NEW! U.S. District Court Judge Granted a Preliminary Injunction Against the Funding Authorized by Obama's Executive Order

NEW! Obama Administration to Appeal Stem Cell Injunction

NEW! Commentary: Inconvenient Facts About Stem Cell Research

NEW! Stem Cell Biology and Its Complications

AP Surprises With Article Noting Adult Stem Cell Research Outpacing Embryonic

AP: Adult Stem Cell Research Far Ahead of Embryonic

FDA OKs First Embryonic Stem Cell Research Trial on Humans, Despite Concerns

Commentary: Playing Politics with Stem Cells

Adult Stem Cell Trial for Spinal Cord Injury in Louisiana

"Adult Stem Cells Said to 'Forget' Retooling; Embryonic Alternative [iPS stem cell research] Suffers Setback"

Darpa’s Synthetic Blood Almost Ready for the Battlefields

Latest Adult Stem Cell Advance Gives Sight to the Blind

Fed Appeals Court Green Lights Suit Against HHS over Funding Embryonic Research

New Adult Stem-Cell Treatments for Head and Heart Advance

Man Appears Free of HIV After Rare Full Transplant Involving Adult Stem Cells

If at First You Don't Succeed, TRY WHAT WORKS: California Quietly Shifts Fruitless Embryo Research Funds to Adult Stem Cells: Investors Criticize the Past Waste on Useless Research

Embryonic Stem Cell Research is in Trouble. Why? Because It Doesn't Work

Geron Stocks Poised to Plunge

Maryland May Follow California in Switching Focus to Adult Stem Cell Research...

U.S. District Court Judge Granted a Preliminary Injunction Against the Funding Authorized by Obama's Executive Order
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli released a legal opinion that abortion businesses should be regulated by the state and held to the same health and safety standards as hospitals. Similar regulations already exist in 27 states, but pro-abortion groups like the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) of Virginia have already started to attack this commonsense proposal designed to protect women.

This morning I had a debate with Tarina Keene of NARAL Virginia, who proved once again that pro-abortion advocates fight for radical abortion ideology—not women. (Watch the debate here.)

The SBA List will be working in the coming weeks to encourage Virginia's pro-life Governor Bob McDonnell to support Attorney General Cuccinelli’s proposal. The lives of women in Virginia—and across the country—are on the line each day and our ideological differences should be set aside to make sure women are treated with respect and care in the safest possible conditions.

Another big development was a decision yesterday by a federal district Judge to put a temporary hold on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research on the grounds that it destroys human embryos, and therefore goes against the will of Congress. To be precise, using federal dollars to destroy human life goes against the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a rider attached to a federal spending bill that bars federal funding of research that involves the destruction of human embryos.

This ruling is a victory, but the pro-abortion majority in Congress will fight back. Since the decision yesterday, Speaker Pelosi and other pro-abortion Representatives have promised to gut the Dickey-Wicker amendment from future spending bills, and resume the systematic destruction of human life through embryonic stem cell research. [24 Aug 10, Susan B. Anthony List email, www.sba-list.org]

Obama Administration to Appeal Stem Cell Injunction
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2427612320100824
Reuters
The Obama administration will appeal a judge's ruling that temporarily barred federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday. Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters the administration will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to lift the preliminary injunction issued on Monday.

Inconvenient Facts About Stem Cell Research: The promise of science carries a high price

When he announced his policy expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, President Barack Obama was not timid about proclaiming its benefits. It would, he announced, hasten "a day when words like 'terminal' and 'incurable' are finally retired from our vocabulary."

You thought Obama wanted to establish death panels? Actually, he seems to think he can confer immortality.

That announcement, made in March of last year, dismantled the limits imposed by the Bush administration. The change, in Obama's view, was a triumph over ignorance and ideology.

His executive order was, the president claimed, "about protecting free and open inquiry" and letting scientists "do their jobs, free from manipulation and coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient." When science wins, he led us to believe, we all win.

Conspicuously absent from those declarations were facts that Obama would prefer to omit because they are — well, inconvenient. But those facts did not elude U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who on Monday said the revised policy violates federal law.

What facts? A restriction approved by Congress in 1996, and repeatedly renewed, says federal money may not be used for "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed." But the point of Obama's new policy was to pay for experiments using stem cells harvested from embryos that are killed in the process.

The administration evaded the ban by stipulating that Washington could fund such research as long as it didn't fund the part where the fetus is terminated. Judge Lamberth was not buying.

Embryonic stem cell research, he noted, requires the destruction of embryos. The federal prohibition, he said, "encompasses all 'research in which' an embryo is destroyed, not just the 'piece of research' in which the embryo is destroyed." So any funding of experiments using such stem cells is forbidden.

Obama imagines that this research may make the word "terminal" obsolete — except, of course, when applied to the embryos that perish when their stem cells are taken for scientific inquiry.

President George W. Bush's policy allowed research only on stem cell lines that had already been established. The idea was to facilitate studies without creating incentives to destroy additional embryos. Obama, by contrast, took the view that the destruction of additional embryos (those "left over" at fertility clinics) is essential to the march of science.

What's wrong with destroying a 5-day-old embryo that would be discarded anyway? Nothing, unless you think there is something wrong with killing a human embryo ostensibly for some greater good.

If there is nothing wrong with that, though, it's hard to see what's wrong with destroying an embryo that is 5 weeks old or 5 months old, if its tissue could be used to help people who are seriously ill. In that case, why limit research to leftover embryos? It would make more sense to let scientists create embryos and let them gestate for months, for the sole purpose of destroying them for their stem cells.

Americans might bridle at that prospect, but proponents of expanded embryonic stem cell research have spared them from the contemplation of such unpleasantness. Their campaign focuses on ends, not means — alleviating suffering, conquering disease, letting the blind see and the lame walk.

Such advances are only speculative at this point. But their allure is such as to discourage us from looking too closely at the methods needed to bring them about. It's easier to think in terms of excising tissue from blastocysts than in terms of killing human embryos. In reality, they are the same thing.

The problem with embryonic stem cell research is that the goals are so desirable that they override our usual moral impulses.

Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, wrote in 2006 in The New Atlantis, "It is very hard for us to describe something higher than health, or more important than the relief of suffering, so when relief comes at a cost, even the cost of cherished principles or self-evident truths, we all too often pay up."

The court decision against Obama's policy on stem cell research is a rare exception, which may induce us to reconsider the wisdom of what we have sanctioned.

"Our problem is not that we are lacking in ethical principles," says Levin, "but rather that we are forgetful of them."

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman

[Chicago Tribune - 8/26/2010 - Columnist Steve Chapman, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0826-chapman-20100825,0,410387.column ]

Stem Cell Biology and Its Complications

Comment: Note this quote: “We will probably need human embryonic stem cells for a while. And then we probably will not need them anymore.” If embryonic stem cell research is so ethical and promising, why is the goal to NOT use them?  The reality is that embryonic stem cell research doesn't seem to be working as supporters promised.  Nancy V.

The renewed debate over embryonic stem cells highlights the advances and complications that have arisen in the field since its controversial beginnings.

The cells are a sort of blank slate, plucked from human embryos just a few days after fertilization. They tantalize scientists because they could in theory turn into any of the body’s 200 mature cell types, from blood to brain to liver to heart.

