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Stem Cell Injections Pioneering Step Forward?
sanspeak writes "Indian Doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences have performed a radical new operation of sorts by pioneering the method of stem cell injections. Ishika Gupta, a seven month old girl child who was suffering from cardiac myopathy, was treated by injecting stem cells into her heart from bone in her own leg. AIIMS has marked a global first in pioneering stem cell medicine by the "injection method''." From the article: "There will now be a national stem cell centre at AIIMS which will coordinate the research and its applications. The statistics speak for themselves. After six months, 56% of the affected (dead muscle) area injected with these cells had shown improvement." Additional details on this therapy available from the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel and Medical News Today.
The attractive thing about these results to many is that is identifies a built in population of stem cells in adult individuals that could be harvested for some applications which gets around certain issues related to the Bush administrations religiously imposed dogma on science and progress.
The problem with this approach is that often, they really do not know what cells they are injecting. Sure they are harvesting cells from the bone marrow which do contain some stem cell populations. But here is the deal: These cells are already partially differentiated. They are not totipotent. Certainly there will be some applications where you can take partially differentiated cells and inject them into some systems that will show positive results, such as the cardiac improvements observed in these studies. However, this will not be generalizeable to other disorders such as vision loss or other degenerative diseases.
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My wife is pregnant right now and we are going to have to make the choice if we want the 'stem cells' harvested from the cord after birth. I realize that there are costs involved, but is it worth it? Gut feeling says that if I don't I could regret it later. Any thoughts?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Directly on-topic? Well, no, but I guarantee there will be several positively moderated messages in this thread that don't get it right.
- This article isn't talking about embryonic stem cells, so any references to the Bush administration embryonic stem cell policy are utterly irrelevant
But for those who still don't get it:
- There isn't a "ban" on any kind of stem cell research in the US. There is a restriction on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research - entities are still free to perform embryonic stem cell research (see California's recent US$3 billion bond initiative to support such research in the state)
- The Bush administration is the first administration to allow any federal funding at all for embryonic stem cell research. Granted, this is partly due to timing, but it's still a point of information.
- When is an embryo "life"? At some arbitrary time? When it's in a woman's womb? When it's "wanted" by someone as the product of actions to create a child? When and how does it become life? What's the magic cutoff? When and why is it ok to destroy it? When it can exist on its own? What does "exist on its own" mean? I'm not saying any of these things necessarily should preclude embryonic stem cell research, and indeed, federal funding for it. But doesn't it seem that those ethical questions should be addressed or at least considered? It may well be that society collectively decides that the benefit outweighs ethical concerns. But bear in mind, too, that farming more developed human life for research would no doubt yield untold answers to questions that might hold great benefit. Does that mean we should do it? If not, why is that any different? Scientifically, it would seem clear that it's a life the second the embryo comes into being...
(Note: No, I am not anti-abortion, but do think we should acknowledge that abortion isn't just a "woman's choice" or a "medical decision" (unless it is a decision in relation to the safety of the mother). It is, essentially, the state sanctioned ability to end a life when it is not wanted by the mother. Let's at least acknowledge what we're doing instead of hiding it under the blinders of "choice" or "scientific progress".)
And yet federal money can't go to stem cell research?
And yet again someone missinformed. Bush DID NOT BAN Federal Funding of Stem Cell Research. He banned Federal Funding going to Embryonic Stem Cell Research on new lines. This research used Adult Stem Cells. Something that Federal money can go to.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Although the U.S. article identified the applicability of stem cells harvested from (adult) bone marrow and other sources, the Indian article discusses the successes achieved from utilizing umbilical cord stem cells...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
Bush banned Federal Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell research on new lines only. If you get private funding, you can do research on new embryoninc lines. Or, you can use Federal Funding on the old lines or Adult Stem Cells. This new technique used Adult Stem Cells. They can get federal funding for this.
