Lead Into Gold: More Scientists Eschew ESCR and Cloning for IPSC Research
It may not yet be a full fledged exodus, but it would appear that the tide has changed dramatically. Where just a few years ago the clamor to overturn the Bush policy was touted throughout the media and among the politicians of the Science Establishment, it now appears that many of the world's top scientists are moving away from ESCR/Cloning and toward IPSC research.
At least that is the take of the splendid bioethics newsletter Bioedge. In the latest edition, for example, it tells of George Q. Daly, the former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research turning to IPSC research--even though only a little while ago he testified that cloning offered the best hope for obtaining patient specific pluripotent stem cells. From the story:
Bioedge notes a similar change in California:Like a number of other leading stem cell scientists, Dr Daley seems to be quietly abandoning human embryonic stem cells, which are obtained by destroying human embryos. This represents a radical about-face. Back in 2005 he testified before the US Senate that: "Although [reprogramming] is worth pursuing, it is extremely high-risk, and may take years to perfect, and may never work as well as nuclear transfer [cloning], which we know we can practice today." [Me: Of course, that was, shall we say, a misstatement. Scientists couldn't practice human nuclear transfer then, and as far as we know still cannot today.]
He was certain then that therapeutic cloning was the only sure path and demanded a change in legislation. "Already proven routes to obtaining embryonic stem cells from excess IVF embryos or through the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer," he continued, "should not be put on hold pending the outcomes of the more speculative methods.
As it turns out, by using these "more speculative methods" Dr Daley and his colleagues have made more progress in six months than he had in years toiling over embryonic stem cells.
Until August, all press releases from the CIRM described it as "the largest source of funding for human embryonic stem cell research in the world". In January it scolded President Bush for not realising that "human embryonic stem cells clearly remain the gold standard for research into pluripotent cells". It firmly squelched hopes about reprogramming: "it will not, for the foreseeable future, be suitable for clinical studies in human because of safety concerns".If this continues, and it becomes clear that the tide is irreversibly flowing toward IPSCs, the political ability to create an international ban on human cloning without the catcalls of CURES! CURES! CURES! to distract leaders from doing the right thing will increase. We may actually be able to throttle human cloning before it gets too far out of the test tube.
In May it stated that it was funding new facilities to allow human embryonic stem cell research "and other stem cell approaches”. The latest press release, dated August 13, however, contains a small but significant change in the CIRM's self-description: "in the world". It appears that the CIRM's love affair with slow, inefficient, expensive, ethically fraught and legally complex human embryonic stem cells may be drawing to a close. In the very near future the CIRM could be boasting that it is the "the largest source of funding for pluripotent stem cell research in the world, as well as other stem cell approaches".
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:55 AM
42 Comments
42 Comments:
I think the broad scientific community is definitely moving towards iPSCs. They are cheaper, faster, easier and purer.
The call for CURES! will not change by this, it will only grow louder. iPSC cells are induced from cloned cells made by the body millions of times a day. iPSC cells could become a person as easily as ESCs, but they are not created with the motivation to become so. Cloning is not a bad word, it is a beautiful natural word. Cloning is a process which without, life would not be possible as we know it.
I doubt that the calls for cures through iPSCs are going to grow louder. The politicians who jumped on this and the biotech leaders are and were motivated by something other than people getting well. Those sufferers like my dad who has more ailments than anyone I know-and who passionately opposes killing innocent life for his benefit, are no longer useful for political purposes, whether that is to win elections or to use them as props to vote money from the treasury to their companies or universities. If they cared, they would have pushed adult stem cell research which is actually helping people. But they can't distinguigh themselves from GWB and others on this one so the call for cures are not going to get the same amplitude as it did before. And the media can't use it to harm the Catholic church and pro-lifers.
The sad thing about the apparent nearing end of this intrinsically evil enterprise (if it is truly fatally undermined by iPSCs) is that it was a technological breakthrough, not a change of heart. The researchers leaving this evil enterprise are not doing it because it they came to see the evil, but because something else works better. They'd continue in it and will do the same and maybe more evil in the future. If it wasn't for the Fetus Farming prohibition, there's no doubt we'd see a march toward that if it showed more promise. We'll see these same people again in some future evil enterprise where they promise all kinds of benefits if we will just let them trample on human life and human dignity. The same argument will be used that says that since we don't intend human life to grow into born humans, it's okay to clone and kill.
Scientists lose much of their remaining authority with this. How many times and with how many things have we been told that this new thing represents the best possibility for cures to anything and everything based on scientific authority? Long time pro-lifers remember the fetal tissue buzz in 1992. If we could just use all that fetal tissue that was going to be thrown away anyway, we could cure Alzheimers and other things, but those evil self righteous pro-lifers and Catholics are in the way, keeping people from getting healed and that we don't care. That seemed to have worked as well as ESCs. History repeats.
This post also shows the foolishness of expertitis That is, a lot of people post excerpts from noted experts on ESCR only to have those experts sing a different tune later. O well. So much for footnotes.
I'm glad for what looks to be a win, but it could have been much better. We're still left with the view that human life is expendable and a means to another human's ends. We'll see this same thing happen again soon, especially if there's some political and financial gain.
Well Don, I'll agree to disagree. I think you will hear a lot more about breakthroughs leading toward cures that result from pluripotent research.
Pluripotent research is advancing at a rapid pace, as evidenced by the fact that scientists around the world can now focus on individual diseases by cloning the specific iPSC lines. So yes that is a win for science. If that happens to meet your personal ethical requirements well then bully for you too.
If we had it your way to begin with iPSC advancements would not be possible today. Science would be on a dead end road without knowledge and understanding of developmental biological processes that occurs ar the pluripotent stage.
The Adult Stem Cells you exclusively promote will be created from cloned pluripotent cells. Do I need to connect the dots for you?
Quite simply your narrow vision of the future of ASCr will draw from the very ESCr-->iPSC technologies you have spent years criticizing. How Ironic.
Fortunately this is real progress, not some contrived list of therapies provided by religious think tanks in attempt to politicize science.
Yes Chad Cowan is guilty of expertitis because he is , well, an expert - one of the best in the world. If you think that pluripotent research is just going away in a few years that speaks volumes about your ignorance.
I don't think you need to connect dots Dark Swan. Your team has been trying to connect them for a long time and they've come up busted. ASCs are doing just fine. Scoreboard friend. This is an ethical, not a technical argument anyway. If it ESCR and cloning didn't kill human beings there'd be no problem.
If you want to call Do No Harm and others religious think tanks, go ahead, it makes you look bad. It sure looks to me that those adult-non embryonic stem cell successes happened in real clinical and therapeutic settings, not in baptismal founts, chapels or in seminaries. To say the list is contrived undermines you too.
iPSCs was not on the political and politicized science radar. I think the President's Council on Bioethics report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity mentioned iPSCs, but I think they thought the regression to pluripotency was going to happen chemically. Anyway Bush, the village idiot to the ESCR political and scientific industrial complex crowd because he doesn't stroke their egos, listened to Princeton's Robert George and I think Standford's Bill Hulbert among others and believed ethical pluripotent stem cells could happen. So he funded it when Congress-obsessed with making him look bad by holding out for more human embryo killing, wouldn't or was going to be too slow to do it.
I suspect we may see some results from iPSCs and would welcome it because those cells are not obtained immorally, by killing human beings. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. We haven't seen it with ESCs, so we may not see it with iPSCs. I hope we do.
The good thing for humanity is that direct reprogramming undermines the rationale for cloning. Cloning and ESCR make targets of all of us. It makes humans out to be raw resources and threatens the very people like my dad whom it alleges to help. Once you start looking at human beings as spare parts, raw resources to be mined and manufactured to spec, or as medicinal elements, then you open the door to look around at the weak to be scavenged for parts.
