Regardless of whether you consider the embryos we use to get these so-called pluripotent stem cells are human yet, I wanted to highlight a few things which the mainstream press is not covering much -- presumably because it's easier to tell this story as a "liberal Obama vs. conservative Bush" story. (I was reading the Wall Street Journal's coverage this morning, and it seems typical.)
- New technologies are turning adult stem cells into pluripotent stem cells. Scientists have had recent successes turning adult stem cells (the ones you and I have in abundance) into pluripotent stem cells -- that is, cells which can turn into other types of cells. Pluripotency is one of the main things which got scientists excited about embryonic stem cells in the first place. (If you the Wikipedia link is a bit too dry, try this article in Nature.)
- Stem-cell therapies working today. Stem cell-based therapies are working today to treat blood problems such as leukemia. Most the media attention is focused on embryonic stem cell research which will take years to develop into effective treatments (if ever), and I thought it worthwhile to remind people that therapies based on adult and umbilical cord stem cells -- neither of which require destroying embryos -- are working today.
Also, update on 3/9 -- here is a CBS news story on regrowing body parts, which I learned about, of all places on Twitter via @tonyrobbins. Yes, that Tony Robbins.
2 comments:
Brian just tried to summarize your blog post for me but I decided to go to the source. Thanks for the additional insight.
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