PUBLIC POLICY : No, the Stem Cell Debate Is Not Over
Fumento, Michael
No, the Stem Cell Debate Is Not Over by Michael Fumento he embryonic stem cell debate is over.” So stated Charles Krauthammer in his column and perhaps it is the beginning of the end. The...
...Rather, he said, he merely believes that “embryonic stem cells will be used by fewer and fewer labs...
...APRIl 2008 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR 59...
...A newswire article stated that Thomson and his fellow authors “warn that such clinical appli-cations are perhaps as much as a decade away...
...You can double the overall research budget—triple it, quadruple it— but it still remains zero sum unless you literally run out of adult stem cell grant applications...
...In fact, they often refuse to stop...
...Outside the Petri dish, there’s been virtually no progress towards curing or treating the over 70 diseases ESC backers say lie in the future of their research...
...some have said in just several years,” he told the AP...
...He showed that stem cells routinely recovered from amniotic fluid in prenatal testing could also give rise to all three germ layers...
...In other words, they’ll be able to do what ASCs do right now...
...Even then there was a trial under way using placental stem cells against multiple sclerosis...
...Further, even pure science still gets funded and if ESC (or perhaps soon iPS) researchers come clean they’ll still get some government support...
...For doing basic research on human cells, iPS as a method has won,” George Q. Daley, a physician and stem cell researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston told the Boston Globe...
...Hence recipients must take dangerous immuno-suppressive drugs for life...
...Some foreign researchers have said three to five decades...
...Perhaps more importantly, one study after another since 2002 has shown that specific types of ASCs can beconvertedintoallthreegermlayersthatgiveriseto all the types of mature cells...
...W hen confronted with this lack of tangi-ble progress, ESC backers do two things...
...In that sense all of us, regardless of our beliefs about experiment-ing with human offspring, should see embryonic stem cell research and the potential of the skin-cell– derived pseudo-ESCs and their lobby as truly immoral...
...others are predictable: They cause cancer...
...Yet it also told readers amniotic stem cells are identical to placental stem cells...
...But for the ultimate goal of getting cells into a patient, it’s a lot less clear...
...Much of the California electorate was sold last year on the idea that human embryonic stem cells might be turned into amazing cures for incurable diseases, propelling Proposition 71 to easy victory in the Nov...
...ESC research, con-versely, is more of a pure science practiced primarily by biologists—many of whom admit their main inter-est isn’t therapy at all but merely “understanding the building blocks of life” or some such...
...Further, assuming the iPS research irons out these problems, it would undoubtedly strip funds from a technology that competed with ESCs and that would continue to compete with iPS research...
...The Associated Press writer present paraphrased him saying that it’s “likely decades away...
...But that support will be commensurate with what it truly has to offer...
...Ahn collabo-rated with Hwang Woo-suk, who pulled off one of the greatest scientific frauds ever in claiming to have cloned human embryonic stem cells, but Ahn was exonerated...
...Some are simply unpredictable...
...Indeed, some have even labeled the dis-covery “cold fusion in a jar,” which is unfair since by all accounts the researchers here did exactly what they claim to have done, unlike the “discover-ers” of cold fusion...
...This does not mean that it is the end of embryonic stem cell research, if only thatweneedagoldstandardtocompareto,”declared the author of one of the two skin cells studies, the University of Wisconsin’s James Thomson...
...That alternative technology uses adult stem cells (ASCs), extremely immature cells found throughout not just among post-embryonic humans but also in placenta, amniotic fluid, and umbilical cord blood...
...But that’s what the decade myth is all about: fooling the public, fooling the politicians, and fooling both public and private holders of research purse strings...
...No, the Stem Cell Debate Is Not Over by Michael Fumento he embryonic stem cell debate is over...
...These specific types of cells are unfeasible for use on humans, at least without major modifications...
...Far from promoting ESCs as “The Miracle Around the Corner,” they admit that “decades”— plural—is more like it, and they don’t mean “two decades...
...In fact, it began over a decade ago...
...I don’t want to sound too pessimistic because this is all doable,” he said, “but it’s going to be very hard...
...But, he explained, “One of the problems is that in order to persuade the public that we must do this work, we often go rather too far in promising what we might achieve...
...Scientifically,there’savastnumberofdifferences between ASC and ESC research...
...You don’t have to be as pessimistic as Lord Winston to realize that public funding for ESC therapies is utter folly...
...Numerous trials around the world have foundthathearttissue,heretoforethoughtincapable of regrowth, has been rebuilt in humans and improved both quality and length of life...
...You don’t have to be as pessimistic as Lord Winston to realize that public funding for ESC ther-apies is utter folly...
...Of the three ESC problems, the only one the iPS cells solve is this one, since the skin donor would be the stem cell recipient himself...
...It was probably first used immediately after James Thomson announced in a 1988 Science paper his lab’s creation of the first human ESC cul-ture...
...They fudge about it, such as repeating the claim (including by CBS’s 60 Minutes) that California researcher Hans Keirstead made paralyzed rats walk again...
