Hope For Stem Cells
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Science
Ignoring science has been the trend for the past 5 years, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t been progressing.
Today Burt has treated 170 patients with stem cells, and increasingly, others are following his lead. There are now more than 1,000 stem-cell therapies in early human trials around the world. The vast majority use cells from patients’ own bone marrow, but doctors are also using cells from healthy adults, and last month saw the first patient treated with embryonic cells, which have triggered much debate in the United States. After years of being thought of as science fictionâ€â€?the domain of animal labs and the distant futureâ€â€?stem-cell therapies are becoming a scientific fact.Burt alone has now treated patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other immune disorders. He’s just written up the results of a stem-cell trial for type 1 diabetes. Three years after treatment, some patients now have normal blood sugar and don’t take insulin. Burt also plans trials for two diseases in which “nothing else really seems to work”: Lou Gehrig’s disease and a rare type of autism involving the immune system. He will treat his first autism patient in January.
And that’s just the start for this seemingly revolutionary therapy…
Doctors with private funding have quietly been experimenting with cells grown from fetal material. Geron, a California biotech company, has used the technique to prevent heart failure in mice; it will petition the FDA for a human trial next year. Before that, the company hopes to start the first major American trial of embryo-derived stem cells as a treatment for spinal-cord injuries. By the time that trial starts, docs will also have results from the only use of embryonic stem cells in humans thus far. In November, doctors in Oregon injected them into a child with a rare, fatal neurodegenerative disorder called Batten disease. That’s only one patientâ€â€?but if those stem cells cure the disease and multiply, their uses are sure to as well.
Are we on the cusp of something amazing?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:03 am
Stem Cell Research In Australia
http://beepbeepitsme.blogspot.com/2006/12/stem-cell-research-in-australia.html
December 7th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Today St. Jude, tomorrow the Lebensborn.
December 7th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Unfortunately Bush will almost certainly veto any federal initiatives involving useful stem cell research, but we might be getting to the point of having enough congresspeople seeing reason to have a veto-proof majority…if not, whichever party takes the presidency in 2008 will certainly be far more reasonable (and intelligent) than Bush.
December 8th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
“You want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfections built in already. The child doesn’t need any additional burdens. Keep in mind this child is still you, simply the best of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.”
That’s right you de-generate in-valid uteros, be prepared. You were horrified by the “Orwellian” nightmare of the NSA wiretapping program, but when it comes to playing God you’ll happily be led to your slaughter by a fictional cure-all carrot — goats the lot of you.
December 8th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
Haha…thanks, Dos, I needed a good laugh this morning. So you really think that somehow allowing research on blastocysts that are about to be thrown away anyway is going to somehow slaughter us all?
Sure, stem cell research has the potential for abuses, such as eugenics, disease warfare research, etc., but the again, so does almost any branch of science. Are we to ignore physics because eventually it leads to the concept of nuclear weapons? Chemistry, because we can learn how to make Sarin gas?
It is impossible to predict with absolute certainty exactly what might come from any particular scientific investigation - that is why the investigation is valuable. However, all indications to date about stem cell research is that it has the potential to be more valuable to society than almost any other medical advance in history. Compared to that, worrying about the feelings of a few leftover cells due to be sent to the biohazard disposal unit is ludicrous.
December 8th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Hey, Sleipner — how often have I heard you bemoan the evils of Corporate America, the greedy immoral bastards with no regard for the environment or humanity, placing profits above people, sponsoring genocide in Africa, exc…
Who do you think is going to be doing the stem cell research brilliant? Who do you think is going to be doing the experimentation? Do you think government forces or market forces will ultimately dictate the direction of genetic research?
You can’t have it both ways Sleipner — either you trust Corporate America enough to give it the power to play God or you don’t. For someone who supposedly hates Corporate America so much, you sure are giving it untethered power to forge into an unknown territory.
December 9th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I’m new here. I’m beginning to get it that DosPeros is best ignored…
December 9th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Welcome, GreenDreams! I look forward to your substantive comments, be they enlightening, brilliant or utterly retarded. Please feel free to ignore me, I will not ignore you. When and if you peck out a thought I deem stupid, irrational, illogical, sloppy, ill-conceived, malinformed, dishonest, inconsistent, bias or wrong I will let you know. If your reasoning is inconsistent from topic to topic and you flutter from one position to the next with no cohesive center and then claim it is moderation - I will probable taunt you and call you out. You see GreenDreams, I “advance the conversation” by scraping horse shit out the middle of the road, so the vehicles of intelligence can pass without interruption or irritation. We will see if you are one of those vehicles…or a horse.