So I thank God and thank Bush for the iSPC discovery and hope it continues so we'll be turned away from cloning and ESCR.
Unfortunately, I don't think you will see a rally to iPSCs (like we both probably want) by the media or the political establishment like my Senator Harry Reid who said all kinds of ugly things about Bush and his decisions. It will remind people that Bush was right and, there's nothing to be gained politically by embracing it. The political opponents of GWB didn't embrace ESCR because they cared about sufferers, most of them did it to win elections. Now something more promising is on the horizon and those sufferers aren't getting any attention because they aren't politically useful anymore. Bush's political opponents have the cells they claimed they wanted. Either they don't believe pluripotent cells have much promise, or they aren't much use for them politically.
I think ASCs are doing fine without immoral embryonic stem cells. The Bush stem cell lines are enough and there's no more need for creating and killing human beings. ESCR and cloning are evil and always will be because it instrumentalizes and commodifies human life and as a result threatens all of us.
I predict that sometime after Bush is out of office and when or as soon as belittling him doesn't help anymore, that the media will have a "Dan Quayle is right" moment about Bush. But it won't happen until they don't have him to kick around anymore.
I'd like to be an expert. They are just like weather forecasters. They only have to be right every now and then. That's easy money. George Daley-I think that was his name-at Harvard that was quoted in the SHS post insisted on cloning and now he's jumping on iPSCs. So much for experts. But we've seen them be wrong so many times that they are getting tuned out. We went through this with fetal tissue years ago in the 90's and it went off the radar for lack of results even though experts said this was strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
As to the narrow vision of ASCR, well, I'm reading the same scoreboard you are. ESCR has had tons of money poured into it and the scoredboard reads goose eggs. Usually when someone is losing 73+ to nothing they don't say they are the better team.
"The Adult Stem Cells you exclusively promote will be created from cloned pluripotent cells."
Adult stem cells are derived from non-embryonic sources such as umbilical-cord blood, bone marrow, and other places in our bodies. Are you still confusing the concept of cloning cells with cloning human embryos in order to obtain cells FROM them?
bmmg
No confusion here (never was), cloning (culturing) of disease specific iPSC cells that were created at Harvard will allow the lines to be distributed to labs around the world. It is a really exciting moment for researchers abroad.
Make no mistake, the process of culturing stem cell lines is indeed cloning. I know you're all afraid to use that word but you don't have to be.
I'll assume you basically understand that cord blood and marrow cells were once pluripotent cells that have differentiated. But if not then you should read up. The focus of this thread is that Harvard scientist have developed pluripotent stem cell lines that contain various diseases.
The goal - once the developmental mechanisms are understood will enable scientists to control the process of differentiation from pluripotent to specialized germ layers that function without the diseases, be they cord, bone or any other ASC.
Without understanding the biologiacl process from diffentiation to apoptosis and controllling mechanisms that regulate cell life cycles scientists are severly limited in their ability to find cures.
That is why pluripotent research , be it ESCr or iPSC is critical - always has been.
pro-lifers were the ones that politicized ESCr.
The moral crusaders started attacking scientific investigation - not the other way around. Once your kind made it an issue and started trying to criminalize researchers in state legislatures, thats when it got really political.
So point that finger back at yourself.
The large majority of Americans supported ESCr because they don't constitute undifferentiated in vitro embryos as a person. So being politicans - they clung to populist stances and supported what they thought people wanted.
I thank God and thank Bush for the iSPC discovery
Hmmm thats funny don, I've seen you absolutely discredit the future hope of pluripotent research in deference to ASCr in previous posts. You flip flopper you.
Not surprising your in bed with Bush though. but instead, How about thanking the scientists who were studying ESCr and figured out how to create iPSC?
George Bush is your hero eh.. That man is an idiot, powerful and evil. A dangerous combination. The fact that your all about him - enough said.
As to the narrow vision of ASCR, well, I'm reading the same scoreboard you are. ESCR has had tons of money poured into it and the scoreboard reads goose eggs. Usually when someone is losing 73+ to nothing they don't say they are the better team.
don you just dont get it - I doubt you ever will. some people just aren't capable of opening their minds to reality. You are an ideologue.
From the scientists view ASCr and ESCr ( and now iPSC) are always part of the same "team", and work together to achieve the same goals.
Its people like you who want to fracture and politicize science because of your minority opinion you feel the need to impose by keeping some ridiculous score. It isn't a game.
Scientist have never tried to turn it into a play of ASCr vs ESCr. That is done by people like you and religious think tanks like David Prentice formed at Do No Harm.
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/images/thescore_73-0.jpg
If you want to call Do No Harm and others religious think tanks, go ahead, it makes you look bad.
Again Reality eludes you don
since you cant connect the dots I'll do it for you, (for the hundredth time)
Do No Harms list of Adult Stem cell therapies was created by David Prentice so that pro-lifers zealots like you could use his CONTRIVED attempt to manufacture arguments against using ESCr.
The data itself is not an issue even though most are just clinical trials.
The problem there is that its a disingenuous argument that purports to be speaking for patients seeking treatment when all it really is Prentice trying to twist it against ESCr to advance a pro-life agenda.
David Prentice, is one of the most prominent critics of ESCr as a Senior Fellow for Life Sciences, Center for Human Life and Bioethics which is part of the Family Research Council..drumroll.....a religious think tank.
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=BY04H12
the FRC claims themselves as "Believing that God is the author of life, liberty, and the family, FRC promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview"
http://www.frc.org/mission-statement
So yes, Prentice's views are based from a religious think tank. He is the sheppard and you are the sheep.
Amen.
"Make no mistake, the process of culturing stem cell lines is indeed cloning. I know you're all afraid to use that word but you don't have to be."
No, it is those who wish to create embryos via cloning who are afraid of the word "cloning."
Again, if someone takes a cell from inside my cheek and simply creates more cells, then that's all well and good. If the person combines my cell with an ovum to create a new human embryo and then destroys that embryo to obtain his or her stem cells, then that's NOT all well and good.
"pro-lifers were the ones that politicized ESCr."
They opposed it because it involved the destruction of embryonic human beings. That's easy enough to follow.
"The large majority of Americans supported ESCr because they don't constitute undifferentiated in vitro embryos as a person."
I've got some reading for ya:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/public-opinion-and-the-embryo-debates
You will notice that, in this thorough poll, people will go from being for embryonic research to being against it in the span of two questions. Ask people if they favor "lifesaving research using embryonic stem cells," and they'll say "You bet!" Then ask if they think embryos should receive protection from being destroyed for stem-cell research and they'll say "I sure do!"
This goes along with what I've been saying for, oh, seven years now. People don't understand this issue. In fact, some of the people (read the poll) who SAY they understand the issue actually understand it the least; they'll consider themselves experts and then wrongly answer that ESCs are the ones already helping people, even as we know that ASCs are the successful ones.
ASCs have been given short shrift by (most of) the mainstream media and by most of the pro-ESCR lobby, since the success of adult stem cells means they won't be able to use this issue as a whooping stick to attack President Bush (as you seem to want to do, DS).
Further, regardless of Do No Harm's affiliations, just click on the links in the News section and you'll find that the success stories surrounding adult stem cells have been put out by organizations like Reuters, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and the BBC. Are they, also, "right-wing think tanks," DS?
Dark Swan,
Nice hustling. Life Sciences (biology) professor David Prentice PhD was on the faculty of Indiana State University and at IU Med before they ran him off. I'm guessing he had to have good stuff to get on there. Last I heard he was at Georgetown Medical school in addition to FRC. I've interviewed him several times and he has a lot more genuiness than you. Before you go public, read more than your talking points.