They could be used to study and treat diseases and to study the basic biology of what determines a cell’s destiny — why a heart cell becomes a heart cell, for example, instead of a brain cell.

The problem is their origin — human embryos. In order to get stem cells, embryos must be destroyed. It is this fact that led to the court ruling on Monday blocking most federal financing for embryonic stem cell research.

The scientist who isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998 struggled with this dilemma, consulting ethicists before proceeding. But in the end, the scientist, Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, decided to go ahead because the embryos were from fertility clinics and were going to be destroyed anyway. And, he reasoned, the work could greatly benefit humanity.

Yet despite the high hopes for embryonic stem cells, progress has been slow — so far there are no treatments with the cells. The Food and Drug Administration just approved the first clinical study, a dose and safety test, of human embryonic stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries.

All along, though, scientists wondered if they could sidestep the ethical debate by creating embryonic stem cells without the embryos. Every cell has the same DNA. A heart cell is different from a liver cell because it uses different genes. But all the genes to make a liver cell, or any other cell, are there in the cell. The liver genes are masked in a heart cell and vice versa. Why can’t scientists find a way to unmask all of a cell’s genes and turn it directly into a stem cell without using an embryo?

A few years ago, two groups of researchers — one led by Dr. Thomson — did just that. They discovered that all they had to do was add four genes and a cell would reprogram itself back to its original state when it was a stem cell in an embryo. Like an embryonic stem cell, that reprogrammed cell seemed to be able to then turn into the many kinds of specialized cells in the body, an ability called pluripotent.

What has happened since that discovery, scientists say, is that stem cell biology turned out to be more complicated than they anticipated. Besides the stem cells from embryos, there are so-called adult stem cells found in all tissues but with limited potential because they can only turn into cells from their tissue of origin. And there are these newer cells made by reprogramming mature cells.

Now researchers are trying to figure out whether stem cells made by this reprogramming process really are the same as ones taken from embryos. Some say they found subtle differences between these cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or I.P.S.C.’s, and embryonic stem cells. Others are not so sure.

They say they need embryonic stem cells as a basis of comparison, a gold standard to see if the newer reprogrammed cells are as good.

“We are not at the stage where you will find many investigators saying, ‘We don’t need embryonic stem cells because I.P. cells are the same,” said Dr. Timothy Kamp, a stem cell researcher and professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “We don’t know that yet.”

One complication is that different labs use different methods to obtain the reprogrammed cells and to study them, Dr. Kamp said. As a result, he said, “not all I.P. cells are the same.”

John Gearhart, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells, said some investigators ended up with reprogrammed cells “that will have little utility.” They are only partly reprogrammed, he explains.

“One worries about how safe and effective they are going to be” if they are ever used in therapies, Dr. Gearhart said.

Dr. George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Children’s Hospital in Boston, saw subtle differences in a recent study. When he just compared the two types of cells side by side with molecular tests, they looked identical. Then he tried turning them into various types of mature cells and comparing the results.

Dr. Daley published a paper in March, in Nature Biotechnology, reporting that mouse I.P.S.C.’s from different tissues remembered, in a sense, where they came from. He has a similar paper under review showing the same effect with human induced pluripotent stem cells.

In the mouse study, it was harder to get pluripotent mouse cells derived from a skin cell, for example, to turn into blood cells than it was to get pluripotent stem cells made from blood cells to turn into blood cells.

“They tended to remember their tissue of origin,” Dr. Daley said.

Researchers need to find ways to make the cells forget where they came from, he said.

Rudolf Jaenisch, a stem cell researcher and biology professor at M.I.T., said he was not certain there were meaningful differences between human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent cells.

But to answer that question will require the use of embryonic stem cells for comparisons, Dr. Jaenisch said.

“Things are very much in flux,” he said. “We will probably need human embryonic stem cells for a while. And then we probably will not need them anymore.”
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/health/research/25cell.html?_r=1&ref=health&pagewanted=print
August 24, 2010, By GINA KOLATA]

AP Surprises With Article Noting Adult Stem Cell Research Outpacing Embryonic
The Associated Press surprised readers with a new story [2 August 2010] on the contrasts between adult and embryonic stem cell research and a headline indicating what pro-life advocates have long known: the use of adult stem cell research is helping patients now, and far outpacing embryonic studies.

"For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments," AP admitted.

A few of the examples highlighted include multiple sclerosis, heart damage, juvenile diabetes, and blindness from chemical burns.

"Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases," AP noted.

Dr. David Scadden of Harvard told the news service that the ability of adult stem cells to help patients with a wide range of diseases and conditions helps it stand out from embryonic, which has never helped a single person. [August 9, 2010, LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Update, Washington, DC; http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100802/ap_on_he_me/us_med_stem_cells]

Actual AP article:
Adult Stem Cell Research Far Ahead of Embryonic

A few months ago, Dr. Thomas Einhorn was treating a patient with a broken ankle that wouldn't heal, even with multiple surgeries. So he sought help from the man's own body.

Einhorn drew bone marrow from the man's pelvic bone with a needle, condensed it to about four teaspoons of rich red liquid, and injected that into his ankle.

Four months later the ankle was healed. Einhorn, chairman of orthopedic surgery at Boston University Medical Center, credits "adult" stem cells in the marrow injection. He tried it because of published research from France.

Einhorn's experience isn't a rigorous study. But it's an example of many innovative therapies doctors are studying with adult stem cells. Those are stem cells typically taken from bone marrow and blood — not embryos.

For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

Adult stem cells are being studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes.
Some early results suggest stem cells can help some patients avoid leg amputation. Recently, researchers reported that they restored vision to patients whose eyes were damaged by chemicals.

Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases.

"That's really one of the great success stories of stem cell biology that gives us all hope," says Dr. David Scadden of Harvard, who notes stem cells are also used to grow skin grafts.

"If we can recreate that success in other tissues, what can we possibly imagine for other people?"

That sort of promise has long been held out for embryonic stem cells, which were first isolated and grown in a lab dish in 1998. Controversy over their use surrounded the 2001 decision by former President George W. Bush to allow only restricted federal funding for studying them.

Proponents [of embryo-destructive stem cell research] over the past decade have included former first lady Nancy Reagan and actors Michael J. Fox and the late Christopher Reeve. Opponents object that human embryos have to be destroyed to harvest the cells.

Embryonic cells may indeed be used someday to grow replacement tissue or therapeutic material for diseases like Parkinson's or diabetes. Just on Friday, a biotech company said it was going ahead with an initial safety study in spinal cord injury patients. Another is planning an initial study in eye disease patients later this year.

[ed. Embryonic stem cell trials in the past have all been halted because of massive failure due to tissue rejection, the development of tumors, and other major disturbing problems.]

But in the near term, embryonic stem cells are more likely to pay off as lab tools, for learning about the roots of disease and screening potential drugs...

Adult cells have been transplanted routinely for decades, first in bone marrow transplants and then in procedures that transfer just the cells. Doctors recover the cells from the marrow or bloodstream of a patient or a donor, and infuse them as part of the treatment for leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases.

Tens of thousands of people are saved each year by such procedures, experts say.

But it is harnessing these cells for other diseases that has encouraged many scientists lately.

