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First Embryonic Stem Cell Clinical Trial Imminent
An anonymous reader writes "California-based Geron has announced that the first embryonic stem cell trial may be in the not-so-distant future. Tom Okarma, Geron's CEO, recently announced that the company will be seeking permission from the FDA to begin clinical trials. From the article: 'Geron's plan is to treat people that have acute spinal injuries with oligodendrocyte progenitor cells grown from human ESCs. Oligodendrocyte cells support neurons in the brain and spine by sheathing them in myelin, a fat that helps neurons to transmit signals.'"
But what I'm really afraid of is that, despite whatever scientific significance such a trial could have, the religious right will immediately jump on this and squelch it without giving it any sort of chance. At least, hopefully, we can get the scientific advances later from countries that are more willing to do the research.
What frightens me is that even with proven advances in adult stem cells, some people squelch it for research that has inherent problems with the body rejecting the cells. These people claim that anti-science religious groups are attacking them. Huh?
I know that our pharmacological community is more concerned with making a buck and keeping us sick then actually curing diseases.
That's a pretty ridiculous thing to say. Yes, pharmaceutical companies want to make a buck, but scientists are human beings and many of them are doing their best to create the best drugs they can to help people. To think that they're intentionally withholding drugs or not trying to cure diseases to keep making money is simply ridiculous and paranoid.
There are tons of people working to cure cancers, Parkinson's, AIDS, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. If you think otherwise, you don't know anything about medical research. The fact that these things aren't yet cured is not from a lack of trying. There's still a great deal about the human body we don't know. There's tons about stem cells we don't understand. The human body is so amazingly comlpex, it's incredible that we can do the things we can do already.
Remember, drug companies and researchers came up with a number of vaccines for diseases that no longer plague us. Bacterial infections are fatal about 1/1000th as often as they used to be, thanks to the work of drug companies.
Don't get me wrong, they're not charity organizations and I'm not trying to make them out to be that. They're trying to make money for their stockholders, and that's their job. The people who work for them are trying to cure diseases, though. That's their job.