I would be very surprised if I have flipped on iPSCS. I'm anti ESCR/SCNT/human cloning. iPSCs are are best answer for pro-lifers and other ESCR/SCNT/Human Cloning opponents to why we should ban human cloning and stop funding ESCR. Our group Nevada LIFE had our press release and email alert out the same day hailing the new discovery of these cells and we were loudly saying that this was the end of SCNT/human cloning. We had the same glee as Wesley Smith the night before the announcement. A couple weeks later we made the same point in an op-ed in a Nevada newspaper. That provoked Harry Reid to go find a scientist at UCSD (and with the notorious CIRM) to offer up the same lame excuses that are offered today that killing human embryos and creating and destroying human life is still necessary. We also trumpeted Ian Wilmut's comments to the Nevada media that iPSCs deserved the Noble Prize, and that its discovery was equivalent to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. We learned about Wilmut's comments from reading SHS. (This is how SHS extends its influence way beyong its readership. It gets picked up by pro-life news servers and read by media spokespeople in all 50 states and repeated all over. Thank God for SHS too). I've also brought iPSCs up to legislators a couple times too as reason to not fund ESCR and continue opposition to cloning. So if you are going to accuse me of flip flopping on iPSCs I'll need some evidence so I can correct myself.
I don't know if iPSCs will cure anyone anymore than ESCs or SCNT, or fetal tissue will-which was the next great thing that moral crusaders like me were acused standing in the way of. Whatever the potential of iPSCs-I hope they work-they remove the rationale for killing more human embryos, and they remove the rationale for cloning since they give scientists and politicians the same cells they say they needed through SCNT. They are morally acceptable stem cells because they are morally obtained. So I'm all for them. As I've said, we don't know (yet) that they are going to work anymore than embryonic stem cells or SCNT which are both a BUST. But we do know that ASCs and ASCR are going great guns and running up the score. Scoreboard; Katelyn McNamara's new bladder from non-ESCR and etc.
And thank God for moral crusaders. Calling someone a moral crusader is not an argument. More of them might have stopped Mengle, Tuskegee, human experimentation in WWII Japan, China, the USSR and elsewhere and maybe they'd have ended slavery sooner. Hopefully the "moral crusaders" gave iPSCs the chance to work that Bush believed in. Otherwise the nation might be stuck up to the wheelwells in ESCR/SCNT. And hopefully these advanced technicians will walk away from it just like they did from the Tower of Babel.
As to pro-lifers politicizing this, nice try. Very Clintonesque... acuse others of the things your are guilty of. Connect the dots. We opposed it for moral reasons. It was ESCR politicians who told sufferers and their loved ones to vote for them because we didn't want them to get well. We didn't go out and tell them if we were elected that people like Christopher Reeve would walk again. That was the ESCR/Cloning industrial complex with their political scientists like Harry Reid, Kedwards et al. Those pols are frauds.
I'd be careful trying to discredit someone by their religion. Not only is that biggoted, I'm guessing that if 89 or 90 percent of Americans and half of scientists believe in God, ridiculing FRC for "Believing that God is the author of life" and etc isn't your best argument to destroying Prentice's credibility. If people believe anything about God, they believe God is the author of life.
Now, stick your finger to the wind. Which way is it blowing? Politicians have a lot of consultants and pollsters divining where the wind is going. If it were blowing toward ESCR/SCNT, it would be a campaign issue and the press would be all over it and trying to beat pro-lifers and pro-life candidates with it. It ain't happening and there's good reason. iPSCs are surpassing it and ESCR/Cloning no longer has political value. They aren't mugging for the camera with sufferers either for the same reason. It was exciting and fun for them until the iPSCs came along and rained on the parade. Not only does it undermine ESCR/SCNT, but Bush believed in it and funded it. Bummer. That turned the lights out on that party. Now, go connect the dots.
You can label pluripotent research a bust if you like - you will be proved wrong.
You can fail to understand how ESCr and ASCr correlate as part of the same process.
You can call me a bigot for pointing out Pentice's association to FRC - even though there is no bigotry in that whatsoever.
You can then contradict yourself by defending the religious think tanks Christian perspective on attacking ESCr you said didn't exist a few posts prior.
You can try to force your beliefs on a majority of society that doesn't agree with you and reject longstanding poll data from reputable sources.
You can give George bush credit for making the greatest scientific breakthrough since the discovery of DNA instead of the scientists who actually made the discovery who gave credit to their predecessors that pioneered ESCr thereby making IPSC possible.
You can accuse scientist of politicizing thier research for no reason, when common sense shows its the pro-life crowd that instigated the politicization.
You can stick you finger where ever you feel like it and gauge what you feel about George Bush, it wont make you right.
to quote you don
"it makes you look bad"
bmmg39
Yes its true, I am no fan of George Bush. Americans and the World will celebrate with me when he leaves office like no other president we've ever seen.
Are Reuters, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and the BBC also, "right-wing think tanks," DS?
No bmmg, there is a major difference here. Everyone appreciates and applauds the successes of ASCr, myself included, and it should be reported.
The difference is that pro-life think tanks and blogs like this take one scientific success and turn it into a political tool by pitting it against other scientific research in attempt to advance a political agenda . Its a manufactured argument that doesn't exist in the scientific world. Scientists are working on these problems simultaneously and progress in one will often benefit the other. Sites like donoharm are pro-lifers hijacking and politicizing science to meet their own ends.
Dark Swan,
Who in the pro-life movement and among pro-ethical stem cell research supporters and anti-cloning opponents said that George Bush put on a lab coat, went into a lab and shazam, discovered a few genes that reverted some skin cells back to a pluripotent state? I don't know of any. As I recall SHS and others were trumpeting the brilliance of these scientists when Direct Reprogramming was announced. I’m pretty sure our group publicly praised their brilliance too. And if I recall, Yamanaka was looking for a way not to kill embryos.
You accuse people of all kinds of nonsense like this-just like you accused me of opposing iPSCS. Quit twisting our words. Stop throwing up a bunch of dust and trying to confuse people. You have yet to show that I flipped flopped on iPSCs. Where did I flip flop on that Dark Swan? You made that up too. Bush is credited for restricting ESCR/SCNT/Human cloning funding and for believing in this alternate pluripotent stem cell research when others said the only way was ESCR/SCNT/Human cloning. The so called dimwitted, frat boy, cowboy, warmongering idiot president believed in it when leading researchers appear to have been surprised by it and were demanding Bush’s head and legislative changes. That’s why I will say again that I do not believe-though it could happen-that there will be a big push for iPSC funding-at least as long as Reid and Pelosi are running the show. It makes them look bad because it reminds people that Bush believed in it and funded it by executive order when the Congress wouldn’t. That explains the political silence. If iPSCs are all we hope they may be, too bad for sufferers. The politicians don’t want to make a big deal out of anything Bush supported or for it to work. They don’t want to be reminded he was right and they were wrong. I suspect iPSC research will get better public funding after Bush is gone and the media has its "Dan Quayle was right" moment with Bush.
I’m glad we can agree on one thing-that iPSCs could be the greatest discovery. You say I call it a bust, but then use the same words I used about it in my quoting of Wilmut who said it could be the greatest discovery since discovering the double helix structure of DNA. We reported that the minute Wilmut said it. But, no one picked it up in the media here. And I don’t remember seeing it in the MSM. Why, because it’s of no political value and ideological value. They sense the jig is up with ESCR/SCNT. Now that something better has come along, the media and politicians who supported ESCR/SCNT/Cloning of Human Beings are pretty quiet, at least comparatively speaking. The silence is so deafening that scientist in CA allegedly cloned himself earlier this year and then when ESCR showed some animal benefit, they were one day stories. If it happened in October, it’s worldwide news for days and weeks. They would be crucifying opponents of ESCR/SCNT Cloning and killing of human beings.