In June, for example, researchers reported they had restored vision to people whose eyes were damaged from caustic chemicals. Stem cells from each patient's healthy eye were grown and multiplied in the lab and transplanted into the damaged eye, where they grew into healthy corneal tissue.

...[O]n Friday, Italian doctors said they'd transplanted two windpipes injected with the recipients' own stem cells.

But these developments only hint at what's being explored in experiments across the United States.

Much of the work is early, and even as experts speak of its promise, they ask for patience and warn against clinics that aggressively market stem-cell cures without scientific backing.

Some of the new approaches, like the long-proven treatments, are based on the idea that stem cells can turn into other cells. Einhorn said the ankle-repair technique, for example, apparently works because of cells that turn into bone and blood vessels. But for other uses, scientists say they're harnessing the apparent abilities of adult stem cells to stimulate tissue repair, or to suppress the immune system.

"That gives adult stem cells really a very interesting and potent quality that embryonic stem cells don't have," says Rocky Tuan of the University of Pittsburgh.

One major focus of adult stem cell work for about a decade has been the ailing heart. While researchers remain committed, much of the early enthusiasm from patients, doctors and investors has slacked off because results so far haven't matched expectations, says Dr. Warren Sherman of Columbia University.

"Everyone, including myself, is impatient and would like to see positive results appear quickly," said Sherman, who hosts an annual international meeting of researchers. But he called for patience.

In treating heart attack, for example, studies show stem cell injections help the heart pump blood a bit better, Sherman said. But the research has not yet established whether injections cut the risk of death, more heart attacks or future hospitalizations, he said.

Sherman said he hopes a large study of those patient outcomes can be done in the next couple of years, and is "very optimistic that patients will benefit."

Similarly, in heart failure, research indicates stem cells can ease symptoms but larger studies are still needed to show how much good the treatments provide, he said. He noted that current studies are testing stem cells taken not only from bone marrow and leg muscle, but also from fat.

Another heart-related condition under study is critical limb ischemia, where blood flow to the leg is so restricted by artery blockage it causes pain and may require amputation. The goal here is to encourage growth of new blood vessels by injecting stem cells into the leg.

Sherman said limb ischemia research is moving fast and the results "are very, very encouraging."

The injected cells may serve as building blocks while also stimulating local tissue to grow the vessels, said Dr. Douglas Losordo of Northwestern University. His own preliminary work suggests such a treatment can reduce amputation rates.

Dr. Gabriel Lasala of TCA Cellular Therapy also has reported positive preliminary results. One success is Rodney Schoenhardt of Metairie, La.

Schoenhardt had already had surgery on both legs for the disease, and his surgeon was talking about amputating his left leg. Schoenhardt suffered so much pain in his left leg while standing that he used a wheelchair instead.

For Lasala's research, Schoenhardt got 40 shots in each leg about 18 months ago, with stem cells going into his left calf and a placebo dose into the other. Soon, he said, the pain in his left leg was gone.

Schoenhardt, 58, now mows his lawn, and he remodeled his living room to fix damage from Hurricane Katrina. "My wheelchair is in my garage, collecting dust," he said.

"I'm even thinking about taking up a little tennis again."

...Among the other diseases being studied for stem cell treatments:

_Multiple sclerosis. In MS, the body's immune system repeatedly assaults brain and spinal cord tissues, which can cause numbness in the limbs, paralysis or vision loss.

Last year, Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern reported a small trial in patients with early MS that was aimed at rebooting the immune system to stop the attacks. He removed stem cells from the patient's blood, destroyed their immune systems, and then re-injected them with their own cells to build a new immune system.

To his surprise, most patients actually improved. He's now conducting another trial to provide firmer evidence of improvement.

Dr. Jeffrey Cohen of the Cleveland Clinic is trying a different and less-researched approach. In a preliminary trial he is just starting, he'll use a different kind of stem cell from patients' marrow that he hopes can slow nervous system damage but also promote repair.

Lessons learned from this approach might eventually reveal some clues for treating other conditions like Parkinson's or spinal cord injury, he said.

_Type 1 diabetes. It's also caused by a misguided attack by the immune system, this time on insulin-producing cells. Burt and colleagues reported last year that the "rebooting" strategy allowed some patients to go without insulin for four years. However, some experts call his approach too risky for that disease. Burt is now doing another study in newly diagnosed adults.

Another study, at about a dozen medical centers around the country, is testing whether an off-the-shelf preparation of marrow stem cells can calm the immune system of diabetics. It's still early work, says C. Randal Mills, chief executive officer of Osiris Therapeutics.

_Cancers such as melanoma and kidney cancer. The idea is to transplant cells to produce a new immune system that will attack the diseases. Earlier work around a decade ago failed to give lasting benefit, but new approaches aim for better results, said Dr. Michael Bishop of the National Cancer Institute...
[MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer, Aug 2, 2010, NEW YORK (6 days ago), http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_STEM_CELLS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-08-02-06-59-36] and [2 Aug 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrAL-sM2yHMyelQ3ZOhCiuZYjYvgD9HB46M80]

FDA OKs First Embryonic Stem Cell Research Trial on Humans, Despite Concerns
[ed. Small Embryonic stem cell trials, in humans, in the past have all been halted because of massive failure due to tissue rejection, the development of tumors, and other major disturbing problems.]

The Obama administration has approved the bid by cloning company Geron to undertake the first trial involving the use of embryonic stem cells in humans. They have never [sic] been used before in people because the cells cause tumors and have immune system rejection issues when tried in animals.

Scientists and pro-life advocates say human embryonic stem cells are not ready for trial because problems associated with the cells in animals haven't been solved. The embryonic stem cells still cause tumors and have issues with the immune system rejecting the injection of the cells.

The Food and Drug Administration had initially placed the trial on hold but Geron indicated today that the agency is now allowing it to proceed with an early stage trial on an stem cell therapy for acute spinal cord injury.

The FDA placed a hold on the trial last August, when evidence showed Geron's GRNOPC1 encountered safety issues when used in animal studies. Geron's own data showed higher frequency of small cysts within the injury site in the spinal cord of animals injected with the embryonic cells.

“We are pleased with the FDA’s decision to allow our planned clinical trial of GRNOPC1 in spinal cord injury to proceed,” said Thomas B. Okarma, Geron's president.

Dr. John A. Kessler, chairman of neurology and director of the stem cell institute at Northwestern University, said the first application from Geron for the embryonic stem cell trial was flawed.

“We really want the best trial to be done for this first trial, and this might not be it,’’ he said at the time. [August 9, 2010, LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Update, Washington, DC]

Commentary: Playing Politics with Stem Cells
 
When scientists play politics with science, society and science both suffer, sometimes with life-threatening implications.  One recent example is Climategate, with revelations that leading global warming researchers played with the data, concealed and tried to suppress data that challenged their assertions and attempted to game the peer-review system.  And as a result of scientists caught playing politics with science, claims of man-made global warming have been met with growing skepticism.

But a similar scenario has played out regarding human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR),  With the introduction of legislation to codify the Obama administration's rules expanding the federal role in funding hESCR, it's time that the extravagant claims for such research suffer the same fate.

Like Climategate, the public policy debate over hESCR has shown that scientists are not always disinterested parties.

