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First Human Embryonic Stem Cell Study Approved
dogmatixpsych writes "The FDA recently approved a privately funded study where human embryonic stem cells will be transplanted into subjects with complete spinal cord injuries. All trials will be paid for and conducted by researchers working for Geron Corporation. The stem cells come from the existing lines Pres. Bush approved federal funding for in August 2001. With Barack Obama now president, many scientists believe federal funding will soon become available for embryonic stem cell research on new cell lines, resulting in additional similar studies."
Good move! I say Obama should be given a raise, free beer, moderations at +5, and infinite karma!
Would stem cell therapy be considered drug therapy? I wonder why the FDA provides approval? Is that the only government agency that enforces this type of research? Me thinks it's great that this "work toward curing disease such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes." is finally getting the approval it deserves.
Namaste
Gotta love the FDA. How long has this technology been around before they finally approved the first human tests of it? Did you know that if current FDA regulations had been in place at the time, neither penicillin nor aspirin would have ever been approved for human use?
Liberty in your lifetime
"With Barack Obama now president, many scientists believe federal funding will soon become available for embryonic stem cell research on new cell lines, resulting in additional similar studies."
Is there a way to stop with the political jabs and bullshit that has been floating around /. for the past few days? It's annoying.
many scientists believe federal funding will soon become available for embryonic stem cell research on new cell lines, resulting in additional similar studies.
Sounds great, but, ummm, aren't we already broke?
It seems many people don't notice that "embryonic stem cell research" is different from "stem cell research." Research has been done on cures involving adult stem cells (e.g., the patients' own) already. I believe this particular ban was on embryonic stem cell research, presumably for abortion/anti-abortion reasons.
Whether or not you agree or disagree with the use of human embryos in this example, there is a distinction that needs to be realized. Adult stem cell research has been going on, IIRC, and has had success already, but people rarely talk about it. Most people, if asked whether or not "stem cell research" was legal, automatically seem to think about embryonic stem cell research and say "no." There seems to be a lack of enthusiasm for it, even though it's been proven to help.
On a more political note, IMO, it is strange for someone to support the usage of human embryos when he refuses to answer when he thinks human life begins? In that case, he is not sure that these human embryos are NOT "real humans," which is an interesting ethical/moral position to be in)
It's a shame this became political, because the fact is that stem cells from sources that don't require the destruction of life have not been adequately studied, and actually HAVE produced successful treatments.
But, if the government slush funds are all going to be pointed at this for political reasons, I guess the embryo-farming will soon begin.
"Thanks Bush for making it so life-saving treatment research got delayed so much. You stupid fuck."
Fuck Yeah! Because we KNOW it will work, and we KNOW that the existing lines are useless, and we KNOW that the only thing stopping the miracle cures was lack of Federal funding, and we KNOW there won't be side affects, and we KNOW that adult stem cell research will amount to nothing.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
At least we can safely say that Democrats have no problem with corporate welfare either. Yep, all of these embryonic stem cells are miracle cures, but, god forbid, every biotech company feels the need to pony up to Washington so Obama can pay for the research.
Right and like 10 TRILLION in bailouts thanks to REPUBLICAN screwups isn't corporate welfare? At least R&D funding has a decent chance to make our lives better. The bailouts are just going to office redecoration, golf trips, spa trips and fat bonuses.
Nice, how the wording got changed so that it says the opposite of what is conveyed by the CNN article!
Slashdot article says:
The source article actually states:
And thus:
And about damn time.
As someone who works in biological research I sort of agree with you. Not that we shouldn't be funding scientific research, but no one should be able to patent research done with public money. I like the NIH rule that any federally funded research must be published in an open access journal. I would argue for another rule, that any patents from federally funded research must be licensed freely, if granted at all.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The embryonic stem cell research ban was just on FEDERAL funding of such research when using non-approved embryonic stem cell lines. This story is about privately funded research using approved stem cell lines, and so doesn't conflict with the Bush administration ban, or have anything to do with the change in administrations.
So ya, it's a cheap shot.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Why didn't the scientific community just buy access to the stem cells found in the amniotic sacs of the millions of live births that take place every year? You can't seriously argue that aborted tissue samples are needed when there is no shortage of women or hospitals that would be willing to sell the amniotic fluid from a healthy birth for scientific research.
I have never understood the controversy here since there are plenty of alternatives to taking it from healthy babies, aborted babies, etc.
Good to see that you have a president who seems to act on the basis of reality rather than listening to the mumbo jumbo of the religious fantasists. It would be nice if we had something like that in the UK.
The REPUBLICANS weren't behind the "affordable housing mission". Democrats blocked regulation in 2004, attacking the regulator, and defeated the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, cosponsored by John McCain. Democrats like Barney Frank cried racism whenever the republicans suggested regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and had control of the house financial services committee which oversees the GSEs.
"I worry, frankly, that there's a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a
threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out . But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing."
Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.)
House Financial Services Committee hearing
Sept. 10, 2003
"I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They're not the best investments these days from the long- term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward. They're in a housing market. I do think their prospects going forward are very solid. And in fact, we're going to do some things that are going to improve them."
Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.)
July 14, 2008
"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation."
John McCain
May 26, 2006
Here are some additional quotes from the Fannie/Freddie Fraud Investigation in 2004
BAKER (R-LA): It is indeed a very troubling report, but it is a report of extraordinary importance not only to those who wish to own a home, but as to the taxpayers of this country who would pay the cost of the clean up of an enterprise failure.
WATERS (D-CA): Through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke, Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.
MEEKS (D-NY): As well as the fact that I'm just pissed off at OFHEO, because if it wasn't for you, I don't think that we'd be here in the first place, and now the problem that we have and that we're faced with is: maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you've given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the, uh, the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they've done a tremendous job. There's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong, you know, with Fannie Mae! Freddie Mac has come up on its own. And the question that then presents is the competence that -- that -- that -- that your agency uh, uh, with reference to, uh, uh, deciding and regulating these GSEs. Uh, and so, uh, I wish I could sit here and say that I'm not upset with you, but I am very upset because, you know, what you do is give -- you know, maybe giving any reason to, as Mr. Gonzales said, to give someone a heart surgery when they really don't need it.
ROYCE (R-CA): In addition to our important oversight role in this committee, I hope that we will move swiftly to create a new regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, for Freddie Mac, and the federal home loan banks.
CLAY (D-MO): This hea
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
There are over 400,000 frozen embryos stored in IVF clinics around America that won't be used for pregnancies. Some of them won't be released by the people whose gametes were used to create them, some won't be in a condition usable for science. But there's a lot that could be used for science. They should be, immediately. Actual people with actual diseases are already waiting for the therapies that research will bring, and the line forming behind them lines up forever into the future.
--
make install -not war
scientists are discovering ways to make adult cells revert to stem cell status
here's a recent methodology:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090107134633.htm
in the near future, there will be no need for stem cells, or rather, stem cells will be made from sources no moralist, medical ethicist, or religious dogmatist could possibly object to
what better way to solve an intransigent divide between science and religion than to make the issue moot?
now if only someone can come up with a methodology to make evolution look like "the word of god", and we're all good
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Very appropriate and good response. Wish I had mod points for you.
You are an idiot
Ugh.
It requires a lot of time and money to find another way to do something we already know how to do. So whether adult stem cells will amount to something or not, we spent several years doing very little else.
However long it takes for the treatments to come to market, wouldn't it have been a lot nicer for them to come to market five years earlier?
I'd mod you if I had the points, but this will have to do. I have found it hilarious how many people blame Bush for the problems with our economy (blame him for the mistakes in Iraq, that's legit) when in fact the Democrats, going all the way back to Clinton, are the ones who have put us in this mess.
I will blame the Republican majority in the House and Senate in the 90's and early this decade for not doing something about it, although admittedly they did try a few times to fix it (McCain among others). However, apparently they didn't try hard enough. People talk of wanting Bush to get tried for war crimes, but in my opinion it's people like Barnie Frank who should be impeached or recalled for willful disregard when it comes to oversight of the housing market, chiefly as it concerns Fannie and Freddie.
It has been made crystal clear that the stimulus package, while having saved the credit industry from collapse, did little good other than to keep the majority of major banks from folding. Lending has not increased but instead continues to retract, and there is no evidence that supports the big three auto makers avoiding collapse as well (other than possibly Ford, assuming their sales recover). The handling of the economy and in particular spending has been an absolute joke over the past 4 years, and while people would love nothing better than to blame Bush, who submits yearly budgets, it is Congress, who approves the budget, who should really be at the forefront of blame. Republicans lost their mandate due to the handling of the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, most voters are too dumb to realize that the other party, the Democrats, were as clueless on the housing and credit crisis as the Republicans were on fighting a lengthy conflict in the middle east. If we only had more people who cared about the economy and the government's incompetency in managing it's duties, both parties would've been ejected from office and we'd have gotten a few more forward lookers in Washington. Too bad that'll never happen in my lifetime.
How ironic is it that Iraq eventually turned around, whereas we're just beginning to really see the seams crack in our economy?
I think patenting work done with public money is okay, as long as, like you said, the patent is licensed freely. This protects the work of the scientists, doctors, etc, as it pertains to credit for their work, but at the same time doesn't allow them to derive obscene profits off of public money.
There is a common belief that embryonic stem cells, because they have the potential to differentiate into any cell line instead of just one or two, are somehow "better" than the other myriad types of cells. This ignores the fact that it's much harder to stop ESCs from continuing to differentiate, which is why you get tumors at an alarming rate.