Where did I say that iPSC pluripotent research is a bust? I've encouraged it and you know it. Our group NV LIFE had its press release out on the day the discovery was announced and we have been trumpeting it as the reason to stop the cloning and killing of human clones and to end ESCR. We noted it was cheaper, easier to do and more efficient and more likely a better match and less likely to reject. I have said that ESCR and human cloning are a bust so far. Scoreboard buddy. Brazilian Diabetics off insulin for long periods of time Katelyn McNamara and all the other incredible ASC/non-ESCR successes too. Those things seem like walking on water and turning it into wine to me. Quit conflating my views on ESCR/SCNT with my views on iPSCs. That’s as dishonest as the politicians and politicizing scientists who tried to make ESCR opponents look like they opposed all stem cell research and were anti-science and anti-patient. That is phoniness and fraud. I don’t think we know if iPSCs will be any easier to control than ESCs. I hope they are. What we do know is that they are ethically procured and that prominent scientists who were pursuing ESCR/SCNT/the creation and destruction of human beings are turning toward iPSCs, as the original post said. As I said before, I hope they worked well. Stop twisting my words.
Did I point to Do No Harm as a religious think tank? I said you did. You said the Do No Harm List is “some contrived list of therapies provided by religious think tanks in attempt to politicize science.” I said “It sure looks to me that those adult-non embryonic stem cell successes happened in real clinical and therapeutic settings, not in baptismal founts, chapels or in seminaries. To say the list is contrived undermines you too.” Of course religious think tanks exist, but those results didn’t happen in them. And would those results be illegitimate if a religious think tank reported them-or at least the kind of religious think you disapprove of?
Was Prentice disqualified to teach biology or arrived at biological truth at ISU or molecular genetics at IU Med before he went to the Christian FRC where they happened to believe, horrors of horrors, in God, like 90 percent of Americans? You have to be pretty good to teach in those schools. Is he or any other Christian-if Prentice is a Christian- or person of faith incapable of speaking the truth about ESCR/SCNT/Cloning and destruction of human beings because he is not an atheist and is instead a Christian? Are the views of Christians and people of faith wrong, disqualified for consideration of public policy because they are people of faith? If yes, that's bigotry. Unfortunately it’s an acceptable bigotry in academia, politics and the media.
You can keep accusing us of what you are guilty of, that is politicizing ESCR/SCNT/Cloning and destruction of human beings, but it’s public record that it was you people who used sufferers as props to score political points by slandering us opponents by saying we could care less about them. And it was you people who told them that votes for Kedwards et al would make them well. Shame on those propagandists. They have the same type of cells that researchers and politicians said they want-and probably superior according to those who should know-and where’s the demand for the same kind of funding that they demanded with ESCR/SCNT and the moral indignation for not providing it?
Like I said, the wind is blowing toward iPSCs and away from the unethical human experimentation of ESCR/SCNT/Cloning and destruction of human beings. The experts have had their credibility hurt, and, non-ESCR results are looking pretty good, if not miraculous.
Where did I say that iPSC pluripotent research is a bust?
don the actual statement was
I've seen you absolutely discredit the future hope of pluripotent research in deference to ASCr in previous posts. You flip flopper you.
I see you trying to hide behind the word IPSC now.
Pluripotent cells have the same potential for medical success regardless of whether they are derived from ESCr or IPSC. Both yield the same pluripotent stem cells. This is basic fact. If you disagree, please educate yourself.
If you want to weasle out of your assertions of the past several years you can back peddle and trip all over yourself trying to explain away the moral differences between the two but that is not what you asserted in the following numerous posts. You have presented a firm and clear image that pluripotent cells were not worth pursuing in light of ASCr advancements from a technical success in the lab. I fully understand that you think ESCr is killing people, I dont, and I've agreed to disagree. But that is not what we're discussing, so if you have the ability to stay on topic of what we are discussing - the potential benefits of pluripotent research - and how you've derided it until it fit your political agenda.
This goes to prove how disingenuous pro-lifers like you were for the past several years. The primary reason the pro-lifers hijacked ASCr success was to turn it into a propaganda tool to fight ESCr in order to advance the pro-life agenda.
Now that IPSc has yielded a human organism that you don't consider a person you and others like Wesley have changed there tune on the potential of pluripotent research.
The fact that your likely still not willing to admit it will erode your credibility tremendously. But here is your chance to come to a rational conclusion, or at least admit the dishonesty of the agenda to use ASCr against ESCr as a political tool.
You see, if you cant even be honest with yourself, then how can we expect you to be honest with anyone else don?
Here are excepts from your blog don - before the advent of IPSC when the only pluripotent research came from ESCr:
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2006/06/cloning_begins_.html
ESCR has not provided a single cure-not even in animal studies after all of these years... It could be decades before we see any results. At the same time, other stem cell research, which uses non-embryonic stem cells-usually called “adult” stem cells-has produced more than 65 results.
Adult stem cells have overcome all of the perceived advantages of embryonic stem cells and are proving themselves to be superior.
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2006/07/index.html
After billions of private investment dollars and years of promises about cures, ESCR has not treated any human beings and there are no human trials. ESCR in animal studies has caused teratomas and has proved to be too dangerous for human trials. Private investment has deserted ESCR for ASCR because ASCR is already helping and curing thousands of people, there are over 80 ASCR cures or treatments including sickle cell anemia, and over 300 human trials on the way (2006-over 1000 trials). Bio-tech companies engaged in ESCR are broke and looking for the taxpayer to bail them out.
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2006/07/page/2/
Adult (non-embryonic) stem cell research is helping Parkinson's sufferers already and mice have been healed of diabetes in animal studies at Harvard, but the Harvard researcher's work couldn't get funding for human trials from groups like The Juvenile Diabetes foundation. What's going on with embryonic stem cell research promoters and groups like JDF when there is ethical and far more promising research which could help the people they are supposed to speak for?
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2006/07/why_continue_wi.html
Why Continue With Embryonic Stem Cell Research?
The current fight about "stem cell research" is about a kind of stem cell research, embryonic stem cell research which kills human embryos to obtain those embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cell supporters have promised to paint opponents as anti-patient and anti-science. I'd like to know what those people are smoking or drinking to say that with a straight face. They've had 20 years to come up with some cure, but they haven't. There are over 70 stem cell successes and over 500 human trials under way. Not a single one is embryonic stem cell research. All of the successes and trials are adult/non-embryonic stem cells successes. This accusation of pro-life opponents is an instance of the accuser being guilty of the charge.
Why the push for embryonic stem cells (ESCs). They are theoretically supposed to have the advantages of being easier to grow and being able to become any type of cell. Adult, or non-embryonic stem cells have met this challenge and they are easier to work with. ESCs seem to have inherent problems. They are made to work in embryos, not mature tissue. They seem to be rapid construction cells and when put into mature tissue in animal studies, they cause tumors and teratomas far too often. So why are we still pursuing this unproductive research unless there are researchers out there whose jobs depend on it?
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2007/01/another_stem_ce.html
breakthroughs like this make embryonic stem cell research more and more irrelevant and unnecessary
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2007/03/nonembryonic_st.html
there doesn't seem to be any reason anymore to proceed with embryonic stem cell research. There are over 72 human treatments/benefits successes that have been documented using non-embryonic stem cell research with over 1000 human trials underway. There are no embryonic ones.
http://nevadalifeissues.typepad.com/files/2007/04/british_team_gr.html
I wonder if there will ever be so many ASC successes/breakthroughs that one day they will report studies like this without this line, "but experts mean it doesn't mean that we should stop embryonic stem cell research. Everyone (with a brain) knows that embryonic stem cells can become any kind of cell." I'm not counting on it.
