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Stem Cells Cultivated Free of Animal Contaminants
qewl writes "In a follow-up to this story, researchers at Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology have created a new method of growing human embryonic stem cells that has overcome the major obstacle of animal contaminants to their use for human treatments. As President George W Bush has restricted federal funding of this research to limited cell lines existing since 2001, scientists have strived to find ways to keep the lines pure. Irina Klimanskaya and colleagues at ACT grew the stem cells from the beginning on a cell and serum-free mixture called an extracellular matrix. "The importance of this work, of course, is that by eliminating contact with animal and human cells, you minimize the risk of contamination with pathogens that could be transmitted to patients and the population at large," Dr. Lanza at ATC said."
Incorrect. Stem cell research has been going on for years in the U.S. and other countries. Bush is just the first president that has said anything about it because stem cell research became politicized round about when he was running for office.
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Here goes the karma sacrifice.
The Russians, who are quite clever, have figured out how to use non-embryonic stem cells to cure spinal cord injuries.
Article
Six spinal patients of one of Russian private clinics agreed to participate in a special experiment, which was based on the above-mentioned method. Patients' own stem cells were injected in the place of spinal cord rupture. A positive result was registered with five of the volunteers: they could feel their legs, even move them a little, pelvic organs retrieved their functions too.
You know that it's interesting that this guy has treated people with stem cells and cured spinal illnesses with the patient's own stem cells! Meanwhile people are talking about embryonic stem cells which haven't yet cured anybody yet. I'm not a doctor but won't these embryonic cells be rejected because they've got different DNA then the person being treated?
I don't really care either way on the abortion issue but this whole thing makes me think that the side effect of successful embryonic stem cell research will be to reward people montetarily for having abortions or at least make people feel good about aborting.
Stem cells are commonly harvested from fertilized embryos, long before they enter the fetal stage. The whole point and promise of stem cells are that their DNA has not differentiated any of its expression/repression of genes. We all know that your DNA is the same throughout your body, but what makes a difference is what genes are expressed in each cell. That is what leads to cell differentiation in the body and the main reason why stem cells are so powerful. These plain, all encompassing cells can be grown in certain controlled conditions in order to obtain whatever kind of cells your body needs, theoretically. The problem with using an old stem cell line is that with each separation, the DNA mutates a litle bit. A couple of base pairs are cut off of each end of the DNA strands with each cell division. This loss of base pairs from the end of each strand of DNA during the replication of DNA are what eventually lead to the aging of cells.
About the rejection of cells by the body, your body decides whether or not a cell is "natural" from the genes that are expressed by the cells as well as different proteins that come out from the surface of cells. At no point does a macrophage enter a cell and check every little bit of DNA to see if it "matches" or not. Why would they be able to do organ transplants if that were the case? With a larger number of stem cell lines to choose from, there may be a greater chance for cells to be similar to each other.
Keep in mind that there are many places to harvest stem cells, from many stages of human life. There are the embryonic stem cells, fetal stem cells, placental stem cells, childhood stem cells and adult stem cells to choose from. However, as the body ages, a smaller percent of cells in the body are actually stem cells. Now, say you harvest the stem cells of an adult seeking treatment for a medical condition and send them to a lab to grow. Do you have any idea of how much difficulty there would be in setting this up on a large enough scale to treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's? Do you know how long it would take to grow enough stem cells to be a viable treatment for a patient? Now, if you could establish cell lines with the thousands of frozen embryos are there frozen at fertility clinics around the world with no hope of ever becoming a child, you could create enough cell lines to be able to treat anyone. THAT is the power of the embryonic stem cell.
Why does it always HAVE to fall back to the Imperial Federal Government to fund everything with MY money?
Let it be done by private organizations, who are faster, more efficient, and FAR more effective.