There is no outright ban. It is a myth.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
This reminds me of Smallville, where one guy would get bitten by a bug who ate meteor rock, and the guy would develop bug powers. Another guy would fall on a hot meteor rock, and would develop heat powers. I can't wait for the stem cell meteor rock episode.
- This article isn't talking about embryonic stem cells, so any references to the Bush administration embryonic stem cell policy are utterly irrelevant
But for those who still don't get it:
- There isn't a "ban" on any kind of stem cell research in the US. There is a restriction on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research - entities are still free to perform embryonic stem cell research (see California's recent US$3 billion bond initiative to support such research in the state)
- The Bush administration is the first administration to allow any federal funding at all for embryonic stem cell research. Granted, this is partly due to timing, but it's still a point of information.
- When is an embryo "life"? At some arbitrary time? When it's in a woman's womb? When it's "wanted" by someone as the product of actions to create a child? When and how does it become life? What's the magic cutoff? When and why is it ok to destroy it? When it can exist on its own? What does "exist on its own" mean? I'm not saying any of these things necessarily should preclude embryonic stem cell research, and indeed, federal funding for it. But doesn't it seem that those ethical questions should be addressed or at least considered? It may well be that society collectively decides that the benefit outweighs ethical concerns. But bear in mind, too, that farming more developed human life for research would no doubt yield untold answers to questions that might hold great benefit. Does that mean we should do it? If not, why is that any different? Scientifically, it would seem clear that it's a life the second the embryo comes into being...
All Bush did was say no government funding of Fetal Stem Cell harvesting. A good choice to make if you aren't sure when life begins or if you think it begins at conception. Harvesting Fetal Tissue from an embryo killed for the purpose would be wrong and evil if life begins at conception. Wisdom isn't always recognized as such though.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
I did a stem cell donation for my brother last week. It cost about $6000 and involved hooking up veins in both arms to a continuous centrifuge that pumped blood out of one arm, centrifuged it to remove the stem cells, and then injected the plasma and red cells back into the other arm. I had to get injections of Neupogen for four days prior to what the docs called the "harvest".
I didn't have to have long needles stuck into my bone marrow. The worst part was not being able to move my arms for 5 1/2 hours for any reason because of the needles in veins in my elbows.
They got 3 times as much material as they need and I am trying to arrange to have the rest stockpiled in case I need them at some later date. They needed 8 million cells per kilo of body weight for a cross donation, but only 4 million for self-donation.
I can't let this one go.
(1) The Bush Administration does not have a "religiously imposed dogma on science and progress". There is a significant segment of the American population that is concerned about scientists initiating the process of conception for the sole purpose of ripping apart the component stem cells while receiving federal funding to do so. Corporations and universities are welcome to continue studying embryonic stem cells, just not while using federal research grants.
(2) Unlike the aformentioned Embryonic Stem Cells, this process is another form of Adult Stem Cell research, which is using the patient's own stem cells to culture and augment existing organs. There has never been any political problems with this branch of stem cell research, and the Bush Administration has advanced this research alternative several times as the preferred path.
(3) Bone Marrow has long been known to be a source of red blood cells as well as muscle stem cells. If they are partially differentiated as marrow cells, they are still in the same family as cardiovascular muscles, and thus are a prime candidate for this type of injection research. It would be like taking neurons from the brain and injecting them into the spinal column, to see if the cells can merge and augment the spinal tissues.
Part of the problem of degenerative diseases is that there is a genetic problem with the adult, so transplanting cells with the same genetic makeup within the same adult will not magically create a missing protein... that is where we need to initiate aditional research with inter-adult stem cell research, and proceed from there.