There is plenty of hope beyond embryonic stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research appears to show NO hope at all.
your words don
"Everyone appreciates and applauds the successes of ASCr, myself included, and it should be reported."
So...if those outlets are confirming ASCs helping people, is this merely a "contrived list of therapies," or do they actually exist?
bmmg39, I like that one.
Thanks Dark Swan. Those are my words indeed. Looks like I nailed it every time. I was hoping that I was as remarkably consistent as I am. I guess Nevada LIFE will keep me on for a while. There's no flip flopping. I've opposed ESCR and SCNT and I've supported iPSCs because they are ethically obtained, just like I said. I said ESCR is bombing. Good scientists are leaving ESCR and SCNT to do Direct Reprogramming. It's easier, more efficient, cheaper and there's probably a better match and etc. iPSCs are said to be turning lead into gold and I don't see many saying that about ESCs. If iPSCs have the same potential, you can argue with Wilmut and the other guys who are ditching unethical ESCR/SCNT.
I've said from the get go that iPSCs are ethical and if something comes of them, good for them. I don't know if it will, but I hope something does. ESCs may have potential, but that's all they've shown after billions of dollars in spending. O well. If they have the same potential, then I suspect we would not see the migration toward the other. Anyone can figure that out.
I'm right that there is plenty of hope beyond embryonic stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research appears to show NO hope at all. Let's see, what are there, over 70 successes plus ones Do No Harm hadn't listen last time I checked? It's hard to keep up with. There are what, 1500 human trials with non embryonic stem cell research and you and your homies have been promising us a human trial every year for how long? Like SHS says, the non-embryonic stem cell successes are getting mundane. We can't keep track of them, but we can keep track of human ESCR successes and trials. Scoreboard.
I've also been for ethical pluripotent stem cells long before Direct Programming came about. In our paper to Senator Ensign's staff we noted that ethical alternatives to ESCR/SCNT existed. In point 8b we noted
"b. Embryonic Stem Cell Alternatives. Our present state of technology does not now allow us to obtain embryonic stem cells with out destroying human beings in the embryonic stage of life. But four new proposals have been made to the President’s Council on Bioethics. “The stem cells could be derived: (1) by extracting cells from embryos already dead; or (2) by nonharmful biopsy of living embryos; or (3) by extracting cells from artificially created non-embryonic but embryo-like cellular systems (engineered to lack the essential elements of embryogenesis but still capable of some cell division and growth); or (4) by dedifferentiation of somatic cells back to pluripotency. (WHITE PAPER: Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem CellS, p. 26)
The first three have some moral objections, but the fourth alternative would turn differentiated cells back to pluripotent cells without creating a new organism (embryo). Other scientists have found a rich source of embryonic like cells in umbilical cord blood.
So we've been for ethical pluripotent stem cells for a long time. Whether they work or not, we'll see. Whether they work or not, they undermine the need for ESCR/SCNT and human cloning that creates and destroys human beings. And if they are the same type of cells, then ESCR and SCNT are probably doomed because they are so complex and expensive and so far so haven't yielded any of the promised cures and politicians are running away and first rate scientists are going another direction too.
I'm sorry if you are a researcher or investor and you are watching your fortune/job go down the drain like some of my rental properties. It's a bummer, but tomorrow is another day.
I am right that none of us ever said Bush got into a lab and created induced pluripotent stem cells. You made that up. We credited his policy for making scientists go in a different direction. If he hadn't, we might be bogged down up to the wheel wells in unproductive, unethical ESCR/SCNT and missed the other stuff that's working.
I'm also right in my description of writing off Christians as bigotry. You resort to that bigotry to try to demean ASCR successes and those who report them.
There’s no argument that David Prentice has good credentials and is qualified to say what he says, even if he is a Christian.
Dark Swan, you and I are probably more alike than you think and would probably be a much better orthodox Christian than me. That's because for you to keep saying that ESCR and SCNT holds great potential in spite of the evidence and results, you have to have great faith, the key to all great saints-those who believed what they knew was true although everything around them said no. You've got the gift.
It’s been fun and you are entertaining. I’m sure we’ll meet again. Obama’s been flipping on abortion. Gotta go and pounce on that. Bye for now.
This comment has been removed by the author.
"Everyone appreciates and applauds the successes of ASCr, myself included, and it should be reported."
So...if those outlets are confirming ASCs helping people, is this merely a "contrived list of therapies," or do they actually exist? -bmmg
bmmg - arent you a little old to be spoon fed?
the Prentice list itself was contrived as a political tool in attempt to discredit ESCr in the 2006 elections, there is no other practicle use for Prentice's list.
It merely provided propaganda for pro-lifers who wanted to impede scientists who were trying to conduct pluripotent research on ESCs.
It is widely know that the list claiming therapies for over 70 diseases is virtually exclusive to pro-life activist websites and blogs and serves no real value to people with diseases.
The list was thoroughly debunked for the propaganda it was in Science magazine in 2006, thus the scientific community viewed this list as contrived - not ASCr itself.
At the time of the lists publication there were less than a dozen therapies available for people to receive.
That didn't stop Prentice from contriving a list that to this day still includes testicular cancer for instance.
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/asc-refs.pdf
TESTICULAR CANCER
Bhatia S et al.; “High-dose chemotherapy as initial salvage chemotherapy in patients with relapsed
testicular cancer”; J. Clin. Oncol. 18, 3346-3351; Oct. 19, 2000
The misleading political intentions of Prentices list not only drew the refutation of several major scientific institutions in Science Magazine, it also promoted several major disease foundations to speak out against it for its obvious misleading intentions.
Testicular Cancer
"There is not an FDA approved ASC treatment generally available to treat testicular cancer. Rather, adult stem cells enable testicular cancer patients to withstand a higher dose of chemotherapy during treatment for the disease. ... The Lance Armstrong Foundation asks that you and your colleagues pass S. 5, and not accept any substitutes." -- Lance Armstrong Foundation
Parkinson's Disease
"If there were a therapy to adequately treat the symptoms, or halt the progression of this unrelenting disease, the millions of Parkinson's patients, caregivers, and their physicians would be pursuing that treatment right now. The Parkinson's community asks that you and your colleagues pass S. 5, and not accept any substitutes." -- American Parkinson's Association, Parkinson's Action Network, Michael J. Fox Parkinson's Research Foundation, The National Parkinson's Foundation, Parkinson's Disease Foundation, and The Parkinson's Alliance and Unity Walk
Multiple Sclerosis
"S. 5 is the only bill that is pro-patient, pro-cure, and pro-research. Please work to pass S. 5 immediately." -- National Multiple Sclerosis Society
Spinal Cord Injury
"There simply is no merit to any claims that adult stem cells have successfully treated or cured spinal cord injury. The CDRF strongly endorses the SCREA, S. 5." -- Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
I've also been for ethical pluripotent stem cells long before Direct Programming came about. - don
REALLY don..., I must have missed your promotions for pluripotent research as I read through your blogs that stated pluripotent ESCr was hopeless technology... please correct me - show me where you made these bold claims for pluripotent research so long ago?
I find it interesting that you would make this a priority while you also repeatedly claimed ESCr (the only pluripotent research at the time) had absolutely no potential. Such conflicting stances from one person.
Me thinks I smell a cow manure ethicist don. Please show me where you stated support for pluripotent research so long ago...(your words don ,not someone else's - any sheep can point to a link and say this is what I thought too)
I'll genuinely be impressed if you penned anything regarding ethical pluripotency prior to the advent of IPSC - so lets see it!
Dark Swan,
Opponents of embryonic stem cell research have been talking about ethical pluripotent alternatives to embryonic stem cell research for years. Certainly WJS has at SHS. The possibilities were there for anyone to read in the report of the president's council on bioethics several years ago. There's another report about this but I haven't had time to read it.