Rather, scientists can be every bit as political and partisan as the politicians, selectively using scientific "evidence" to justify their ideological viewpoint.

The patterns of behavior promoting public funding of hESCR have been strikingly similar to Climategate:  selective use of data, manipulation of the peer review process, demonizing colleagues who questioned the prevailing orthodoxies and appeals to a bogus scientific "consensus," among others.   Those who questioned this supposed "consensus" were dismissed as scientifically ignorant and accused of playing politics with science.  

Indeed, President Bush's policy on hESCR was a prime example of what opponents dubbed the "war on science."  Their narrative, dutifully echoed by the mainstream media, was that limiting federal funding of hESCR showed Bush was either ignorant or contemptuous of science, willing to play politics to appease his pro-life base.

In contrast, Obama characterized his executive order lifting the Bush-era restrictions as "ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda, and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

His remarks were risible. The scientific facts regarding hESCR are remarkably flimsy and incapable of supporting the extravagant claims for such research.  Such claims advanced a political agenda -- legitimizing and guaranteeing federal funding for ethically contentious research. For the same political reasons, the increasingly strong evidence of actual therapeutic benefits to patients from ethically non-contentious adult stem cell research was distorted or concealed.   

Senator Arlen Specter declared that hESCR "could result in a veritable fountain of youth by replacing diseased or damaged cells".  Sen. Tom Harkin said in 2005 that apart from Hurricane Katrina relief, the most urgent issue facing the nation was lifting the Bush restrictions on hESCR because "people are dying from diseases and medical conditions that might be cured through embryonic stem-cell research....every day of delay by the Senate has life-and-death consequences." Nancy Pelosi waxed theological, saying "Scientists have been given an almost biblical power to cure through advances in embryonic stem cell research."[i]

Many patient advocacy groups - and celebrities associated with them -- also were not shy hyping hESCR.  

The Alliance for Aging Research said that it allows us to "imagine a world without debilitating costly diseases such as Parkinson's, heart disease and diabetes." Michael J. Fox flatly stated that hESCR has the "potential to eliminate diseases, literally save millions of lives,"[ii] while Christopher Reeve told a Senate committee, "for the true biological miracles that researchers have only begun to foresee, medical science must turn to undifferentiated [embryonic] stem cells."[iii]  

Scientists themselves-eager for federal research dollars but determined that no one outside the "research community" would tell them what they could or could not do --also joined in.

Then-NIH director Harold Varmus testified that "within the course of the next decade or two... that many -- many diseases would be at least treated, if not entirely cured[iv]" by embryonic stem cells. Michael West, president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technologies, declared embryonic stem cells to be among the gifts "that mankind occasionally is given...that can greatly advance the human condition."[v] Dr. Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University testified embryonic stem cells would prove beneficial "for any of these diseases: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, a variety of spinal cord injuries, certain types of diabetes, many others...The only hope on the horizon is through transplantation of these [embryonic]  stem cells..."[vi]

By the rhetorical standards set by hESCR proponents, Varmus' prediction that many diseases would be treated "within the next decade or two" was conservative.  More often proponents would offer five to ten years. Jose Cibelli, a leading proponent of hESCR, admitted that such pronouncements were essentially meaningless. Asked when therapies using hESCs would be ready, Cibelli told the Baltimore Sun "My answer is five years. It's the same thing as saying I have no idea."[vii]

Five and even ten years have come and gone, and there are no treatments or cures using hESCs.  One clinical trial approved by the FDA in 2009, then put on safety hold, was re-approved in July 2010, but as yet not a single patient has even been injected with hESC. The five to ten year predictions were apparently designed to mislead people into thinking treatments were imminent; and to realize them, all Congress needed to do was expand federal hESCR funding.  

In 1992, journalist Gregg Easterbrook, writing on the global warming debate, coined what he called the "Law of Doomsaying": "Predict dreadful events whose arrival impends no sooner than 5 years hence, no later than 10" i.e., soon enough to scare people into action, but far enough away that they will not recall if your predictions prove wrong.  In the hESCR debate, let's call it the "Law of Exaggerated Expectations": Predict wildly optimistic outcomes for cures no later than ten years hence, but no sooner than five years away - a seemingly reasonable time to raise expectations and support for the research,  but far enough off that people will forget if wrong.

Even the respected New England Journal of Medicine jumped on the bandwagon announcing its willingness to distort the peer-review process to promote embryonic stem cell research. In July, 2003, the NEJM announced it would give preferential treatment to publishing papers that shed a favorable light on hESCR.  And it did so for explicitly political purposes -- to "boost the controversial field's standing among politicians and the public".[viii]

It certainly needed a boost -- very little scientific evidence supported hESCR.  Nonetheless, the "scientific community" insisted there was a "consensus" that embryonic stem cells had the greatest potential to cure any number of diseases, period. This bogus "scientific consensus" soon became the new orthodoxy, and there was to be no dissent.  

In April 2007, Nature Neuroscience set its sights on Maureen Condic, professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah.  In an editorial, the journal attacked her for being "anti-scientific," "polemical" and engaging in "disingenuous distortions of scientific arguments."  Her crime?  In the pages of First Things (the editorial attack pointedly described it as a ‘conservative Roman Catholic magazine') Prof. Condic, relying on the peer-reviewed, published literature, challenged the prevailing orthodoxy, throwing much needed cold water on the extravagant hESCR claims, going so far as to suggest that adult stem cells may well prove to be more efficacious in actually helping patients!

In 2002, Roger Pielke, Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, noted in the journal Nature on the trend to politicize science: "As political battles are waged through 'science', many scientists are willing to adopt tactics of demagoguery and character assassination as well as, or even instead of, reasoned argument...science is increasingly the battlefield on which political advocates, not to mention lawyers and those with commercial interests, manipulate 'facts' to support their positions."[ix]

Or ignore facts altogether.  In 2007, Sen. Tom Harkin waved away evidence for adult stem cells saying "Scientists have known about adult stem cells for 40 years, and they still haven't provided the answer for juvenile diabetes." He said this on the very day that the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published clinical trial results using adult stem cells in a treatment that reversed juvenile diabetes in patients.  

In a May 2008 House committee hearing, Weyman Johnson, board chair of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and an MS sufferer himself, testified that "embryonic stem cell research holds unique promise to repair nerve cells to slow the progression of MS and to find a cure."[x] Yet in February 2008, JAMA published data showing benefits of adult stem cells for patients with various auto-immune diseases, including MS (see also the statement of Barry Goudy, one of the MS patients treated).  Embryonic stem cells have achieved nothing regarding MS even in animal models.

At that same hearing, Rep. Diana DeGette commented that "I know that these wonderful patients who are here today who have been cured by adult stem cells, mostly for blood-related diseases, would never say that somebody with diabetes or somebody with Parkinson's or somebody with nerve damage or somebody with macular degeneration -- all diseases for which embryonic stem cell research has shown promise and adult stem cells have shown no clinical promise -- no one would say those people should not be cured..."  

She was 0 for 4.  Rep. DeGette seemed embarrassingly unaware of the year-old JAMA study showing adult stem cells efficacy for juvenile diabetes patients -- and Rep. DeGette is co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus.   

