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[JuntaJoe]

Ailing Specter Now Pushes Stem Cell Research

April 21, 2005 6:56 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - Sen. Arlen Specter is pushing legislation to expand stem cell research with the perspective of a man fighting a deadly illness.

The Pennsylvania Republican has Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph system, and is being treated with chemotherapy. He and two colleagues introduced a bill Thursday that would allow for what is often referred to as therapeutic cloning.

"I've got a new hairdo, which you can all observe, and that is indicative of a problem which may well be helped by stem cell research if it were to go forward," said Specter, referring to the loss of most of his hair.

Specter was joined at a news conference by Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a conservative Republican, and Dianne Feinstein of California, a moderate Democrat. The three said their bill would make reproductive cloning, to produce a baby, a crime punishable by up to 10 years.

But they do want to allow for "therapeutic cloning" for the purpose of obtaining stem cells to be used in treating disease.

Therapeutic cloning requires the destruction of an embryo, and therefore opponents argue that destroying it is the same as destroying life.

Specter, a co-sponsor of stem cell legislation in the last Congress, said he believes the United States needs to place more emphasis on health care research.

"I do not think that we are spending the right priorities with respect to our health care budget," he said. "I don't choose to unduly personalize it, but I have to find some way to excuse my hairdo."

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.


Doesn't strike you as strange that Republican politicos get all high and mighty about the sins of stem cell research until their head rests on the chopping block?

Ah, but debating the hipocracy of politicians is an old saw here and not likely to get much of a rise from this crew.


So let's discuss our opinions and arguments for or against stem cell research.

I'll be back to make a more comprehensive comment, but to get the ball rolling, let me state that I'm conditionally for the research.

How do you stand and why?

[Brf]

I find it funny that he sponsors stem-cell research to combat hair-loss.

[s_stabeler]

brf, he is referring to the usual loss of hair from chemotherapy(sp?)when stem cells might be able to combat cancer( they can turn into a wide range of specialised cells) withoput loss of hair. basically what jappens is the cancerous cells are removed and replacedd by stem cells. the only problem is based on how long the stem cells are stored, if they are stored too long, they can cause cancer.

[Brf]

Yes I know.... I was referring to the big emphasis on his lack of hair, and little emphasis on how stem-cells could be used to treat cancer.

[JuntaJoe]

Here's is what I recommend on the topic.

Currently, there are only a few viable lines of stem cells available for study.

And there are tons of frozen fertilized ova out there.

How about a national screening to see if any of those lines belong to couples that are dead by early demise?

And that would remain the standard. If both donors are dead and leave no specific instructions then they can be moved into the research lines. There can be a provision that the last two fertilized ova cannot be moved to protect the gene line for a viable child.

But most donors tend to have quite a few ova made in hopes one will "take" in a woman who has trouble with carrying to term.


By holding the last two in reserve, you protect the gene pool and the rights of blood kin who otherwise had no claim due to a lack of proper instruction on the part of the donors.

And the rest would be donated to the research lines as the donors have left life behind themselves without proper instructions of their wishes.

It may not result in a flood of new research lines. But perhaps enough to help the science progress a bit further. Remember, there are only a couple dozen old lines that are legal and the scientists claim most are unviable for this research due to a host of medical reasons. Statistically, there will be a couple dozen more lines that fit my rather stringent criteria. But it would double or triple the available lines for research for the time being. Enough to let us see what promise this research brings.

It's a solid measured baby step of the science. And it guards well against our ethical and moral fears. The donors are dead and the ova have no sponsor. And saving a sample of the gene line can cover any moral concerns for the blood kin.

[Brf]

So you are favor of killing these embryos?

[s_stabeler]

brf, there is a simple logic that yoiu could apply to this situation. many liuves could potentially be saved if there is more stem cell lines to research, which involves the death of maybe 10, 25, 100? embryos, whereas many thousands more lives than that could be saved by proper research into stem cells. and also, embryos don't atually have sensation i.e. pain. untill the 22nd week i think it is, so before thast, it vcould be argued that it isn't exactly alive. and i am not gping to discuss m y opinion on that particular issue in this topic.

[CooJoe]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't stem cells be had from Umbilical cords, blood, and dead people?

I'll try to look it up.

[JuntaJoe]

Yes, but not embryonic stem cells.

