It is a shame that contemporary debate about stem cell research is driven by ideology rather than data. A straightforward examination of the data shows that embryonic stem cell research has yielded little to no results. Any type of treatment using embryonic stem cells remains aloof. Yet the same cannot be said of research done with adult stem cells, as highlighted by www.stemcellresearch.org. As noted in a publication by www.stemcellresearch.com, such research has already led to promising treatments.
In a recent study done by researchers at Harvard and Columbia, Lifenews.com reports that motor neurons were created using a new technique that reprograms human adult skin cells into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells. Studies performed last November in Japan and Wisconsin revealed that doing so was possible with skin cells from healthy humans. At that time, however, it was unknown if motor neurons could be created from skin cells from chronically-ill patients. The recent study shows this is possible because the motor neurons were created using skin cells from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) patients. (The study was published in the July 31 edition of the medical journal Science.)
Chris Henderson, a professor of pathology, neurology and neuroscience at Columbia said, “Our paper now shows that we can generate hundreds of millions of motor neurons that are genetically identical to a patient’s own neurons. This will be an immense help as we try to uncover the mechanisms behind this disease and screen for drugs that can prolong life.”
Bioethicist Wesley Smith hails these results as yet another example of the fruitful research performed with adult stem cells as a result of President Bush’s courage not to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research. This courage has led to highly successful research alternatives. Comparing the ineffective results of embryonic stem cell research to the more recent and successful adult stem cell research, Smith said, “[S]o far no human cloned embryonic stem cells have been derived despite years of trying. . . . But in less than one year since the first iPSC human line was created, that precise achievement has already been accomplished.”
In fact, as reported by Lifenews.com, Dr. David Prentice, a Family Research Council fellow and former Indiana State University biology professor, notes that this is not the first time researchers have successfully made patient-specific and disease-specific stem cell lines.
Just think: Treatments for diseases without a single human being destroyed. This is not a dream. Such treatments already exist and this study reveals the immense promise of further research using adult stem cells.