Parkinson's?  In 2004, both Dr. Michel Levesque and Dennis Turner, a Parkinson's patient Levesque treated with Turner's own adult stem cells, testified regarding the positive results of the treatment.  Leveque subsequently published his findings in the peer-reviewed Bentham Open Stem Cell Journal.

Nerve Damage?  Published studies using adult stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries include a 2006 report by Portugal's Dr. Carlos Lima in collaboration with Dr. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson of Wayne State University. They published a second report in 2009 using adult stem cells to treat more spinal cord injured patients.

Macular degeneration?  Far from showing "no clinical promise," University of Louisville researchers have announced plans for a human trial of adult stem cells for macular degeneration.  

Rep. DeGette also seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the patient who testified was treated with his own adult stem cells for heart damage, not a "blood-related disease".

This was a remarkable display of ignorance by one of the leading proponents of hESCR.

But DeGette went even further in dismissing evidence inconvenient to her political agenda.  "It makes me particularly angry when people try to claim that adult stem cells can substitute for cures for diseases for which adult stem cells have shown no clinical promise whatsoever..."  

Her remark showed the flip side of hyping hESCR to advance a political agenda -- demonize and dismiss those who disagreed.  

At one Senate hearing, Dr. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson outlined her research showing positive adult stem cell treatment for spinal cord injury. Yet Sen. Frank Lautenberg's first question for her was "Are you a member of a pro-life group?" repeating it with an even more McCarthyesque tinge: "Are you now a member of a pro-life group in any way?"  Simply identifying someone as pro-life was apparently sufficient reason to dismiss their scientific facts.

The mainstream media joined in: the Washington Post's Rick Weiss, in a "news" report, identified opponents of embryo cloning as "religious conservatives" and not so subtly compared them to the Taliban.[xi]  

When President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC) recommended federal funding for hESCR, it did so conditionally: "In our judgment, the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research...The claim that there are alternatives to using stem cells derived from embryos is not, at the present time, supported scientifically. We recognize, however, that this is a matter that must be revisited continually as science advances." (p.53, emphasis added).

In other words, they recognized that, given the ethical problems associated with hESCR, it should not even be undertaken if viable alternatives exist.  

But the insistence on continuing hESCR in the name of cures, begs the question as to whether the NBAC was simply being disingenuous when it said hESCR should be pursued only if no alternatives were available.  It now seems nothing more than a clever political ploy, designed to allay concerns over the ethically contentious nature of hESCR.  Lip service to "advances of science" showing the efficacy of alternatives would not derail the political drive for federal funding of hESCR.  

The most ironic -- and most troubling -- aspect to the stem cell debate is that all the talk about "playing politics" with science obscured the fact that in an open society there is and must be a role for politics in determining the parameters within which science will be conducted. 

By itself, science is not competent to set these parameters.  Science is a method to obtain knowledge, it can determine one way may be more effective or more efficient than another.  But efficient does not always mean morally acceptable.  

In congressional testimony, Dr. Stuart Newman, a professor at New York Medical College, offered a hypothetical.  Researchers have agreed among themselves that 14 days is the outer limit to destroy embryos to obtain their stem cells. 

But, Newman wondered, why stop there?  After all, more valuable cells could be obtained from cloned embryos allowed to develop to 8 to 9 weeks.  "Right now, it would be a hot potato, but once we have ... gotten used to the idea....And once stem cell harvesting from two-month clonal embryos is in place, who could resist the pleas to extend the time frame...?   I emphasize that all of this makes perfectly good scientific and medical sense. The only thing that stands in the way is the sense of propriety concerning the uses to which developing human embryos and fetuses may be put.[xii]

Our "sense of propriety" must of necessity be based on something other than science.  We (currently at least) reject such research not because it is scientifically unsound, but because we sense it is morally and ethically beyond the pale. Refusing to permit research that may be the most efficient from a scientific perspective because of ethical concerns may make the research more costly and time consuming to pursue - but that cost is the price we pay to keep our humanity.

That is why in an open society, determining public policy on science requires hearing from many voices, voices from outside the scientific community such as ethicists, religious leaders, economists, philosophers and others, in addition to members of the scientific community.  The perspectives they bring should not and must not be dismissed as ideological, sectarian or narrow minded.  Just as war is too important to leave to the generals, setting public policy on science is too important to leave to the scientists.  

By the same token, when actual scientific evidence is dismissed because it is inconvenient to political goals then all that's left is the politics. And once that happens, all that's left is to use the issue to score political points off your opponents.    

By the time Obama signed his executive order vastly expanding the role of the federal government in hESCR, the actual science of stem cell research advances to help patients had long ago left the building.  Should Rep. DeGette succeed in passing her legislation, it will not protect the President's executive order from politics.  It will, though, protect it from science.

Gene Tarne is Communications Director,  Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans  for Research Ethics (www.stemcellresearch.org). David Prentice, PhD is Senior Fellow, Life Sciences, Family Research Council & Founding Member, Do No Harm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] "Obama Action on Stem Cells Would Boost State and National Research Efforts, Sanford Experts Say," Business Wire, 1/12/09

[ii] Stem Cell Research Could Lead to Parkinson's Cure, CNN Today, 9/14/2000

[iii] Testimony before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, 4/26/00

[iv] Testimony before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, 12/2/98

[v] Testimony before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, 8/1/01

[vi] Testimony before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, 10/31/01

[vii] "Stem Cells: A Long Road Ahead;" Baltimore Sun, 3/8/04

[viii] "Influential Journal Plans to Publish More Stem Cell Studies Editor: Deterring Political Opposition to Research is Goal;" Boston Globe, 7/17/03

[ix] "Policy, politics and perspective;" Nature, v. 416, p. 367, 3/28/02

[x] Testimony before the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 5/8/08

[xi] "Bush Unveils Bioethics Council;" Washington Post, 1/17/02

[xii]Testimony before the Senate Committee on Labor and Pensions, Subcommittee on Health, 3/5/02  

[8 August 2010, Gene Tarne and David Prentice, http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/playing_politics_with_stem_cel.html ]

Adult Stem Cell Trial for Spinal Cord Injury in Louisiana
 A Louisiana group has announced that they have enrolled their first spinal cord injury patient for a clinical trial using the patient’s own adult stem cells for treatment.

The first patient enrolled is a paralyzed Iraqi war veteran, Marine veteran Matt C., who was paralyzed from the chest down in a 2005 insurgent attack in Iraq.

The FDA-approved clinical trial will primarily assess the safety of the method, and secondarily evaluate if the treatment can provide functional improvements. TCA Cellular Therapy is the sponsor of the trial.

Note that this is still a clinical trial; a report of results is expected in 2012.

Adult stem cells from olfactory tissue have also been used to successfully treat spinal cord injury patients.
[3 Aug 2010, David Prentice, Baton Rouge, LA, http://www.lifenews.com/nb316.html ]

 [COMMENT -- ACTUAL ARTICLE FOLLOWS...]

