THE NATION'S PULSE: Adult Approaches
Fumento, Michael
THE NATION’S PULSE Adult Approaches Will embryonic stem cell promise ever pay off ? by Michael Fumento I F YOU OR A LOVED ONE IS CURRENTLY ILL or planning to be so in the...
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...It was only in 1998 that other researchers were able to isolate and cultivate embryo stem cells...
...WHICH LEAVES US WITH A FINAL but very important question...
...But the ASCs—from marrow—were types of mature cells...
...Whether this was actually therapeutic remains unknown...
...They are used in raising false hopes and hence money...
...Others have since used different types of cells from those Verfaillie used, but to the same effect...
...There’s been an ongoing clinical trial since 2001 to treat sickle cell anemia...
...In addressing a convention in February, Thomson pointed out that obstacles to therapeutic ESC research are daunting...
...That’s a minimum of 20 years, with no maximum...
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...Instead, you need to consult the adult stem cell (ASC) literature whereupon you’ll find these little guys currently treat or cure over 70 diseases and conditions even as they’re involved in almost 1,300 human clinical trials...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FOUNDATION 54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2007...
...That scientist is none other than the University of Wisconsin’s James Thomson himself...
...For more information, please contact: Patrick Pyles, The American Spectator Foundation, 1611 North Kent Street, Suite 901, Arlington, VA 22209 Ph: 703-807-2011 ext...
...In fact, ASCs and ESCs were both discovered in rodents in the 1950s...
...They are used in no treatments, cures, or human clinical trials...
...Adult stem cell research thus has an almost four decade head start compared to embryo-derived stem cells...
...You know, like, well, actually making sick people better...
...THE MOST EXCITING NEWS in this area lately has been the revelation, announced in January, of Anthony Atala’s findings...
...The magazine is correct only if “years away” means “years ago...
...Moreover— and this is typical of ESC researcher grandstanding— his rats weren’t even paralyzed...
...But one leading ESC scientist says even that may be far too optimistic...
...In fact, ASCs and ESCs were both discovered in rodents in the 1950s...
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...Muscle...
...They remain a real bear to work with, which is why their domain remains primarily the Petri dish...
...MAY 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 53 THE NATION’S PULSE The standard answer is in about a decade, which must be true because it’s been “in about a decade” for years now...
...As Atala himself has noted, amniotic stem cells are identical to placental stem cells...
...Newsweek International did make note of it but claimed, “Many scientists are quick to emphasize that comprehensive human trials are still many years away...
...ASCs, because they are more developed, were long thought to be considerably less flexible...
...ESCs, conversely, precisely because of their much-touted flexibility, were so hard to work with that it wasn’t until 1998, in the lab of the University of Wisconsin’s James Thomson, that the first human line of ESCs was created...
...In other words, they’ll be able to do what ASCs do right now...
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...MICHAEL FUMENTO SINCE THEY ARE mere days old, ESCs are so malleable as to lend themselves to becoming mature cells from all three germ layers of the human body—about 220 types of cells total...
...But the ASCs—from marrow— were readily adaptable for treating leukemia and other human blood disorders...
...Yes, widen, lengthen, and deepen that federal trough enough and toss in lots of state funding from places like California (3 billion bucks over ten years), and we just might be able to do with an ESC in 2017 what we can with an ASC today...
...Michael Fumento is a D.C.-based military, health, and science reporter...
...So let’s just give the ESC researchers all the money they want for their decades-away promise, mindful that those funds could have gone to ASC research projects treating and curing humans today...
...One advantage of ESCs has been that while most types of adult stem cells cannot be multiplied outside of the body for very long, embryonic ones may replicate in the lab indefinitely...
...When will the ESC promise pay off...
...The second development is that since 2002 researchers have been discovering ASCs that apparently can be converted to mature cells in all three germ layers, beginning with the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute Catherine Verfaillie’s finding, announced in Nature magazine...
...But that gap has either been rapidly narrowed or even erased...
...Check your calendar...
...In the last few years, doctors have used ASCs to rebuild hearts and livers not in Petri dishes but in live humans...
...Then perhaps they’ll announce that, given enough money and perhaps decades, they’ll also build a computer with the processing power of a dime-store calculator...
...NIH is the hand that feeds them and NIH likes handing checks to ESC researchers...