...But the point, as regards to hype, is made...
...But ultimately, this new development could prove tragic...
...Another is that their much-touted ability to become any type of mature cell makes it hard to direct them to become a specific type of mature cells...
...Try Thomson himself, who might feel a bit humbled about his “as much as a decade” remark...
...He actually attributes that belief to others in his field, but does allow it as a possibility...
...The dirtiest of the dirty secrets in the ESC research closet is that according to many top experts in biolo-gy, science writers, and even those whose entire work and reputations concern the field, promises of cures are nowhere closer to being redeemed than since they were first made...
...Mere small fry...
...Mind you, ESC research is not completely a pure science (such as efforts to discover the origin of the universe) because it is entirely possible that given enough time and money it may eventually pan out into something that’s therapeutically useful, even if it’s long after the same has been accomplished with ASC technology...
...Early on it appeared that ASCs were limited in the types of mature cells they could become, whereas the embryonic variety could become all the mature cells in the body...
...One problem with ESCs is that despite the cells’ immaturity, they already have the surface proteins that cause rejection when implanted into the recipi-ent...
...T he magic word as to when we’ll get that cure for Alzheimer’s or Parkinsonism or diabetes has always been “decade,” as in “a decade away” or “a decade off...
...Declared the Los Angeles Times a year later, “Gone are the allusions to healing such afflictions as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases that dominated the 2004 campaign for Proposition 71...
...In fact, the trend appears to be towards lengthening the predicted day of deliver-ance to anywhere from “decades” to perhaps not even in our lifetimes...
...Now, it’s increasingly clear that stem cell APRIl 2008 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR 57 transplants for diabetes or Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s are nowhere close, maybe decades away...
...But as far as the pub-lic at large and patients are concerned, the basic dif-ference is that ASC technology is applied therapeutic science with a proven track record and is practiced primarily by medical doctors...
...It would seem not...
...That’s what the decade myth is all about: fooling the public, fooling the politicians, and fooling both public and private holders of research purse strings...
...She added, “It is unlikely that [the institute created to allocate the research money] will be able to fully develop stem cell therapy for routine clinical use during the ten years of the plan...
...Michaelfumento is a D.C.-based health, science, and military freelance writer...
...The media and its anointed experts quickly “observed” that such cells may not lead to anything, since allegedly they’d never been tested on humans...
...For one, Krauthammer and the pro-life groups are wrong...
...Every dollar spent on a technology that may possibly pay off in decades is unavailable for that which is bearing fruit now...
...It will never be approved [by the FDA] to put these cells in a patient,” biologist Douglas Melton co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, told the Globe...
...Brain tissue...
...As to marrow, as noted that was the very first medical application of ASCs...
...Hardly...
...It sounds like a nice warm and fuzzy com-promise to finance both tracks as many scientists and patient-advocates have urged—as have ASC researchers who fear their National Institutes of Health funding may be yanked if they don’t pay homage to ESC research...
...Further, “It’s likely to take a long time...
...Anthony Atala, announced in the January 2007 Nature Biotechnology...
...In fact, the roadblock is the biology of the ESC itself...
...The reason is the late November publication of “Ttwo separate studies in which human skin cells appeared to have been reprogrammed into iPS (“induced pluripotent stem”) cells that mimic the qualities of embryonic stem cells (ESC), albeit with-out killing embryos...
...That’s hard-ly likely since larger research budgets in and of themselves generate grant applications...
...Emphasis added...
...Ten years having already elapsed, that “warning” seems a bit understated...
...But research spending is a zero-sum game...
...Of course, technically speaking, those were many years away—away in the past...
...Adult stem cells have none of these problems, except for the possibility of rejection...
...Indeed, it’s that very knowledge among smart venture capitalists that’s made the embryonic research lobby so desperate to feed at the public trough...
...The most recent was last November, but proba-bly the most prominent was that of Dr...
...Or ought to be...
...It reported on another placenta blood trial two years later...
...Certainly there was rejoicing on both sides of the emotion-charged conflict...
...And they love to blame the lack of finan-cial support...
...2004 election,” wrote science reporter Carl Hal in the San Francisco Chronicle in September 2005...
...How long...
...News and World Report tells read-ers, as it did in 2006, that “researchers say it could be decades before embryonic stem cells cure anything,” who are some of those “researchers...
...You may notice that our company [Human Genome Sciences] has not made such investments...
...And if it’s true what a member of one of the two iPS research teams said, that “If you didn’t know where they came from, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between these [cells] and true human embryonic stem cells,” then the biological roadblock is built into the iPS cells as well...
...ASCs have provided relief from Parkinsonism in at least three different human stud-ies...
...Anti-ESC research groups often misquote South Korean cloning expert Curie Ahn as saying ESC therapies may take “three to five decades...
...They also just want to keep their labs humming, which is under-standable in the same way it’s understandable that slide rule makers would gladly have accepted state and federal subsidies to remain in business...