"Adult Stem Cells Said to 'Forget' Retooling; Embryonic Alternative [iPS stem cell research] Suffers Setback"
[Comments:  While it would be great of course to find ethical alternatives to the use of human embryonic stem cells (for therapies and for basic research), the article copied below indicates once again that scientifically iPS cells would not constitute that final "ethical alternative".  There have also been several similar research studies over the last few years which have indicated similar scientific problems with iPS cells.  But there are also a number of ethical concerns that continue to plague iPS stem cell research.  For example:  
 
(1)  Referring to iPS stem cells as "adult" stem cells is very misleading.  Real "adult" stem cells obtained from adult human tissues and organs are initially "multipotent", and then are re-programmed to become even more differentiated cells, whereas iPS cells are obtained from adult cells that are de-programmed back to "pluripotency" to become far less differentiated cells.  That is, real "adult" stem cells are never manipulated to become "pluripotent", whereas iPS stem cells are.  The ethical concern is that, especially with little or no control over this de-programming or de-methylations process (as demonstrated in the studies addressed by the article below), "totipotent" cells could result instead of "pluripotent" cells.  Since "totipotent" cells are by definition capable of being reverted to new single cell human embryos by means of the natural biological process of "regulation" or "de-methylation", if any totipotent cells do result from these iPS techniques they could indeed revert back to new single-cell human embryos which would then be destroyed.  Please, this is not to say that all totipotent cells are embryos (as I have been misquoted as saying).  It is to say that the real possibility exists that such totipotent cells might revert to new single-cell embryos because they possess the natural biological process of "regulation" or "de-methylation".  Of interest is that:  a)  none of these experiments test directly for "totipotency", only for odd tumor-producing properties of "pluripotency" -- so they don't know -- empirically -- if any human embryos have been "accidentally" produced during the iPS process;  and b) their definitions of "pluripotency" and of "totipotency" are scientifically incorrect.  For more details and scientific references on these concerns, see:  
 
Irving, “Pluripotent' Stem Cell (iPS) Research is Not the Usual 'Adult' Stem Cell Research” (April 8, 2009), at:  http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_138ips_notadultstemcell.html;   and, Irving, “Framing the Debates on Human Cloning and Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Pluripotent vs. TOTIPOTENT” (July 23, 2005), at: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_100debatecloning1.html.   For related issues of "redefinitions" of standard scientific terms, see Irving and Kischer , “Responses to Dr. Condic's ‘Science’ in National Catholic Register Interview” (January 6, 2010), at:
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_172responsetocondic.html;  also, Irving, Condic’s ‘Pre-Zygote’ Error in ‘When Does Human Life Begin?’” (November 18, 2008), at:  http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_134maureencondic1.html
 
(2)  iPS research, as well as most other similar types of research, require the use of "biological materials" that are derived originally from human embryos and human fetuses and then used throughout these experiments .  This has been acknowledged by these researchers themselves.  That is, even aside from the very real possibility that real living human embryos might be "accidentally" reproduced during the iPS process, the fact remains that bits and pieces of human embryos and fetuses are used throughout these experiments (e.g., in the media used, the feeder cells used, the "controls" in assays and machines used, etc.).  Therefore, such research could hardly claim that it was "free" of the unethical destruction of any human embryos and fetuses.  This concern about the use of human embryonic and fetal "biological materials" in iPS stem cell research holds for related research as well, such as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), ANT, OAR, etc.
 
(3)  It should also be pointed out in fairness that the quote attributed to Debi Vinnedge (Executive Director of Children of God For Life) as stated in the article below is also not completely accurate.  (On the other hand, these scientific "details" are often difficult for those with little scientific background, like reporters and most other people, to comprehend).  Debi Vinnedge is quoted as saying that "the study wasn't particularly helpful in resolving moral issues surrounding stem-cell research because both types of cells start with the aborted fetus."  This interpretation of what was said to the reporter could be misleading, because, as Ms Vinnedge knows well, neither iPS research nor human embryo research literally begin with an "aborted fetus". 

Rather, the point Ms Vinnedge was trying to make, and as she so stated to the reporter, was that "both involve the destruction of innocent human beings."    Ms Vinnedge explained to the reporter that whether or not embryos were continuously destroyed in a specific research protocol was not the issue; one had to destroy embryos and fetuses in order to produce the embryonic cell lines used that specific research protocol to begin with.  She thus explained that "From a moral perspective, there's no difference between embryonic and reprogrammed adult stem cell research because scientists used embryonic stem cells and/or aborted fetal cell lines in order to accomplish the reprogramming,"  Similarly, she also pointed out to the reporter that the Bush decision on using only those existing embryonic stem cells for federal funding was still morally wrong simply because embryos had to have been destroyed somewhere along the line -- it's just that tax dollars were not used for the actual initial destruction. [Personal communication] 

For an in-depth analysis of both the scientific and ethical concerns surrounding iPS research, see Irving, “Ethical and Scientific Concerns About Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research -- Yamanaka and Thomson” (June 1, 2008), at: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_127concerns.html. -- DNI]]http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irvi/irvi_69ipsstemcell.html

[actual article]
Adult Stem Cells Said to 'Forget' Retooling: Embryonic alternative suffers setback

Reprogrammed adult stem cells may not be as useful an alternative to controversial embryonic stem-cell research as had been hoped, researchers found in two articles published Monday.

Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Johns Hopkins University published an article online in the prestigious journal Nature finding that such adult stem cells remain fundamentally different from embryonic stem cells and are no better at curing diseases in mice.

Many in the medical community and among pro-lifers have hoped harvesting embryonic cells, which destroys the days-old human embryos and has provoked intense ethical and moral criticism, could be avoided if scientists could manipulate adult cells to act as if they were embryonic stem cells.

Called "induced pluripotent stem cells" (or iPS), the altered adult cells "forget" they were once cells naturally "programmed" to become liver cells, lung cells, skin cells, etc. This would make them, theoretically, as useful as embryonic cells for a variety of miracle cures, especially for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

It turns out, the studies say, that they don't forget.

"Our data indicate that nuclear transfer [from embryonic stem cells] is more effective at establishing the ground state of pluripotency than factor-based reprogramming [of adult stem cells], which can leave an epigenetic memory of the tissue of origin that may influence efforts at directed differentiation for applications in disease modelling or treatment," the article's findings stated.

A second, separate group of scientists led by Konrad Hochedlinger, a stem-cell biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine, published similar findings Monday in Nature Biotechnology. That group said the adult cells obtained from mice exhibited distinct patterns that could not be erased.

Kitai Kim, a postdoctoral fellow and one of the leading researchers on the project published in Nature, explained that older cells are more set in their ways and difficult to reprogram. His group worked with mice, reprogramming different kinds of cells with varying results.

The needed DNA change "was incompletely reset in [reprogrammed adult] cells compared to nuclear-transfer stem cells," said co-senior author Andrew Feinberg. "This paper opens our eyes to the restricted lineage of iPS cells. ... The lineage restriction by tissue of origin is both a blessing and a curse. You might want lineage restriction in some cases, but you may also have to do more work to make the iPS cells more totally pluripotent."

Those who oppose using embryos for stem-cell research have long argued in favor of replacing them with adult stem cells. Critics have argued that embryonic stem cells are scientifically superior to adult stem cells. And the researchers said the findings demonstrate that the scientific focus needs to be on embryonic stem-cell research.

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the results of the study weren't surprising from a scientific perspective, but could still have enormous implications for future research.

"A giant balloon of enthusiasm just got the air let out of it," said Mr. Caplan.