They contain the most potential for cellular change.

[Brf]

s_stabler, pain has nothing to do with it. Suppose the scientists decide to sacrifice you? Your liver and kidneys and heart could be used to save a bunch of lives.... along with your blood and numerous other tissues. They could put you to sleep, so there is no pain.

[JuntaJoe]

Brf holds the moral whiphand.

A large segment of society simply feels that destruction of viable embryos means killing life.

Since it is a moral/religious stance there is little chance to inject sterile logic or theory into the discussion.

Life is life and death is death. Scientists could make all the noise they want and not move a large segment of society to embrace the concept. We could face a society crisis of huge proportions.

But there is a chance for a small incremental compromise like I mentioned.

With the death of both donors, frozen embryos are assured of destruction with the hyper rare exception of a blood kin rescue court order in cases where no prior instructions are on file.

That rare segment of cells is almost assured death by discarding.

And by holding a portion of the embryos in a still viable position on the extreme chance of rescue, most objections have been mitigated.


Best of all, my plan doesn't either strangle the science like the current plan nor open the floodgates for every idiot to cook up stemcells in their garage. The few limited releases would assure that only top notch research teams would remain in control of the science.

This micro release would push the science closer to the point where we could get better answers for what the ultimate potential is.

If the potential is shown to be huge then the topic can be revisited again in society discussion.

If the potential shows to be little better than adapting non-embryonic stem cells then we have not disturbed society's mores.

Bush didn't bolt the door and shut it all down. Instead, he opened a microscopic window and demanded the science progress past the pie-in-the-sky claims stage.

My proposal does the same. Just a little to get us further down the road without causing a moral crisis in society.



Some will still rebel against my idea, but we need to face facts. If the US slams the door then some less moral country regime will open the floodgates. Crazy claims will cause a rush of elite folks to seek nirvana. Then you get a culture war as nasty as if we opened the floodgates here. But a small release under the right conditions will keep the crazies in check awaiting scientific results from top scientific teams. We must find an incremental compromise to keep the lid on society while we wait for the scientific truth to come in.

[Brf]

I am not against stem-cell research using existing stocks. The deaths have already occured. We might as well not let those lives go to waste.

[JuntaJoe]

But you've been misinformed. Existing stocks are few and tainted.

No one realized the lock down would come when it did. The "existing" lines were already being altered. So nothing of the original stock remains. All that was left was tertiary growth cultures.

And you cannot do real comprehensive research without original unmodified cultures. Original untainted culture can be used to replicate all the research stock we need. And for research diversity, you need a couple dozen different DNA groupings.

If the the lockdown had been expected, then the original sets would have handled our research needs. But the suddenness caught the research groups by surprise. Since they expected more cultures to be available, they had already tainted the existing stocks. What we have currently is a mixed bag of only semi-viable material. Actually, almost half of the approved group was considered unusable when the gate dropped.

Research was still in it's infancy and you had grad students and corporate labs doing most of the work. They were sloppy. Thus when the gate dropped and top university teams took over they realized that would be completely impossible to finish all the basic research with the leftover slop.

We will never finish the basic research with what we have.

That's an immutable fact.

If the US refuses to finish the basic research then another country will.

And we will have no say-so in the ethics of the research.

But since the lion's share of the Genome Project lies inside our borders we remain the focal point of the research. The expert teams are here. If we give them just enough to continue research then they will remain and we can control the ethics instead of letting another society impose their ethics. The experts will certainly leave once they hit the end of the usefulness of these tainted lines. And that point is approaching fast.

When they leave, the new host countries will try to draw investment with slick advertising to elite society types. The money will flow. And the money will flow out as well. And elites going to take advantage of hack services will start the culture war.

This is a classic case of being damned either way you go if you hold those moral values. But a limited release is the lesser evil in this case. Keep it here in the US where we can keep the lid on radical and unethical research.

We have to give an inch or we'll lose a mile.


I may not hold the same moral values that you do, Brf, but I certainly do not want to see some insane race of unethical collection of ova. That breeds nothing but crime of the worst sort. Extorting the poor to provide potential life for the sole purpose of ensuring the lifespan and luxury of elites. It would be a sick form of slavery even if I disagree with you that it's murder. I consider slavery just as bad as murder. I also don't want to see 3rd world research cranking out "alternative" life options. Things like in-vitro modification to make kids tall, blond, and smart. And some whacko in a jungle lab will try the cloning thing at some point. We must hold the research here to maintain an ethical environment.

