Stem Cells in the Heart?

NewScientist reports that researchers have discovered stem cells in the heart, leading them to believe that the heart can regenerate itself. From the article: "The finding raises the possibility that these cardiac stem cells could one day be manipulated to rebuild tissues damaged by heart disease - still the leading cause of death in the US and UK. Because fully developed heart cells do not divide, experts have believed the organ was unable to regenerate after injury. But, in 2003, researchers at Piero Anversa's laboratory at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, US, discovered stem cells in the hearts of mice, and subsequently humans. However, they still did not know whether these stem cells actually resided in the heart or had merely migrated there from another tissue, such as bone marrow."

Comments

What is a stem cell?

[SurturZ]

I am not a medical researcher, but my understanding is that a stem cell is a primitive type of cell that can grow into another type of cell. The fuss about stem cell research is that human foetuses have a large supply of stem cells, because they have not finished growing yet. So harvesting aborted foetuses would be one way to provide stem cells for research. This is controversial for obvious reasons.

Nature, the idiot.

[Sqreater]

Nature is not an idiot. She did not spend 4 billion years or so evolving homo sapiens just to overlook stem cells as the source of repair for all our medical problems. She has intimate knowledge of stem cells. If she doesn't use them, they don't work. It's not like she doesn't care. She's built, laboriously, a magnificent immune and repair system.

Stem cells are one of the biggest frauds the scientific-industrial-complex has come up with in years. Already, debt-burdened California has been convinced to fund 3 billion dollars for embryonic stem-cell "research." After much breathless reportage on how stem cells would solve all our medical problems, Proposition 71 passed in November of 2005. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov 2004/tc20041115_9013_tc024.htm I bet the gray-haired boys and girls of science are patting each other on the back over this one and guzzling Glenlivet while smoking Cuban cigars.

"It's academic and research institutions like Stanford University, the University of California, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. Between them, they're expected to receive the lion's share of California's funding plan."

I put stem cell research right up there with atom smashers, fusion power, and a manned trip to Mars as worthless "busyscience" endeavors designed to drain the public purse and steal standard-of-living from the taxpayer.

News media, stop the scientist worship or we'll end up funding a multi-trillion dollar perpetual motion machine built in the middle of some one of the world's major oceans.