"What this shows is that ideology and values are no substitute for science," he said. "The science on this is still early, and the values and moral beliefs are going to have to wait until the science has told us what's possible."

Debi Vinnedge, executive director of the Children of God for Life, which opposes using embryonic stem-cell research, said the study wasn't particularly helpful in resolving moral issues surrounding stem-cell research because both types of cells start with the aborted fetus.

"From a moral perspective, there's no difference between embryonic and reprogrammed adult stem cells because scientists used embryonic stem cells and/or aborted fetal cell lines in order to accomplish the reprogramming," Ms. Vinnedge said.

The research did show, however, that while reprogrammed stem cells may not be as versatile as embryonic ones, they can still be quite useful.

Thousands of patients around the world have been treated with adult stem cells, but no humans as of yet have been given cells derived from embryos in an approved trial.
 
[19 July 2010, Valerie Richardson and Kathryn Watson, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/19/adult-stem-cells-said-to-forget-retooling/
WashingtonTimes.com; PharmFacts E-News Update -- 26 Jul 2010, PFLI PharmAid Center, www.pfli.org]

Darpa’s Synthetic Blood Almost Ready for the Battlefields

Back in 2008, Darpa launched the Blood Pharming program. Pharming is the name for a genetically altered plant or animal that can produce an excess of some valuable property, like insulin or cheap vaccines.

The Blood Pharming project was, obviously, created to pharm blood, especially in military medical situations. Darpa contracted a Cleveland biotech firm called Arteriocyte for a mere $1.95 million for the project, and Arteriocyte now has a prototype that’s ready to ship off to the Food and Drug Administration for testing. Says Wired:

    The blood was produced using hematopoietic cells, derived from embryonic cord-blood units. Currently, it takes Arteriocyte scientists three days to turn a single umbilical cord unit into 20 units of RBC-packed blood. The average soldier needs six units during trauma treatment.

One unit of pharmed blood currently costs about $5,000–Darpa estimates that that price will have to sink to about $1,000 before it’s financially viable, but one it gets FDA approval, there should be little problem to ramp up production and lower the price.

There’s another wrinkle that makes pharmed blood desirable: time. Most blood used in military medical situations is donated on physical U.S. soil, often very far from the action, as in our current major military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the actual shelf life of blood is disputed (some say two weeks, some say four weeks, some say six), blood usually takes around 21 days to reach its intended host. By that time it is, if not actually expired, certainly “stale,” as Arteriocyte’s CEO puts it.

But pharmed blood can be produced on-site in much greater quantities, rather than having to be shipped from the States. That could be a huge advantage for this somewhat-artificial blood.
[Dan Nosowitz | Jul 9, 2010, http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/darpas-synthetic-blood-almost-ready-for-the-battlefields/4699/ ; PharmFacts E-News Update, 13July 10]

Latest Adult Stem Cell Advance Gives Sight to the Blind

For individuals blinded by chemical burns, the ever advancing field of adult stem-cell research has provided yet another astonishing cure – giving them sight through their own stem cells.

Italian researchers have reported developing a very successful therapy to cure those who were either blinded, or whose vision was severely impaired, thanks to chemical burns to their corneas. Such burns can come about through handling everything from toxic cleaning substances at home to heavy-duty chemicals at work.

The new stem-cell therapy, however, is specific to chemical burns and cannot be used to remedy other diseases or damages to the eye, such as from glaucoma or retinal damage.

In a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists treated 107 eyes of 106 patients with stem cells derived from the limbus, the rim around the cornea, where stem cells are naturally produced by the body to do repairs on the cornea.

The researchers derived the stem cells from a patient’s healthy eye, and then encouraged them to multiply. Once they had enough stem cells, they removed the scar tissue over the bad eye, and then grafted the stem cells on over the site of the cornea, which then began to generate new corneal tissues.

After 12-24 months had passed, these grafts were then followed up by corrective surgeries.

One patient had severe alkali burns on both his eyes from 1948. Researchers, however, were able to adapt and derive limbal stem-cell cultures with biopsied tissue taken from the patient’s left eye.

The therapy managed to successfully restore both corneal surfaces, transitioning the man from blindness to having an almost normal, combined vision of close to 20/30. Follow-ups after two and five years showed that both eyes were stable after the treatment.

In all, the treatment had a 76.6 percent success rate, sustained over the past decade. The researchers note that all their failure cases occurred within the first year of treatment. In all, 82 of 107 eyes had successful cures, with partial success in 14 others.

"They were incredibly happy. Some said it was a miracle," one of the study leaders, Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena's Center for Regenerative Medicine in Italy, told the Associated Press. "It was not a miracle. It was simply a technique."

The treatment is a major advance for the field of stem-cell research, and avoids all the moral and ethical hazards intrinsic to embryonic stem cell research (ESSR), where human embryos must be destroyed for their stem cells.

 However, despite media hype and sweeping promises of hope, ESCR has yielded no therapies; it is only the field of adult stem cell research that has been on the cutting edge of developing the “miracle cures” demanded by the public.

Even better, the adult stem cells derived from patients are completely compatible with the body, and do not carry the risk of rejection or need drugs to prevent rejection, as is the case with therapies using embryonic stem cells.

One group, the Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List, hailed the results of the study, saying that it proves once again that the future of stem cell research lies in adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells.

“Not only,” wrote SBA on their blog, do the patients “not have to worry about anti-rejection drugs, patients who undergo adult stem cell therapies are not troubled by the moral and ethical dilemma of destroying small humans, embryos, for scientific research. Also unlike embryonic stem cell research, treatments with adult stem cells have yielded real results.”

SBA also wrote that it’s a “miracle” that “the Italian government funded a study involving only the use of adult stem cells.”

“Here in the U.S.,” they continued, “research with adult stem cells is only in the preliminary stages while after only two months in office, President Obama ended the ban on embryonic stem cell research. Since March 2009, there has been little to no success with embryonic cells. Hopefully the American science & research community will take this hint from our Italian friends!”

Read the study in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Limbal Stem-Cell Therapy and Long-Term Corneal Regeneration” here -- http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa0905955v1
[29 June 2010, Peter J. Smith, WASHINGTON, D.C.,   http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062913.html ]

Fed Appeals Court Green Lights Suit Against HHS over Funding Embryonic Research

Overturning a lower court ruling, a federal appeals court has told adult stem-cell researchers that they have standing to fight guidelines allowing taxpayer funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued its decision Friday, finding that doctors doing adult stem cell research have 'competitive standing' to sue. Therefore, the court reinstated the doctors' federal lawsuit, filed last summer, that seeks to preliminarily enjoin and ultimately overturn the controversial guidelines for public funding of embryonic stem cell research that the National Institutes of Health issued on July 7, 2009.

The implementation of these guidelines marks the first time that taxpayer dollars will be used to fund research that will result in the destruction of human embryos. Since 1994, Congress has expressly banned the NIH from funding research in which human embryos "are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

According to Thomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, "the language of the statute is clear. It bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos. NIH's attempt to avoid Congress's command by funding everything but the act of 'harvesting' is pure sophistry. The guidelines will result in the destruction of human embryos and are unlawful, unethical, and unnecessary."