Remember, it is America filling its churches, not Europe or Asia. They are emptying there. Do you really want those societies forging the medical ethics of the future?

Take what I've said and go play the devil's advocate with people of your values. Lay it out on the table completely. Let them know the current situation with the existing lines. Heck, print a copy of this thread for notes and bring up the discussion. Make them see all the limitations of the current situation and the future ramifications of those limitations. Make them do the hard choices and bring what they say back here. I'm seriously curious about their thoughts when they consider all the ramifications.

Or are we going to wait until we get to the point like we did with abortions and suffer an up or down, all or nothing vote. Or let the judges take the decision out of our hands. Our ignoring the issue is what brought us to the point where we permit abortion as a birth control method. Any move for sensible compromise is seen as encroachment by the other party and the walls go up. Abortion has a proper role in medicine to protect mothers' lives. But it gets used as a backup condom for the lazy now. We could have certainly come up with a better compromise than what we have now. But we just refused to meet at the fence and the judges played Solomon.

Let's not let the stem cell issue go as bad as the abortion issue did.

Let's find a way to meet at the fence.

[Batchman]

Interestingly, I am one of those right wing, holier than thou, ultra conservative, Bible-thumping, hymn-singing, soul-saving religious zealots.

And I have to say, while I am not comfortable with saying there is nothing wrong with stem cell research, I am even less comfortable with saying straight out that I understand every aspect of God well enough to say with absolute certainty how he feels about anything that he hasn't told us how he feels on.

And Joe makes some pretty good points.

While I am pretty strong in my feelings on abortion, there's a pretty obvious difference between a fertilized egg within a female that is well on its way to developing into a full human being, and a union of two cells in a test tube that have almost no chance of developing into a human being, stuck away in some freezer.

Whether or not you approve of the 'fancy' ways of bringing babies into existence (and personally, I don't really have a strong problem with it, though it can surely lead to many more problems and moral issues), it still seems to me there are some obvious differences here.

The one thing I am against are people who are against this on religious principles, until it is them or a close friend who might benefit, and suddenly they change their mind. If it is a matter of principle, stand on your principles. If you just aren't sure, then be straightforeward and say that, rather than being against it, and then switching.

Its late, I'm tired, and I don't know if that made any sense to anybody but me.

[JuntaJoe]

And that's the reason for my particular compromise.

I too am not ready for fertility labs to begin selling what they consider "excess" to research labs.

At some point, some greedy idiot will begin manufacturing "excess" ova.

They will begin offering money under the table to desperate people to use their regular services in order to generate "excess" stock.

I could even envision the scenario. A seedy recruiter would approach young and poor couples and enquire if they were planning to have kids. If they were, they would be offered a few services and cash to visit a shady doctor who would suddenly declare them to be marginally infirtile and in need of a fertility clinic. Profits from sales of "excess" would be used to hire consultants who would quietly pay the couple the amount of money needed to pay the public and legal medical bill from the fertility clinic, thus keeping the books kosher. The couple would have insemination and modest prenatal services and have "excess" generated as a matter of a clinic safety factor. Surprise, the "excess" gets sold off to top dollar research and genetic labs. The couple makes a few extra dollars for what they could have done easily in their own bedroom.

And if you stare at that scenario, it is really selling sex for money.

A perverted form of prostitution.


My limitation does not permit sale of "excess" if either donor is alive or if written instruction is done in advance on the disposition of a couple's unneeded fertilized ova. This will severely constrain the labs and unless they go into the murder business, they will not be able to plan for said "excess" in order to make a regular profit from it.

Nor would I object to a mandatory pricing system between the genetic labs and fertility clinics. Fertility clinics would only recoup the costs incurred by the transfer and administrative overhead.

We keep the profit out of the game while basic research goes on.

Let's learn the science before someone starts polishing that cash register.

Let's learn the science before we start a proper moral/ethical debate in our society.

We need to know what we are dealing with here.

[KhabaLox]

I voted against the stem-cell measure here in California but it passed anyways. Curse democracy.

My philosophical opinion is that there are too many humans, and extending life spans will only exacerbate the problem.