WJS, the Catholic church and then the pro-life movement has been looking for ethical ways to get pluripotent stem cells. I would guess that all our guests on our old radio program Voice for Life-WJS, Robert George, David Prentice, Tad Pacholcyzk and etc, who spoke about stem cells, all discussed these things. I suspect my old colleague Bob Dunning spoke of these things when he had Dr. Leon Kass on his show. It's common knowledge that we were thinking about pluripotent alternatives to embryo destruction before direct reprogramming became available. I would be surprised if anyone truly were impressed that we knew about those things or would have supported ethical alternatives.
You can find our comments in a section of Nevada LIFE's presentation to Senator Ensign's staff in September 2005, two years ahead of Yamanaka, and to then Congressman Gibbons staff a little earlier, though we didn't post the comments to Gibbons. I missed the dinner at a Seminar around that time where Stanford's Bill Hurlbut spoke of Alternative Nuclear Transfer... something I think I rejected at the time, but Robert George and others supported it. So we've discussed this for sometime. Don't know if they will work any more than ESCR has worked.
You can find our comments to the senator at our website http://www.nevadalife.org/hottopics/no%20on%20HR%20810%20S%20471.html. The same excerpt I copied is in there. I believe in section 8b. I suspect we said as much in our press releases to the Nevada Media, most of which are posted at our site, but maybe we didn't. But we've known about them for some time.
"arent you a little old to be spoon fed? the Prentice list itself was contrived as a political tool in attempt to discredit ESCr in the 2006 elections, there is no other practicle use for Prentice's list."
Well, I certainly don't enjoy being spoon-fed crap, and you have the wholesale-club-sized jar with you here, as we can see. The website to wish you refer has been up since at least 2001, long before the 2004, much less 2006, elections. First it looked as though you were complaining that Do No Harm was concocting a fake list of studies. If you're not, then it looks like your complaint is that Do No Harm has a list of ACTUAL success stories. That's a real head-shaker.
"It is widely know that the list claiming therapies for over 70 diseases is virtually exclusive to pro-life activist websites and blogs and serves no real value to people with diseases."
Yes, because all those exciting human trials involving adult stem cells were merely performed for the benefit of the Family Research Council. Dark Swan, you're in quicksand! Let me help a brotha out...
"The list was thoroughly debunked for the propaganda it was in Science magazine in 2006..."
WRONG. I get to refute this one again! The letter to SCIENCE was a poor attempt at a joke, actually, falsely claiming that the treatments with adult stem cells don't really exist, when in fact all it could demonstrate was that most of the therapies hadn't been FDA-approved (yet) and hadn't been made widely available (yet). (Of course, since that time, many of the adult stem cell therapies HAVE been approved by the FDA, but don't hold your breath for William Neaves and Company -- authors of that disingenous letter to SCIENCE -- to acknowledge this.) Earlier this year, DS, the JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION confirmed the legitimacy of the adult stem cell trials.
Not that you won't trot out the SCIENCE Magazine, again, because I've corrected you before on this and you decided to pretend that I didn't.
thanks for the link don, I see in subsection 8b there is a reference to a white paper on another site which then discusses the broad concept of dedifferentiation in section 4 of that paper as a hopeful method for eventually developing pluripotent stem cells. (spoiler: The discovery of this method was obtained by studying ESCr)
Where it says:
"But it would take new scientific advances and new technological innovation before such “dedifferentiation” of somatic cells back into pluripotent stem cells could be achieved. ...Research into dedifferentiation of somatic cells is at a preliminary stage, and it is much too early to know whether this will succeed...Given the complexity of the process, and how little we now know about the factors that regulate differentiation and its opposite, it is not likely that this (second) approach will yield results in the near future."
So don - that white paper was looking for the right thing in the wrong places as we now know the knowledge about the factors that regulate dedifferentiation came from studying ESCs, as you claimed "embryonic stem cell research appears to show NO hope at all."
The breakthrough that was made as we know was IPSC, to which Yamanaka attributes the discovery of this method to the ESCr of Thomson and other ESCr pioneers.
The comments started off by my by implying it is likely that ESCr is a stepping stone to the next generation of pluripotent stem cell treatments. IPSc is the next step along that path to understanding both pluripotent and adult stem cell research - neither should be excluded from future research.
Yamanaka in his discovery referred to the quest for "ES like" stem cells from ordinary donor cells.
Here is Yamanaka himself stating it.
http://www.tv.janjan.jp/movie/edit/fccj/080109fccj_shinya_yamanakai_v_01.php
Hopefully people like you and Prentice will eventually stop attempting to use ASCr trials to contrive arguments against ESCr and now IPSc as a technical superior method to combat disease, in order to promote what your true motivations intend, an agenda to curb what you view as a threat to your pro-life beliefs.
Again, the point, DS, is that adult stem cells are turning out to be far more workable than embryonic stem cells, but IF YOU WANT EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS these IPSCs will do everything the ESCs can do. Whichever one you want, you no longer "need" to destroy microscopic human beings for it.
the point, DS, is that adult stem cells are turning out to be far more workable than embryonic stem cells
Hopefully someday after is is repeated to you over and over bmmg you may, if you open your mind, understand that this is not an issue of one being better than the other.
Thats not even part of the question for those who understand the complete cellular lifecycle.
Pluripotent (ESCR and IPSC currently) and differentiated (ASCr) cells need to be studied as a whole as they are a contiuum of the same process. Fundamentals of development in pluripotent cells will effect the resulting differntiated cells that can be used for further research or therapy.
Your games of keeping score are absolutely meaningless to stem cell researchers.
all it could demonstrate was that most of the therapies hadn't been FDA-approved (yet) and hadn't been made widely available (yet).
Ahaa, but that is exactly was Prentice was claiming at the time!
"Adult stem cells have now helped patients with at least 65 different human diseases. It's real help for real patients" - David Prentice Oct 2005
This statement was originally printed in
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/010/24.71.html
for some mysterious reason those comments were removed once they were proven false, but you can still find them at
http://web.archive.org/web/20051123213528/http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/010/24.71.html
So this is a major fallacy presented by Prentice. There were no where near 65 treatments for the diseases he claimed available for "real people" as he tried to mislead.
That sparked the entire controversy that was refuted in SCIENCE magazine. It was obvious to the scientific community his list was merely a clumsy tool in attempt to discredit ESCr.
Now I see you all retreating from those words and uses phrasing like "Clinical trials" but thats not what Prentice said, he said "It's real help for real patients".
Have you even read the article? What SPECIFICALLY in that article from Shane Smith do you refute? Anything?
Smith and company went on to say
"Clearly, enrollment of an experimental therapy in a clinical trial does not mean that it is an effective therapy. The purpose of clinical trials is, first, to establish safety and, second, to document efficacy. Many promising experimental therapies fail when they reach larger Phase II or III trials. Such is the case with adult stem cell therapy for heart attacks and breast cancer--two conditions for which Prentice and Tarne improperly claimed that adult stem cells provide effective therapy"
Furthermore
In an interview published in the Chicago Tribune shortly after our Letter was published online, Prentice admitted that some of his citations were unwarranted. "We've cleaned up that list now," he said. Asked how the errors occurred, Prentice said, "I think things just got stuck in"
J. Manier, J. Graham, "Experts rip Rove stem cell remark; researchers doubt value of adult cells," Chicago Trib., 19 July 2006, p. 1.
many of the adult stem cell therapies HAVE been approved by the FDA,
OK where can my uncle get treatment to use his limbs again, he is a quadriplegic - thats still on his list.
"Hopefully someday after is is repeated to you over and over bmmg you may, if you open your mind, understand that this is not an issue of one being better than the other."
