3. Cord blood is just that: cord blood. Not embroynic stem cells. Unless someone can point me to something that suggests otherwise, this is not covered by the Federal ban on stem-cell research funding.
4. This treatment could have been derived in the US at various research universities. The fact that South Koreans made the breakthrough at this time does not detract from the US but rather should be an item of pride for the ingenuity and dedication of the South Koreans involved.
Snippy, snide, child-like comments aside, this development bolsters the claim that we do not need embroynic steam cells for the type of treatments and remedies that would help so many people. This was achieved withour US federal funding, without embroynic stem cells. The otherwise of the issue would have you believe that banning Federal funding of embroynic stem research on new lines is akin to calling the earth flat.
A press conference is not a peer reviewed journal. A woman walking in from of a camera does not mean a single stem cell helped her. Wait for journal publication, review, and commentary from experts before going around talking about how great this is.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Not at all. These are not created by aborting a fetus. In fact most attempts at using embryonic stem cells have met with tumors and rejection. But cord stem cells have been used successfully used to treat 75 illnesses. And to set the record straight, Bush didn't ban stem cell research in the US. He only increased government funding but limited it to those embryonic stem cells already harvested. Big difference, he didn't say you could not donate your money to the research. Just that the estimated 60 million people who find it morally apprensible to abort babies to harvest cells don't have to pay for it too.
Okay, I'll bite on the last part, at least.
Your question is misleading. The government should be in charge of funding basic scientific research that drives forward our understanding of physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and creates the platform on which industry can develop specific products.
Why should the government do this? Because the results of fundamental research must be completely open and available to all scientists and entrepeneurs who would do something useful with it. Industry will *never* do that.
Government-funded researchers invented the calculus, the mechanical (and electronic) computer, and the internal combustion engine, and gave that research to the public, so that commercial and charitable use could be made of them. Industry, on the other hand, is busy trying to patent your *genes*!
"Stem cell research", as you can tell from the name, is not medicine, nor is it a commercial product. It is a fundamental piece of scientific research that advances our entire base of technology.
So yes, the government should fund it.
However, embryonic stem cells are the cells which hold the real promise for research. This modern debate on embryonic stem cells is similar to the ban on using corpses for medical training and analysis in 16th century Europe. Sure you could learn some things by cutting open a dog. However, the real learning and advancement began once Human corpses were allowed for Medical research. History will view the ban on stem cells the same way. Think of all the good medicine we would not have today if some brave people did not push the issue of using corpses for medical research. Let the Bush Bashing resume.
I really, really hope that what's being reported is true, but I'd really like to see it in a peer reviewed journal and have the findings reproduced before getting too excited. Because things like cold fusion have been announced via press release before, with no journal paper forthcoming. Without it being reproducable it's just another faith healing.
That said, please, please be good, reproducable research.
If not now, when?
Be real for a second and review industry's track record. Drugs for phantom depression. Drugs for sex enhancement. Drugs for obesity. None of these result from real societal problems and the greatest tragedy is that they aren't funding smaller problems with the major profits. They are just inventing more problems.
Perhaps a better question is "who do you want to define research priorities--government or industry?"
A government of the people should
Laws are for people with no friends.
The spinal cord is an enormously complex structure, the exact neural connections of which are formed in early embryonic life. That you could simply inject multipotential cells into a damaged cord and expect them to differentiate and grow into mature neurons, complete with appropriate connections, is asking an awful lot. In addition, in this patient, "paralyzed" for two decades, you have the issue of muscles, bones, and joints that haven't been in use all that time.
It would be wonderful if this account is true, but I'm not getting my hopes up until I see more of the fine print.
Ed Uthman, MD
Pathologist, Houston/Richmond, TX, USA
My sentiments, exactly; I wish I had mod points.
I had a friend who broke his neck from a fall, so I've researched the topic a little bit. It is possible, in a very small number of cases, that people will spontaneously regrow the damaged nerves. This could be one of those cases.
One isolated incident does not make for a medical breakthrough. They need to demonstrate that this is repeatable.
For starters, it's a bureaucratic nightmare for labs--if so much as a single "bad" sample makes its way into an experiment, they can lose all government funding in a heartbeat. Labs end up having to spend a surprising and frustrating amount of time and money simply to meet the ever-growing list of compliance demands for federal funding. Angling for private funding is all well and good, but there's a severe lack of funding for pure science; corporate sponsors are far more interested in applied science. Applied science is important, but pure science is equally important and would suffer badly if it weren't for federal funding.
Second, the stem cells in question are coming from discarded embryos from in-vitro fertilization clinics which are already slated for destruction. To ban these stem cells from research is hypocritical, at root--if the issue at hand is the destruction of a human life, they should be fighting just as hard to outlaw the practice of freezing embryos in the first place. That they're attacking the scientific link in this chain suggests that they're more against using these wasted embryos for scientific study (which, for various banal reasons, is seen as the arch-enemy of religion by many,) than they are upset about the wasting of embryos in the first place.
It's a shame that the debate such that the scientific community is being made out to be the villian here. The real villian is the IVF industry; science is simply stepping in and trying to conduct incredibly promising research with something that'd otherwise be flushed down the drain without so much as a second thought.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Government-funded researchers invented the calculus
Um... Isaac Newton invented calculus when he was still a student at Trinity College. The school was on break for two years as a result of disease sweeping the area, and having little else to do, he spent his idle time thinking very productively.
There was no government funding involved in his inventing calculus, sorry. He invented it out of curiosity, not because he was paid to do so.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Is it really surprising that most of the advancement has come from research that hasn't been effectively banned?