JuntaJoe wrote: The few limited releases would assure that only top notch research teams would remain in control of the science.

This micro release would push the science closer to the point where we could get better answers for what the ultimate potential is.


If you really want the science of stem cells to take off, you should open it up to as many researchers as possible. Research thrives off competition, and the more competitors, the more competition.

[Brf]

KhabaLox wrote: there are too many humans, and extending life spans will only exacerbate the problem.

Just the other day I saw a news article that stated the average age of humans is increasing.... I thought: "Duh!".

[JuntaJoe]

KhabaLox wrote: If you really want the science of stem cells to take off, you should open it up to as many researchers as possible. Research thrives off competition, and the more competitors, the more competition.

I would agree on the concept of opening research as far as you can is the best way to advance a particular science.

The problem in this case is the material used in the research.

A wide open research base would require complete freedom to use all embryonic ova in storage.

It matters not your political or religious leanings. Anyone knows that opening all the embryonic cryostorage would cause a massive moral and ethical backlash across society. It could actually fracture the country.

And yet doing nothing will produce the same effect later when the technology shifts overseas .

We have to find a way to thread the needle.

[JuntaJoe]

Study: Stem Cells May Repair Cord Damage

September 19, 2005 4:14 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again.

The experiment, reported Monday, isn't the first to show that stem cells offer tantalizing hope for spinal cord injury - other scientists have helped mice recover, too.

But the new work went an extra step, suggesting the connections that the stem cells form to help bridge the damaged spinal cord are key to recovery.

Surprisingly, they didn't just form new nerve cells. They also formed cells that create the biological insulation that nerve fibers need to communicate. A number of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, involve loss of that insulation, called myelin.

"The actual cells that we transplanted, the human cells, are the ones that are making myelin," explained lead researcher Aileen Anderson of the University of California, Irvine. "We're extremely excited about these cells."

The research is reported in Monday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Stem cells are building blocks that turn into different types of tissue. Embryonic stem cells in particular have made headlines recently, as scientists attempt to harness them to regenerate damaged organs or other body parts. They're essentially a blank slate, able to turn into any tissue given the right biochemical instructions.

But they're not the only type of stem cell. Anderson and colleagues used fetal neural stem cells, a type that are slightly more developed than embryonic stem cells because they're destined to make cells for the central nervous system.

The researchers injured the spinal cords of mice and nine days later injected some with the human neural stem cells.

Four months later, the treated mice could again step normally with their hind paws. Mice given no treatment or an injection with an unrelated cell showed no improvement.

The question was what sparked that improvement. Injections of stem cells might simply stimulate the body to produce some healing factor, or they might directly repair damage themselves.

So Anderson injected the animals with diphtheria toxin, which kills only human cells, not mouse cells. The improvements in walking disappeared, suggesting it was the cells themselves responsible for recovery.

"It was striking," Anderson said.

Finally, the researchers analyzed the actual mouse spinal cords to see what the human stem cells had turned into. The hope was that they would make neurons, or nerve cells, and some did.

But the bulk of the injected stem cells formed oligodendrocytes, a different type of cell that forms myelin, the insulation coating that is key for nerve fibers to transmit the electrical signals they use to communicate.

The toxin step was key to ensuring the transplanted cells themselves are functioning, and all researchers must provide such evidence because different types of stem cells almost certainly will work by different mechanisms in different tissues, said Dr. Doug Kerr, a Johns Hopkins University neurologist who is performing similar spinal cord research with embryonic stem cells.

Much more research must be done before testing stem cells in people with spinal cord injuries, cautioned Anderson. One question is how soon after an injury cells must be administered to have any effect - no one knows how nine days in a mouse's life correlates to the post-injury period for a person. Also, the mice were bred to avoid immune system destruction of the human cells, and suppressing a person's immune system because of similar transplant rejection risk poses big problems.

"The last thing we want to do is take someone who's living a productive life - if confined, we all understand that - and make them worse," said Anderson, who said the work also shows the need to study all types of stem cells. "The exciting part is the potential is there."

The research was funded by the nonprofit Christopher Reeve Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. StemCells Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., provided the fetal-derived stem cells.

--

On the Net:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/
Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[DrJoshuaFalken]

Is it possible to throw a ton of stem cells unto a Shakey's, and then the stem cells reform to make an new Shakey's?


/Cartman