...The University of California, Irvine’s Hans Keirstead, who claims to have used ESCs to cure paralyzed rats, said last year he would start human clinical trials this year...
...When can we expect something more from them than arcane articles in medical journals (though repeatedly portrayed as miracle breakthroughs in the New York Times...
...Rather, as opposed to what he tells reporters, including the late Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes, the injuries were “moderate in severity [and] sparing some hind limb motor function,” as he reported in a medical journal...
...Atala, a physician and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, found that stem cells in the amniotic fluid that fill the sac surrounding the fetus appear to be just as versatile as ESCs...
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...How long...
...At this point, all that ESCs hold is promise...
...Autopsies on bone marrow recipients have found that some of the cells made their way to the brain and became nerve cells...
...52 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2007 ESC lobbyists sniff that ASC research got a big head start...
...But Atala’s amniotic stem and other human blood disorders...
...With numerous types of stem cells in all three germ layers, it’s possible we could constitute all 220 cell types (assuming you even need all 220 cell types) without a one-size-fits-all ES cell...
...That is, you could get marrow from marrow stem cells along with blood, muscle, and an amazing array of other cells grow as fast outside the body as ESCs (doubling every 36 hours), and he’s now been growing the same cell line for two years with no indication of slowing...
...Importantly, nerve cells are in a different germ layer from fat...
...Fat, America’s most inexhaustible resource, contains stem cells that have been converted into more fat (for cosmetic purposes), bone, cartilage, and nerve cells...
...Finally, neuronal stem cells have treated brain diseases like Parkinsonism in animal models and assuredly will soon enter human testing...
...Problem is, he’s been saying “next year” since 2002...
...Meanwhile the ASC advantage in therapies grows by the month...
...ESC researchers have desperately tried to downplay these findings, to the extent that the New York Times, which told readers three years ago that there were no cures or treatments involving ASCs, refused even to mention Atala’s work...
...As he told PBS’s NewsHour: “We have been able to drive the cell to what we call all three germ layers, which basically means all three major classes of tissues available in the body, from which all cells come from...
...But as I observed two years ago, ASC researchers almost always say something like that after making a breakthrough...
...Note that the very name furthers the ESC lobby’s goal of portraying all their opponents as religious fanatics...
...Two developments, however, have eaten away at this apparent ESC advantage...
...Backers of more funding for ESC research are also quick to point out that Atala himself, after his article was published, wrote in a letter: “It is essential that National Institute[s] of Health-funded researchers are able to fully pursue embryonic stem cell research...
...As noted, marrow stem cells have been curing people for half a century...
...Said Thomson, “I don’t want to sound too pessimistic because this is all doable, but it’s going to be very hard...
...Among them is that ES cells require the recipient to permanently use dangerous immunosuppressive drugs and that they have a nasty tendency to form into teratomas—which means “monster tumor...
...THE NATION’S PULSE Adult Approaches Will embryonic stem cell promise ever pay off ? by Michael Fumento I F YOU OR A LOVED ONE IS CURRENTLY ILL or planning to be so in the near future, don’t bother looking to embryonic stem cell (ESC) research to help...
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...Marrow...
...Further, “It’s likely to take a long time...
...As to what we can expect from those therapies, as the AP writer quoting Thomson put it: “One day, some believe the [embryonic stem] cells will become sources of brain tissue, muscle and bone marrow to replace diseased or injured body parts...
...The first is that while ASCs were originally identified in marrow, now they’ve been found throughout the body including skin, brains, spinal cords, dental pulp, muscles, blood vessels, corneas, retinas, livers, hair follicles, and umbilical cords...
...The New England Journal of Medicine carried one paper on a placenta stem cell trial back in 1996 and another paper two years later...
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...The Associated Press writer present characterized it as “likely decades away...
...There’s also nothing to be gained by angering colleagues whose livelihoods are based on tinkering with ESCs, if not actually accomplishing anything...
...But you couldn’t get neu-readily adaptable for treating leukemia rons or pancreatic cells because those are in different germ layers...
...Not soon enough, to be sure, but certainly a lot earlier than “decades...
...ESCs certainly had a head start in the race to develop all types of cells from a single one...
...Researchers began using adult stem cells from bone marrow back in 1960,” claims ReligiousTolerance.org on its website...
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...What is the ESC promise and when will these cells and scientists deliver...
Vol. 40 • May 2007 • No. 4