This is in turn rooted in another common incorrect notion, namely that stem cells repair injury by differentiating into new cells and tissue. The first decade of research in this field has largely disproved this notion. Instead, stem cells seem to alter the host response to injury, such that normal repair mechanisms function much more effectively. Stem cells tend to get stuck in the lungs when given intravenously, but still result in improved repair at remote sites; conversely, after direct injection of cells into a site of injury, most of those cells are someplace else in the body after 24 hours.
This is why the Geron trial is limited to spinal cord injuries that are less than two weeks old. Once scar formation has occurred, this therapeutic target is gone, and there is currently no notion of how to truly "reconstruct" a spinal cord in a long-standing paraplegic patient.
RTFA? This is slashdot, right? Or did I take a wrong turn somewhere?
"Bush is the devil!"
"Everything's the devil to you, Mama!"
welcome our stem-cell powered superhuman overlords.
Stem cells are genotype specific. That means in order for stem cells to be available for
YOU that YOUR stem cells (or at least those that are genetically identical to yours) must be
available.
For most of the population, any reliance on embryonic stem cells requires a cloned embryo be produced.
This pretty much opens the door to human cloning, so Bill Gates can live on through a series of
clones. There is no way this technology could ever be contained to just producing stem cells
and make sure the embryo was destroyed after harvesting of cells.
Thank you, jcnnghm. Excellent post. It's hard to refute facts such as these.
It's hilarious when people blame this on the "unregulated market", when the exact opposite is true. This was caused by government meddling in the private sector. It was not a problem caused by "a lack of oversight". This was caused by insanely stupid policies that were almost guaranteed to be a financial train wreck in the long term. And no, this was not unforeseen by everyone. Plenty of people were plenty worried about this issue. But the people who were trying to prevent this mess happen to belong to a currently unpopular political party now mostly out of power.
Of course, you know that Barney Frank and his cohorts are pretty much untouchable at this point. I'm certainly not expecting any one of them to pay any sort of political price for this. But damn, at the very least, we DO need to see criminal investigations of the fraud going on at Fanny and Freddy. Tell me, why the blistering reactions to what Enron did, but not a peep about these guys running these institutions into the ground? I'll have a much better opinion of Obama if he actually sics the Justice department on these guys.
Good times, good times...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Tylenol can easily destroy your liver. There is a very small difference between the effective dose and the poisonous dose. Add alcohol, and the situation is even worse.
African-American president to create a race of slaves.
1. While the Democrats certainly encouraged affordable housing, no bank was required to make loans that placed it in financial risk. Many regional banks and all credit unions are coming through this unscathed because they maintained financial propriety. Nor does any of this explain the practice of issuing undocumented loans or interest only loans. These practices were simply a matter of pandering to speculators.
2. NONE of this explains the MBS and CDS fiasco which is what dragged down investment banks like Lehman and Merrill Lynch. Nor the looming disaster of the derivatives market. These problems are clearly due to failed regulatory institutions.
3. If the government regulators were doing their jobs where were they when Bernie Madoff was running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?
4. Where were the financial checks on the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America? BofA was on sound footing until they were encouraged to buy Merrill, and now they are being dragged into insolvency.
5. Then there is the question of what the regulatory agencies were doing in the 7 years of 2001 to 2007 when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were engaging in questionable loan practices. It was not merely a matter of Raines; he was responsible for Freddie Mac only. BOTH companies failed.
6. Democrats were not the majority party in Congress in 2003-2004. Any legislation or regulatory activities during that period of time could not possibly have been blocked by them. Any claims otherwise are ludicrous.
7. During the Bush administration the leverage of many large financial institutions increased from a factor of 10 to a factor of 20. This coupled with increased default rates was and still is a key factor in this debacle. There is no way any responsible regulation of a financial system should permit this level of leverage.
From Wikipedia:
A 2004 SEC ruling allowed USA investment banks to issue substantially more debt, which was then used to purchase MBS. Over 2004-07, the top five US investment banks each significantly increased their financial leverage (see diagram), which increased their vulnerability to the declining value of MBSs. These five institutions reported over $4.1 trillion in debt for fiscal year 2007, about 30% of USA nominal GDP for 2007. Further, the percentage of subprime mortgages originated to total originations increased from below 10% in 2001-2003 to between 18-20% from 2004-2006, due in-part to financing from investment banks.
8. Bush was President of the Unitied States for the past 8 years, and the Republican party had majorities in the House and Senate for 6 out of the last 8 years. They did NOTHING.
This graph from Wikipedia illustrates the explosion in fraud in the system during the past 8 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mortgage_loan_fraud.svg
MBS credit rating downgrades coming home to roost:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MBS_Downgrades_Chart.png
President George W. Bush stated in September 2008: "Once this crisis is resolved, there will be time to update our financial regulatory structures. Our 21st century global economy remains regulated largely by outdated 20th century laws."[97] The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has conceded that self-regulation of investment banks contributed to the crisis.[98][99]
Locking the barn door after the horses have left? Clearly so.