...so...if you want ESCs, you can just use iPSCs, whether it's a "competition" or not.
"Adult stem cells have now helped patients with at least 65 different human diseases. It's real help for real patients" - David Prentice Oct 2005
...which is TRUE. Real patients are the ones receiving real help in the human trials. They don't need to be available at your friendly neighborhood corner drugstore in order for them to exist.
"OK where can my uncle get treatment to use his limbs again, he is a quadriplegic - thats still on his list."
You remind me of the Obama commercial I saw today. They show McCain saying (in January) that the economy is improving, and then they interview an unemployed guy. As if to suggest that McCain was lying when he said that unemployment is down -- since they found one person out of work.
so then why is treating paralysis on the list to begin with? its obviously a false assertion and illustrates the flimsy unproven qualifications Prentice used
Adult stem cells are treating paralyzed patients in human trials. See: http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200409090835.asp
"so then why is treating paralysis on the list to begin with?"
Because...they're...treating...human...patients...in...human...trials...
Wow.
The article you refer to is about Joni Tada http://www.joniandfriends.org/. She is a devout evangelical and highly outpsoken critic against Embryonic Research, she writes books agaisnt ESCr, so its no wonder you rely on her as your source to claim that ASCr is a thereapy for paralysis victims. You are relying on ancedotal reports from a woman who said said she would rather never walk again than receive ESCr treatments. So why do all of these ASC success stories always wind up coming from sources who are outspoken critics of ESCr, why cant you provide objective sources?
Tada received "treatment" from Dr. Carlos Lima several years ago. Tada to this day is still in wheelchair. Lets find out more about the results from her source Dr. Lima.
Dr. Lima has stated that they aren't even using ASCr but rather Olfactory Mucosa. So - the unverified results used to achieve bladder control in paralysis patients were not even achieved using Adult Stem Cells as you claim.
Results unfortunately were far less glowing from an objective POV, form a kind woman who went through the same procedure with Dr. Lima and simply wants to walk again.
Susan Fajt paid $30,000 for surgery performed by Dr. Carlos Lima, a neurologist at Hospital Egaz Moniz in Lisbon, Portugal, that involved transplanting cells taken from inside Fajt's nose into her spine.
Fajt testified in the Senate in a hearing held by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to promote funding for adult stem-cell research, during which she said her treatment involved adult stem cells. She said she has since learned that olfactory ensheathing cells, not adult stem cells, were likely the active ingredient in her therapy.
"The cells Dr. Lima transplanted into my spinal cord were from my own nasal mucosa," Fajt wrote in her letter. "Evidence thus far shows that olfactory ensheathing glia, not adult stem cells, are the cells most likely to be responsible for any recovery."
Shortly thereafter minions of the the anti ESCr movement falsely politicized this information in effort to deceive Congress into believing a lie.
Susan Fajt has charged that Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Florida) used her image without permission and misled Congress and the public by suggesting that her case offers evidence that adult stem cells can help severely injured people walk again.
On May 24, as Weldon tried to persuade members of the House of Representatives that embryonic stem-cell research was unnecessary, he held up a poster-size image of himself standing beside Fajt, who is clutching a walker in the photo. She believes Weldon's comments and his use of her image gave patients and lawmakers, who were about to vote on a bill that would approve funding for embryonic stem-cell research, the false impression that adult stem-cell therapy can cure spinal-cord injuries. "This poster is of a young lady who was paralyzed for years and had an adult stem-cell transplant," Weldon said that day. "She is able to stand up."
Fajt urged Weldon to support funding for both adult and embryonic stem cell research the day the photo he presented in Congress (which also appears on his website) was taken, she said. Fajt visited Weldon's office to try to persuade him that all types of stem-cell research should be funded by the federal government.
"I told him, 'I am still paralyzed,'" she said.
People like Weldon and you Wesley are doing crippled patients a huge disservice to people who are actually hoping to walk again, to bath themselves again, to make their own dinner, to get in and out of bed themselves, by making false claims that that ASCr is sufficient and that embryonic stem cell research was not necessary to persue. Others in congress hold this concern as well.
"I am very concerned that some members of Congress are touting the results of an unpublished overseas clinical trial of an experimental therapy, based on anecdotal stories of recovery in patients," said Wise Young, director of cell biology and neuroscience at Rutgers University. "They are calling the treatment 'adult stem cells' when it is not clear that this is a treatment with adult stem cells. This is a nasal mucosa transplantation into the spinal cord...To imply that this therapy is a 'miracle' and to suggest that this therapy is producing significant functional recovery in people with spinal-cord injury is wrong,".
As a follow up to this "therapy" you promote, Susan Fajt had this to say in her thread at Rutgers in October 2006. http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=17817&page=52&highlight=lima
"With this being said, i also feel that *all* patients whom have undergone this experimental/dangerous surgery should be refunded all money paid as we are being used as guinea pigs and this is simply unacceptable to date. Being that I was the 11th patient to recieve this procedure throughout the world, i am beside myself that i have had zero follow up and have tremendous amounts of pain and believe it to be due to the removing of half of my rods, (the other half would had been removed, thankfully i began bleeding to much) so they had to quit using there HUGE instruments to cut through the titanium rods in my back.
Please understand that when i underwent this procedure i was told that i would walk again and truly believed that i was doing the right thing, (i had no other options, with the exeption of shark cells?, crazzy) and was told that it could take up to two years for the "stem cells" to work, they have not! I am urging you to take my words to heart and others to help raise awareness that this "guinea pig" like work on humans it totally ridiculous and should have been stopped long ago!!! I appologize on my behalf for not speaking out, yet i did not know how to tear down the walls that was holding me up, false hope. Once again, if Dr. Lima is continuing to do exactly what he has done to me and others that have not recovered at all, it should be thought as criminal and we as an intelligent human race should be raising hell for more research to be done for a cure to be found! As i stated above, i *believed* with all of my heart and soul that i would not be left in a wheelchair for the remainder of my life and worked very, very hard to do all that was humanly possible to get the hell out of it. False hope is terribly hard on an individual that sets oneself up for disaster...Godspeed for a cure~
Susan Fajt.
"
If that doesnt give you pause to the calamity your bogus propaganda supports then your nothing of the magnificent human you claim to be.
I really appreciate the opportunity to shed light on what pro-lifers consider treatment for paralysis, the bogus assertions that you make need a place to be refuted and shown for what they really are, desperate grasps attempting to legitimize false assertions leveled by people like Prentice. You do a serious disservice to paralysed people by promoting this deceiving and what I consider evil propaganda in attempts to stiffle legitimate ESCr research because of your moral agenda.
It goes to show your true intentions are merely to advance your prolife agenda at the physical and emotional cost of real paralysis victims wanting to wanting to restore normal movement to their bodies.
The Lima studies have been peer reviewed, They are proceeding in different places throughout the world. People who had no feeling, in these early trials, have had feeling restored. That much is sure from the peer reviewed article.
Anecdotally, some patients have been able to restore bladder control, been able to stand with braces, etc.
It is not a "cure" but it is very, very hopeful work.
Bravo bmmg39. Those references on the list did as Prentice said-they helped real people. They did what WJS has said previously, provided benefits, treatments, not necessarily cures. And at the end of the day what was it that the letter to science, they sure didn’t disprove that real people had actually been helped by ASCs. Nor did it tell us that there were any human benefits or human trials to ESCR. While people downplay that list, people are getting helped with ASCs and non-ESC treatment. O well.