The answers to these questions are all arbitrary. A million different people can come up with a million different answers. Which leaves us to a few making the distinction for us, which inevitably will alienate a vast majority who don't believe the same thing. You're right, it's more than a womans choice and a medical decision. However, it is not our place to judge or deside for people as to what they can and can not do in this regard. I think that put into any other terms other than "womans choice" or "medical decision" is imposing a belife onto somones person. I just think that people are entirely too quick to pick up the flame of moral superiority instead of just letting people live their lives. I guess I'm kind of an anarchist in that sense. And my opinion doesn't matter to anyone but myself. So I won't voice my opinions here. All told, I agree with you that there's more to it, however, I think people should be left to make their own decisions instead of having them imposed on them. Also, I sit corrected on the state of the stem cell research area in this country. The point I was trying to make wat that the Bush administration (not bush bashing here) won't fund new line stem cell research due to religious beliefs, rather than scientific reasoning. That is all...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
I just want to make sure we're clear.
That also means that a baby grown outside of the womb has no protections.
That also means we can farm developed fetuses for destructive research that might yield great benefit. You could even go further and grow them beyond any arbitrary period (e.g., 9 months for example). Since they've never been "born", and have never been wanted by a parent, it's not a "life" by your definition. And if such research could hold untold answers to questions and benefit for mankind, why should we not do it?
I just want to make sure you're being logically consistent here.
The key word here being think. And no I don't think conciousness is what we are talking about. I'm talking about life period. If conciousness is your defining characteristic of being worthy of living then you have to decide what level of conciousness. do senile people deserve to live? how about those with a lower mental capacity? And as far as the soul goes. Are you sure there isn't such a thing? cause in that case why should any human life be valuable? If it is not of use to society then just get rid of it. I'm not sure you really want to go that route.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Futurama was (almost) Right!
The NIH even publishes guidelines on how to keep your embryonic stem cell research from impacting your other funding.
Clear, Dark Skies
if women laid eggs and then walked away from them, never to return, then the anti-abortion crowd would be 100% ethical and moral in their stance
however, mother nature has designed us mammals so that for a moment in time, 2 lives are interconnected biologically, and then, 2 lives are socially connected for years
what this means is that you can not consider either the rights of the fetus or the rights of the mother in a vacuum and consider yourself to be moral or ethical
therefore, to fall 100% on the side of fetal rights is to basically consider a woman to be nothing but a breeding pod chamber
and to fall 100% on the side of maternal rights is tantamount to considering infanticide reasonable
but, of course, exactly where you draw the line, exactly when you draw the line: 3 months old fetus... 3 day old fetus... whatever, that becomes the critical question
and the problem is that no outside panel of people, no matter how reasonable or passionate about the issue, can decide the issue to satisfaciton on each individual case
there is, however, one person who can make such a passionate, reasonable decision: the mother
it seems that the anti-abortion crowd thinks women are all out having one night stands at raves and then aborting a month later and going to another rave to have one night stands the same night
as if women don't have any feelings about the fetus?! why do anti-abortionists have such a dim view of women?
so let the mother decide, and the mother ALONE decide, and all of us hyperconcerned but UNINVOLVED third party members should learn to BUTT OUT
this is the ONLY moral and ethical stand you can take on abortion: the mom decides, no one else can possibly have a say
is it superior to force a woman to have a child she does not love with no father there to support it?
are we only in the business of punishing women for acts of sex outside of marriage? what about the man's responsibilty?
the more you examine the issue, the more you realize anti-abortion stances are simply anti-women
let the mother decide, it's her body, and you cannot assume she doesn't care about the fetus, unless you have some sort of psychological problem with women
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is no ban on stem cell research or even funding stem cell research - there is a ban on funding /embryonic/ stem cell research which has nothing to do with the original article - which people have pointed out over and over again.
The value of adult stem cells has been shown over and over again. The value of embryonic stem cells has never been shown and, in fact, embryonic stem cells cause all sorts of havoc when injected into another individual. Havoc like sudden cancers caused by the embryonic cells not adapting well to life in a grown host.
