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Stem Cell Tourist Dies From Treatment In Thailand
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, news that Costa Rica was shutting down a large stem cell clinic sparked a debate here on Slashdot about whether patients should be allowed to take the risks that come with untested treatments. Now comes news of what can happen when patients go looking for a shortcut. A patient suffering from an autoimmune disease that was destroying her kidneys went to a Bangkok clinic, where doctors injected her own adult stem cells into her kidneys. Now she's dead, and a postmortem revealed that the sites of injection had weird growths — 'tangled mixtures of blood vessels and bone marrow cells.' Researchers say the treatment almost certainly killed her."
To a nontrivial(though, certainly, not wholly comprehensive) degree, this system already exists de facto.
First, you have FDA-approved drugs, treatments, and devices. Then, you have clinical trials of drugs, treatments, and devices hoping to join the first category; but not yet there.
This latter category recruits trial subjects from either the public at large(for the safety/tolerability portion of the studies) or from the patient pool for whatever the condition is(for the efficacy portion). This means that, in practice, a fair number of patients(weighted toward those for whom the FDA-approved stuff isn't cutting it) are taking experimental, unapproved, therapies, with effort being made to minimize the danger; but with the recognition that this isn't without its risks. Now, it is true that not everyone who wants to can necessarily get into a given trial. Some are just size-limited. In other cases, the group running the trial might be cherry-picking patients to try to get the results they want(ie. if you drug kills a bunch of people, or fails to cure, your odds of FDA approval go down. This creates an incentive to keep the hopeless cases away.)
There is also the intermediate category of off-label use. Once something is FDA-approved, doctors are not required to use it only for whatever it was originally approved for(the manufacturer can't market it for any unapproved use; but doctors are free to prescribe it for pretty much whatever they deem suitable, subject only to the risk of this being declared "malpractice").
Adult stem cells have been studied for 40 years. Embryonic stem cells have been studied for 12. Adult stem cell therapies are limited to blood disorders (mostly bone marrow transplants).
New ASC therapies are in trials using manipulation techniques learned from ESC research, but simply nothing can match the pluripotency of ESCs. Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (ipSCs) are fine for research but due to the induction methods and production efficiency issues are wholly unsuitable for therapies.
The "market for dead babies" line is just so much inflammatory ignorant bullshit. The lines are generated from surplus material which would otherwise be discarded.
Yes, you are flat out wrong.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
You have a moral issue with embryonic stem cell research because you have not clue what it entails.
Embryonic Stem Cell Basics
"Most embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro--in an in vitro fertilization clinic--and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are not derived from eggs fertilized in a woman's body. The embryos from which human embryonic stem cells are derived are typically four or five days old and are a hollow microscopic ball of cells called the blastocyst."
A blastocyst is the embryonic clump of cells, approximately 70 to 100 cells, that would have the potential to turn into a baby if it were in a womb. As noted in the basics these blastocysts are not in a womb, they will never develop a placenta or form into a human.
Using political power and social pressure to hold back embryonic stem cell research does not mean it has no potential uses, it means there has been limited research, that's all.
I'm glad you admitted that you do not understand because that truly is the root of the entire debate.
Embryonic Stem Cell Basics
- Embryonic stem cells can become all cell types of the body because they are pluripotent. Adult stem cells are thought to be limited to differentiating into different cell types of their tissue of origin.
- Embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture. Adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues, so isolating these cells from an adult tissue is challenging, and methods to expand their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out. This is an important distinction, as large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies.
In conclusion, there is no sane reason to be morally opposed to embryonic stem cell research due to a need for dead babies as no babies ever die for embryonic stem cell research.
Or perhaps you believe that virtually every man and woman on the planet are baby killers because they do not ensure that every single spermatozoa and ovam is given a chance to become a baby.
Perhaps you think that manufacturers of sanitary napkins and condoms are the enablers of baby killing.
You do see how irrational one can be when the probability of cells becoming a human becomes the basis for a moral standard, don't you? If you ever experience a nocturnal emission or go through a menstrual cycle without producing offspring then you are the same type of baby killer as the embryonic stem cell researchers. Obviously you did not kill any babies and neither did the researchers.