Speaking of lists, I think Neaves et al had their own list over 70 diseases that ESCR/SCNT COULD, MIGHT, POTENTIALLY cure just before the vote on the embryonic stem cell bill and their MO campaigns. There's one now and it still has the words “Could Potentially Benefit” in the sales pitch. The cures for CA campaign had its own list. If I remember right, it also was filled with COULD/MIGHT/HAS POTENTIAL TO and etc, except I think for one group of stem cell results-non embryonic ones. They could be positive about those results, but they didn't say they were non-ESCR results, just stem cell ones though they were advocating for funds for ESCR/SCNT. ESCR/SCNT advocates downplay the success of ASCs and non ESCs and then in a major campaign they use them to promote the promise of ESCR.
What human evidence was there to base their coulds/mights/potentially could/might and etc upon for those lists when it came to ESCR/SCNT in Big MO or CA? In the letter to Science, the MO people have the gall to say “…Prentice and those who repeat his claims mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients.” O really? These very same people making these claims are still leading people on to think they will be cured from ESCR and are using the language “could/potential/might.” What a bunch of baloney. They have also waged huge advertizing campaigns doing the same and are more guilty-since they have no evidence or any human benefits to point to- of misleading “laypeople and cruelly deceive(ing) patients.” For all the criticism of the Do No Harm list which appears to list actual studies recording human benefits, we still have a goose egg for human results and human trials using ESCR/SCNT.
It is bizarre that while people trash the Do No Harm list and say that it's a fraudulent political list, people are getting help for maladies with ASCR just like Do No Harm says, but for some reasons ESCR/SCNT advocates do not seem to think that their lists are political propaganda tools. Hmmm... Why were/are those ESCR/SCNT lists up there? It’s opart of their sales pitch to persuade legislators and voters to give them money. It's for political purposes. Hence it's political science. At least there is some "is" behind the Do No Harm List.
If anyone is going to question the intent of the Do No Harm list, they need to tell us what the purpose was of all these lists that use the words COULD/MIGHT/HAVE POTENTIAL TO and etc with ESCR/SCNT. What were the purposes of all those add campaigns using the words could/might/potential? Maybe it’s to “mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients.” They are guilty of their own charge of politicizing ESCR/SCNT.
At the end of the day, scoreboards may not be important to scientists, but they are important to sufferers, especially to those who were used as political props to influence voting and spending by people in the Missouri and CA campaigns and the political hacks like Harry Reid and Kedwards et al.
It is not a "cure" but it is very, very hopeful work.
Regardless,
Why is spinal chord injury on the ASCr list if they arent using ASCs but instead olfactory cells?
Lima C et al., Olfactory mucosa autografts in human spinal cord injury: A pilot clinical study, Journal of
Spinal Cord Medicine 29, 191-203, July 2006
This paper does not include Adult Stem Cells.
Providing false information about spinal chord benefits using ASCs just undermines the integrity of Prentices claim. He is simply wrong.
"Why is spinal chord injury on the ASCr list if they arent using ASCs but instead olfactory cells?"
You did NOT just ask that.
Oh YES I did! (finger wave with head bob)
OECs (Olfactory Ensheathing Cells) are a special type of neuronal support cell that guides the axons and supports their elongation.
When transplanted to the injured spinal cord, OECs are believed to promote axon regeneration by producing an insulating sheath providing an environment that promotes axon growth.
OEC's did the work Prentice falsely claimed was done by ASCs. So Prentice is either ignorant of his claims or flatly misleading people on purpose, either way his list is an academic fraud. Wesley perpetuates it in articles aimed at layperson who don't know any better.
Were you about to say something else bm?
Before you expose us to more ignorance you may want to read this.
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~psong/projects/OEC/handbook/OEGC.html
You're welcome.
"Were you about to say something else bm?"
I am.
"Jacki, 18, suffered an injury to her spine in August, 2003 that left her paralyzed. She was treated in Portugal by Dr. Carlos Lima with her own adult stem cells derived from olfactory mucosa."
Oh, and if you still cannot grasp basic human reproductive biology, then you really mustn't accuse others of "ignorance."
Re Lima: I checked with my sources. Lima's procedure does not attempt to extract adult stem cells from the rest of the cellular material. It is all used. Some of the material are "stem-like progenitor cells," e.g. adult stem cells. So Prentice was right.
Here is the PDF of the published paper. http://www.apssci.org/pdf/olfactory.pdf
Wesley you should really do a little basic research for your threads instead of rehashing Prentice talking points!
The is no question that the cells responsible for the SCI treatments are OECs - which are not stem cells of any kind. How can you ethically promote these bogus statements in good conscience?
Im really glad you all have shown that what matters to you is your ideologue notions about protecting Prentice and his false assertions, rather than acknowledging the truth. The danger in his list is illustrated by the fact that we still are debunking his lies many years later.
The foremost experts have explicitly spoken to the fact that OEC cells responsible for axion formation enabling some minor success in restoring feeling to SCI patients. Listen to the foremost experts who all say OECs ARE NOT STEM CELLS! The fact that you continue to claim the false propaganda to deceive people regardless of the reality, shows you care nothing for the patients involved, only for your agenda.
How are people going to take you seriously on other issues that you may make a positive difference on if you keep putting your neck on the line for the lies of Prentice?
Did you even look at the paper from Harvard which stated:
Dr. Huang and others have repeated again and again, but many people continue to get the cells mixed up!
OEC (whether from fetuses or from adults) are fully differentiated cells which do not have the plasticity of stem cells to become other types of cells such as neurons."
or
Consultant for Paralyzed Veterans of America Laurance Johnston's explanation: "The nose contains neurons that send signals to the brain when triggered by odor molecules. The axons of these neurons are enveloped by OECs, a special type of neuronal support cell that guides the axons and supports their elongation..... When transplanted into the injured spinal cord, OECs theoretically promote axonal regeneration by producing insulating myelin sheaths around growing and damaged axons, secreting growth factors, and generating structural and matrix macromolecules that lay the tracks for axonal elongation."
Lima has been criticized by his peers and his patients for not purifying the OEC cells from the olfactory mucosa. Instead he takes the whole soup, throws it against the wall to see what sticks, what stuck were OECs. His patients have referred to themselves as Guinea Pigs - You saw what Susan Fajt had to say about him.
Some recent quotes by Wise on Lima crude method:
"Some surgeons are operating on the spinal cord and physically removing “scar” tissues. In my opinion, this is wrong. Any such procedure will result in more damage to the spinal cord and more gliosis. That is why I have criticized the work of Carlos Lima and believe that it is not only counterproductive but possibly harmful to remove “glial scar” in the spinal cord and place nasal mucosa into the spinal cord, particularly patients with incomplete spinal cord injury. I was particularly aghast when I saw a presentation by Carlos Lima where he showed pieces of spinal cord that had been removed from people and the pieces of spinal cord contained axons." http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=100074&page=2&highlight=lima
American spinal cord injury researcher Dr. Wise Young's explains: In summary, OEG cells are not stem cells.
Who is Wise Young? He is one of the most highly regarded neuroscientist in the world treating Spinal Cord Injuries, who developed the method of steroid application to SCI victims within hours of the accident. His method is used as standardized treatment around the world. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/americasbest/science.medicine/pro.wyoung.html
American spinal cord injury researcher Dr. Wise Young's explains: In summary, OEG cells are not stem cells.
Wise founded a forum at Rutgers that has become a primary resource of information for SCI patients on the internet http://sci.rutgers.edu/
If readers want an honest and intelligent source of information I suggest reading up on the forums there. You will receive real information that isn't manufactured solely to promote the pro-life agenda.. They discuss the real deal.
"Please note that I do not oppose the study and use of adult stem cells, and in fact have said repeatedly that I believe that this technology should be pursued and developed as fast as possible. I support pursuit of both embryonic and adult stem cell research, as well as cloning research. To shut embryonic stem cells down at the present is, in my opinion, shutting off one of the most important and promising avenues of research today. This opinion, by the way, is shared by a majority of scientists." - Wise Young
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