Clear, Dark Skies
There was a case in Royal Oak MI where a 16 year old with severe heart damage was treated with stem cells from his bone marrow. This was almost 2 years ago and seems to have been a complete success, but you never read about it. It saved the kid from needing a heart transplant.
m ai n542962.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/06/tech/
or google for royal oak heart stem cell
If the only thing of value is that more lives were saved than lost, then the same argument can be applied to therapies derived from embryonic stem cells.
If more lives are saved than lost, what do you care if a few embryos were harvested for this treatment.
Clear, Dark Skies
As a quick google would have told you.
Clear, Dark Skies
Yeah, kind of funny (not ironic) that research which isn't being funded well can't produce a single cure, whereas the research that _is_ does. Duh.
This has actually been a far larger problem with totipotent embryonic stem cells than with adult stem cells of the type seen in the article.
It should also be noted that the effect is often different than the common conception of tumors. What is seen (mostly in animal trials, since that is were it has mostly been done) is that injected stem cells which, for example, are meant to help the heart instead decide to turn into bone tissue or nerve tissue or something else that shouldn't be there. This certainly qualifies as a tumor, since it is a detrimental and abnormal growth, but it usually rather different than the kind of malignancy most people think of as cancer.
Adult stem cells from bone marrow are already partially differentiated so they almost always only become cells related to blood or muscle tissues. Hence the risk of them turning into bone or nerve tissue after injection is considerably reduced.
Ultimately, if the use of embryonic stem cells is to be succesful, it may rely on finding ways to program the cells to evolve in a particular desired direction.
Technically, it's true--technically, states were free to set the drinking age to whatever they saw fit, and technically, research labs are free to conduct embryonic stem cell research on new cell lines.
[...]
There exist only a bare handful of labs who can afford to lose government funding. When the government says "Do this or you'll lose your federal funding", a PI can either do what the government says or close up shop--which means losing years of research, losing his livelihood, and firing a group of highly trained, carefully sought-after and brilliant scientists.
I'm sorry, but you're completely and utterly wrong.
Research institutions with federal funding are already easily working around the federal funding restrictions.
For example, the University of Wisconsin - currently the number one recipient of federal research grant money in general, and recipient of the greatest number of R01 NIH grants - launched the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, a private research institute, in part to work around these restrictions. The institute can pursue embryonic stem cell research without affecting federal funding at the University of Wisconsin in any way. The NIH even has guidelines and recommendations about how institutions can work around federal funding guidelines for embryonic stem cell research, so as not to jeopardize other funding. California is doing the same sort of thing.
"Acknowledge the reality of the situation," indeed.
A complete change of life.
They now can line up to get their mojo injected.
Yeah baby. Yeah!
"Indian Doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences have performed a radical new operation of sorts by pioneering the method of stem cell injections...There will now be a national stem cell centre at AIIMS which will coordinate the research and its applications..."
So, despite the assurances of U.S. politicos, once again the U.S. is NOT the world leader in science and technology. Another country leads (gasp! A THIRD-WORLD country!), and the U.S. has a flat tire.
Standard U.S. knee-jerks:
"Stem-cell" == "abortion"
"nuclear" == "bomb"
"food" == "McDonald's"
"Britney Spears" == "music"
"language" == "English"
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
This is getting ridiculous with all the posts trying to use this to justify the effective ban on embryonic stem cell research. IF you belIeve that this research is immoral that's fine - I do understand your opinion and I have no problem with it though I disagree.
BUT stop claiming that the denial of federal funds doesn't make embryonic stem cell research in the US very difficult. Stop claiming that there is no merit to embryonic stem cell research - that is just patently untrue (yes I am a scientist and I have worked with EC but not ES cells). Look up Parkinson's and Diabetes and get a developmental biologist to explain to you why embryonic stem cell research provides hope for a cure to these diseases. Or read NIH's own summary on stem cell research
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics1.asp
Like I said if you have strong opinions that embryonic cell research is immoral - stand up for yourself and just say so. I respect that much more than trying to trick other people into accepting your agenda with naked FUD.