That's like saying there hasn't been any advance in the theraputic use of cocaine or heroin.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be. Why not allow federal funding for research on "surplus" embryos taken from IVF facilities (i.e., embryos that are not going to be implanted, but that are going to be flushed down the drain?)
>There is a huge difference between the two
Yet in practice there isn't. A lot of these lines have been ruined by mouse DNA and other issues. The best stem cell research, predictically, isnt from these lines but from others and most notably from foreign nations.
Bush could have left the Clinton-era laws alone, but chose to give this as a handout to his religious right base. Its dirty politics any way you slice it. The moral issue is as manufactured as the PC you're using to browse this site.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be.
The problem is that you can make that argument about any human. Someone's in a coma, they're never going to come out, why not do some experiments on them? They're going to die anyway, why let a perfectly good body go to waste?
Or even a newborn that's not wanted. A newborn isn't sentient (that takes another few months); if the parents don't want it, why not allow post-birth abortions?
Now, I recognize that a lot of embryos are going to be "flushed down the drain", and that it's not quite the same as the above, but that doesn't mean there aren't ethical considerations. If embryos are OK, what about two cells? 1024 cells? One week gestation? One month? Eight months, when the mother wants a late-term abortion?
I'm uncomfortable with drawing arbitrary lines on this. It just seems intrinsically wrong to experiment on a living cell with human potential.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Prior to Roe v. Wade this was the case. The wealthy have always had access to safe abortions, either in the US or overseas.
Lesser members of the human race had coathanger abortions in alleys, or just had kids. All Roe v. Wade really did was to allow poorer people the same access to abortion as the wealthy.
.
In my experience, it is that secular mass media often assumes that the religious want to ban all stem cells, because they fail to differentiate between cellular sources.
Simple google search shows the "major" media outlets routinely leave off the word embryonic when discussing the topic. Drawing a distinction between the two would better inform the public.
Catholic news letters define the difference, and promote more research into adult stem cells as the intelligent alternative.
Unless you beleive that all non-religious people are morally bankrupt anarchists, I think you can grant that scientists are bound by ethics that have nothing to do with a god of any kind.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
I'd argue an embryo becomes a human when a recognizable brain forms, and detectable brain activity occurs. Prior to that point, the embryo is a clump of cells indistinguishable from any other mamal's embryo. Humans are still animals- the only thing separating us is brain functionality/capability. It's alright to kill off frogs, or sheep, or cattle at any point to disect and use for research, so what is the difference from a human embryo, provided it hasn't developed a brain yet?
The big issue is not whether killing a fetus is morally right or wrong (I myself am pro-choice, but only up to a certain point of development. I do think killing off a fetus is wrong, but ejecting an embryo is fine), but at what point the embryos become a Human fetus. I've heard every argument from conception, to the development of a heart, to the development of a brain/brain activity. The later makes the most sense to me.
So, at this point, we are banning research on things that 'potentially' under the correct circumstances become life? If that's they case...we could take it to ridiculous length. Why not ban male masturbation? Potentially, this lost sperm ("every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great..") under the correct circumstances, could be come human life. Obviously, gay people are really withholding their contribution to potential life...etc. Ridiculous stretch there grant it, but, just to illustrate my point. Embryos that are created outside the body...unless implated are not life...they will not live without scientific intervention. So, I have a hard time calling it destruction of a human life for science.
I consider myself to have fairly deep religious feelings and beliefs, but, embryonic stem cell research doesn't bother me...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
1. There was no existing work, due to this being a new discovery
2. Bush prevented work from being funded for embryonic cells (with usual caveats)
Whether or not this is "halting work" is purely a matter of sematics.
The ideas were NOT around much prior to the Bush Administration: it was not until 1998 that embryonic cloning was possible and 1999/2000 that the first breakthroughs in differentiation were made. Please see the link, which has an obvious slashcode-inserted space.
A wart is alive and has human genes... is it a human?
/bleh
What about your appendix and tonsils? Are they not alive? Are they not human?
What about that nasty tumor growing in your brain? Don't get it removed or you'll be killing a human.
You can still cut your hair and nails.
haven't we sort of sidestepped the issue of whether ethical objections to destroying small clumps of human cells (which could potentially, but will not, produce babies) trump the research benefits of embryonic stem cell research.
Well, the problem isn't whether those clumps of cells can potentially produce babies, but whether those clumps of cells are in fact already babies. This is a very heated area of dispute.
If embryos are human beings, then it is immoral to manipulate or destroy them for personal benefit. It would clearly be wrong to kill a one-month old (that is, one month after birth) even if the tissue you harvested from them could save 100 people. Now we're debating over where the line gets drawn. Is it OK to kill a fetus just before it is born in order to harvest tissue to benefit those same 100 people? Is it OK to do it one month after conception? A week?
It really isn't as simple an issue as the rhetoric would have you believe...
"If embryos are human beings, then it is immoral to manipulate or destroy them for personal benefit. It would clearly be wrong to kill a one-month old (that is, one month after birth) even if the tissue you harvested from them could save 100 people."
But would it be immoral? I mean we regularly execute people for killing one person (or not even killing someone but being an accomplice) in the hopes that this will convince others not to commit murder (best case-in reality it is closer to revenge...) I mean if it is moral to kill a murderer, something that will not save anybody's life, why would the death of a baby (or fetus) that could save 100 people be considered immoral?
We place a value on human life all the time (aka cost benefit analyis)-is this immoral? Government/ private enterprise/people regularly make decisions that cost peoples lives for the sake of money, yet we don't hear the same outcry? Why exactly? These apparent contradictions have always interested me.
"It really isn't as simple an issue as the rhetoric would have you believe..."
You certainly got that right!