...One wonders if patient-advocates like Michael J. Fox, Mary Tyler Moore, and Michael Kinsley are aware of this or if the late Christopher Reeve was aware...
...For example, William Haseltine, an ESC research advocate and formerly chief execu-tive officer of Human Genome Sciences, said in 2001, “The routine utilization of human embryonic stem cells for medicine is 20 to 30 years hence...
...Way back in 1996 the most respected American medical magazine, the New England Journal of Medicine, carried a paper on a successful placenta stem cell trial...
...S till other researchers think “just” a couple of decades won’t cut it...
...These cells may never be useful for direct therapy...
...The dirtiest of the dirty secrets is that according to many top experts, even those whose entire work and reputations concern the field, promises of cures are nowhere closer to being redeemed than since they were first made...
...As Agence France-Presse reported, Haseltine said, “The time-line to commercialization is so long that I simply would not invest...
...In the meantime these research-ers and the shareholders in their companies are merely raising false hopes and draining critical funds away from helping sick people...
...When a lab accomplishes this feat, it literally becomes national news...
...Many scientists are quick to emphasize that com-prehensive human trials [of amniotic stem cells] are still many years away,” declared Newsweek Inter-national...
...And naturally using a patient’s own ASCs totally eliminates the possibility...
...Still, when U.S...
...Finally, ESCs have a terrific ability to replicate...
...Check the literature, however, and you’ll find perhaps a growing trend of researchers and media observersadmittingthatasingledecadewon’tnearly cut it...
...That’s because the method of creating them cre-ates a blank slate, requiring the researchers to insert four potent regulator genes into them to allow them 56 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR APRIl 2008 to be programmed...
...Rather, wrote science correspon-dent Mary Engel, “Scientists say there is no guaran-tee of cures—certainly not any time soon—from the measure that was optimistically titled the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act...
...ESC researchers hailed the new method (though natural-ly they also said that ESC research must continue, just in case) as did pro-life groups...
...But every year since then we’ve heard, ad nauseam, of all the miracles just ten years off...
...Muscle...
...Meanwhile, despite constant claims in scientific and medical journals and the mainstream media of ESC “breakthroughs,” “discoveries,” “advances in knowledge,” or “new stepping stones,” it remains they’ve rarely been tested on animals and never on a human...
...Addressing a convention in February 2007, Thomson emphasized that obstacles to therapeutic ESC research are daunting...
...Or they claim ASCs just got a head start, when both types of cell were discovered in the 1950s...
...Thus research on the iPS cells, after they’re made with a new process, shouldn’t proceed at much faster a pace than that of ESCs to date...
...We will work hard, but we don’t want to raise false expectations...
...California’s $3 billion Proposition 71 or the $20 million giveaway in Con-necticut’s “Stem Cell Research Fund” both have ten-year timelines...
...Even then, some of the most useful ASCs, such as the easily-attained ones from umbilical cords, prompt no immuneresponse.Thelong-usedmesenchymalstem cells from marrow rarely prompt a response, such that they’ve even been transplanted from humans into sheep without problem...
...Few seem to have noticed that the “decade away” schedule keeps getting bumped...
...But as more types of ASCs have been found throughout the body and scientists have teased each type into becoming far more types of mature cells, the importance of this has steadily declined...
...And that’s even slower than the data we have to date indicate...
...Consider that the AP writer who quoted Thomson told readers: “One day, some believe the [embryonic 58 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR APRIl 2008 stem] cells will become sources of brain tissue, muscle and bone marrow to replace diseased or injured body parts...
...Imagine what ASCs can do for muscle that can regrow on its own...
...Many others have admitted, without saying so directly, that what ASCs do right now won’t be avail-able from the embryonic variety for 20 years or even much, much longer...
...The medical term for this is “cancer...
...At the end of those ten years, the residents of those states—and people generally—are supposed to have something to show for it that’s not just in a Petri dish...
...I n light of the tremendous progress with one technology and the dismal progress with the other, there was only one plausible reason ever for funding embryonic stem cell research out of medical budgets...
...ASCs have been treating human cancer (via marrow transplants) since the 1950s and today are used in over 70 treatments or cures...
...At the extreme end of the spectrum you have those like British fertility expert Professor Lord Robert Winston, who in a 2005 lecture said, “I am not entirely convinced that embryonic stem cells will, in my lifetime, and possibly anybody’s lifetime for that matter, be holding quite the promise that we desperately hope they will...
...This even though it takes mere seconds to punch up an abstract of Keirstead’s sole paper on thesubject,whichstatestheywereneverparalyzed in the first place...
...They are being tested in over 1,300 human clinical trials, with the number growing monthly...
...Given the long lead times necessary to gain approval for new medical technologies,” physician and former FDA official Scott Gottlieb wrote in The American Spectator, “if a company can’t get signifi-cant results in four to six years, it’s generally beyond the scope of a venture capitalist’s interest...
Vol. 41 • April 2008 • No. 3