The plaintiffs contend that the NIH guidelines violate the congressional ban because they "necessarily condition funding on the destruction of human embryos."

In addition, the plaintiffs allege that the NIH guidelines were invalidly implemented, because the decision to fund human embryonic stem cell research was made without the proper procedures required by law and without properly considering the more effective and less ethically problematic forms of adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research.

President Obama instituted the funding policy in a March 11, 2009 Executive Order, purportedly backing funding for "responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research ... to the extent permitted by law."

Yet pro-life leaders say Obama's new guidelines fail his own test, arguing that they are both unlawful and based upon an ethically irresponsible misunderstanding of available scientific evidence.

"The great irony of the guidelines is that research involving stem cells safely derived from human adults and other sources presents the same if not greater potential for medical breakthroughs, without any of the troubling legal and ethical issues related to embryonic stem-cell research," explained one of the expert stem cell researcher plaintiffs, Dr. James L. Sherley.

Clinical trials using adult stem cells have successfully reversed the effects of diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

The plaintiffs argue that because NIH promulgated its guidelines with a preconceived determination to fund human embryonic stem cell research and without considering these scientifically and ethically superior alternatives, the guidelines are invalid regulations and should be struck down.

"The majority of the almost 50,000 comments that the NIH received were opposed to funding this research, and by its own admission, NIH totally ignored these comments," said Sam Casey, co-Counsel for the plaintiffs and General Counsel of Advocates International's Law of Life Project.

"The so-called spare human embryos being stored in IVF clinics around the United States are not 'in excess of need,' as the NIH in its guidelines callously assert. They are human beings in need of biological or adoptive parents."

The lawsuit is brought by a broad coalition of plaintiffs, including Dr. James L. Sherley, a former member of the MIT faculty, currently working as a senior scientist at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute; Dr. Theresa Deisher, the founder, managing member, and research and development director of AVM Biotechnology; Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a non-profit, licensed adoption agency dedicated to protecting and finding adoptive parents for human embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization; all individual human embryos whose lives are now at risk under NIH's guidelines; parents seeking to adopt human embryos; and the Christian Medical Association.

[WASHINGTON, D.C., June 25, 2010, www.LifeSiteNews.com, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062505.html ]

New Adult Stem-Cell Treatments for Head and Heart Advance
New reports indicate that real hope for ‘miracle’ treatments using adult stem cells is on the way for those suffering from diseases afflicting both the brain and the heart. 

In California, researchers at the University of California in Irvine say they have discovered the method and mechanisms by which adult stem-cells can repair and replace damaged tissue in the brain.

The discovery could lead to treatments for individuals with multiple sclerosis and other brain inflammation diseases.

While advances have been made in treating the diseases of the head, a young girl is undergoing an experimental adult stem cell treatment that, if successful, would finally allow her to overcome a rare disease of the heart called Eisenmenger syndrome. http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10060901.html, Life Site News; Pro-Life Today | 10 June 2010

Man Appears Free of HIV After Rare Full Transplant Involving Adult Stem Cells

A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The patient is fine," said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. "Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication."

The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man's leukemia, not the HIV itself.

However, the team deliberately chose a compatible donor who has a naturally occurring gene mutation that confers resistance to HIV.

The mutation cripples a receptor known as CCR5, which is normally found on the surface of T cells, the type of immune system cells attacked by HIV.  [7June2010, www.LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report, Berlin, Germany]

California Quietly Shifts Fruitless Embryo Research Funds to Adult Stem Cells: Investors Criticize the Past Waste on Useless Research
California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine came into being five years ago, fueled by a conviction that the Bush administration's restriction on embryo-destructive research in the National Institutes of Health was stifling the progress of science. 

But after years of fruitless work, the Institute has now quietly diverted funds from embryonic stem cell research (ESCr) to adult stem cell research - which has already produced dozens of treatments and all-out cures for maladies ranging from spinal cord injury, to Alzheimer's, to type I diabetes.

The California government - which is again teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - in 2004 passed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, or Proposition 71.  The initiative pumped $3 billion into research seeking some medical use for stem cells harvested from human embryos, which are killed in the process. 

But an editorial in the Los Angeles-based Investor's Business Daily (IBD) magazine January 12 pointed out the abysmal failure of the state's massive investment in research that has procured no effective treatments to date. 

"Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress," notes the IBD editors. 

"ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure."

The editors also called out the Institute for dissembling on the real source of progress among stem cell research.  "Over the years ... when funding was needed, the phrase 'embryonic stem cells' was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word 'embryonic' was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab," they write.

"This is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed."

Although scientists and pro-life advocates have denounced the dead-end science of embryo research for years, the political and ethical furor surrounding embryonic research appears to have obscured the undeniable superiority of adult stem cells' track record. 

Not only have adult cells already produced dozens of treatments, but embryonic stem cells have been found prone to multiply out of control, causing tumors, and are less easily cultivated into specific types of tissue than their adult counterparts. 

Meanwhile, due to advances in induced pluripotent stem cells, adult cells are now capable of transforming into various types of cells – an ability once thought to be held only by embryonic cells.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the director of the National Institutes of Health under the Bush administration, wrote in a March 2009 U.S. News & World Report column that "embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, are obsolete." 

The same month, however, President Obama reversed the Bush administration ban on taxpayer funding of embryo research, saying that "our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values." 

The IBD editors concluded that "it is ESCR researchers who have politicized science and stood in the way of real progress.

"We are pleased to see California researchers beginning to put science in its rightful place."
 

Related:

Pentagon Invests $250 Million in Adult Stem Cell Research http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08091006. html  

Obama Unleashes Taxpayer Funds for Embryo-Destructive Research
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030910 .html

[29January2010, Kathleen Gilbert, Los Angeles, CA, www.LifeSiteNews.com, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jan/10012908.html]

2-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Geron?
Embryonic stem cell research, regardless of the current presidential/congressional support, is in trouble. They have not figured out how to fix the problems (e.g. cancerous tumors), yet "adult" stem cells (e.g., from dental pulp, bone marrow, and fatty deposits) are consistently meeting or exceeding expectations. ... Combine funding cuts with research setbacks and Geron is in a LOT of trouble. [http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2010/02/17/2-star-stocks-poised-to-plunge-geron.aspx, The Motley Fool; ALL Pro-Life Today, 20Feb10]

Maryland May Follow California in Switching Focus to Adult Stem Cell Research
Maryland is following the lead of California in acknowledging that adult stem cell research has shown much promise, while embryonic stem cell research has destroyed countless lives with no results.

One official says success in unfunded adult stem cell efforts suggests that a focus on embryonic stem cells has led to “funding the wrong research.” The legislation in the state’s House of Delegates is sponsored by Delegate Shirley Nathan-Pulliam, a Baltimore County Democrat. It would devote five percent of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund to adult stem cell research for sickle cell disease. [Ed. Note: Only 5%? It's a shame to continue to waste the other 95% on embryo-destructive stem cell research; but it's a start...]

Del. Nathan-Pulliam’s proposal comes two months after the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published the results of a clinical trial that used the research to reverse sickle cell disease in 90 percent of adult patients.In the past, the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund had twice rejected applications for funding adult stem cell research in sickle cell disease. [8March10, Annapolis, MD, www.LifeNews.com, #4843]