However, experiments around the world have shown that adult stem cells from one germ layer can be converted into those of another in a living human, such as those that turned marrow cells into heart muscle and blood vessels in live humans. Amniotic stem cells may be the most easily differentiated of all - as well as among the easiest to extract in large amounts. Indeed, they are routinely recovered with a hypodermic needle during amniocentesis. While it's widely believed that this procedure slightly increases the chance of miscarriage, a sizable study last November of 35,000 women who underwent mid-trimester testing found "no significant difference in loss rates between those undergoing amniocentesis and those not undergoing amniocentesis."
There are over four million births each year in the United States (around 250,000 in Australia), and Atala calculates that merely 100,000 amniotic stem cell specimens could supply 99 percent of the U.S. (300-million) population's needs for perfect matches for transplants, assuming a perfect match is even needed. About 700,000 amniocentesis procedures are performed in the United States and Western Europe each year. Amniotic cells can also be obtained at the time of birth when the membranes around the amniotic sac rupture. Women describe this as their “waters breaking”.
Of course ESC researchers have downplayed the Atala findings. The work will "still require a lot of replication from other groups before they can be conclusive," Stephen Minger, a lecturer in stem-cell biology told a British newspaper. "They have only shown that these particular stem cells can turn into a couple of different types of other stem cells .... a lot more work is required." Other media outlets would say the same. Newsweek International claimed, "Many scientists are quick to emphasize that comprehensive human trials are still many years away."
The New York Times (there's the NYT again - see Media Bias on p 13 ) refused even to allow people to read between the lines - they simply never reported the news about Atala's work. When a reader complained to the "Public Editor," about the omission, the Times responded that its genetics reporter, Nicholas Wade, "looked at the Atala paper last week and deemed it a minor development." Wade said of the paper, "It reports finding 'multipotent' stem cells in amniotic fluid. Multipotent means they can't do as much as bona fide embryonic stem cells (which are called 'pluripotent')."
Minger, Newsweek and Wade are wrong. As Atala told PBS's Online NewsHour, "We have been able to drive the cell to what we call all three germ layers, which basically means all three major classes of tissues available in the body, from which all cells come." The online abstract of the Atala paper indicated the same. Of course, this is the same paper that told readers in 2004 that there were no cures or treatments with adult stem cells. Not the 70 cures or treatments, some dating back half a century, but none!
The media cover-up is obvious. Atala's work actually is a replication of numerous studies. He's just taken the research further and drawn his cells from amniotic fluid, whereas others have drawn the identical cells from placentas. Amniotic and placenta stem cells are the same, as Atala himself noted. Rather than human trials being "many years away," trials were being carried out many years ago. The New England Journal of Medicine carried one paper on a placenta stem cell trial back in 1996 and another paper two years later. There's been an ongoing clinical trial since 2001 to treat sickle cell anemia.
The Washington Post's Rick Weiss, who has been accused of promoting ESC research, tried to find a middle ground. [You know, like Hillary Clinton trying to find a middle ground on abortion by promoting the Morning After Pill]. He wrote that "The new (!) cells are adding credence to an emerging consensus among experts that the popular distinction between ‘embryonic’ and 'adult' stem cells - those isolated from adult bone marrow and other organs - is artificial."
That is rubbish. It is not an artificial distinction that extracting ESCs kills the embryo while adult stem cells can be obtained without killing the donor. That distinction remains no matter how liberal journalists attempt to obscure it or what the “potential” of embryonic stem cells is.
What is somewhat artificial is the term "adult stem cell," which was appropriate when all adult stem cells were taken from bone marrow, but this is confusing now that they are being extracted from placentas, amniotic fluid, and umbilical cords, which aren't "adult" sources. But for discussions both scientific and moral, stem cells can still be classified as embryonic and non-embryonic.
All embryonic stem cell treatments tend to result in tumours; they require permanent, dangerous, immunosuppressive drugs because the body rejects them as foreign and they are difficult to differentiate into the needed type of mature cells. Non-embryonic stem cells, however, do not become cancerous; they are far less likely to cause rejection (especially the youngest, including umbilical cord and amniotic/placental cells) and they have been used therapeutically since the late 1950s (originally for leukemia) because they have the amazing ability to form the right type of mature cell merely upon being injected into a body that needs that type of cell.
It is these biological differences that have held ESC research back, not lack of "compassionate" legislation, lack of funds or mean right-to-lifers. Stem-cell researcher Malcolm Alison of the University of London told the Daily Mail that amniotic cells "appear to be at least as malleable as embryonic stem cells but without all the ethical baggage."
There is another moral issue. Research funds are not unlimited and non-embryonic stem cell researchers are already achieving amazing results such as growing new heart and liver tissue and treating multiple sclerosis - all in living humans. Just this year there have been reports of brain cells that regenerate in humans opening up the potential for treatments of brain diseases, and there have also been trials of adult and umbilical cord cells for treatments of juvenile diabetes.
There is no justification for wasting one more cent on embryo killing ESC research other than to feed the egos of amoral scientists. Our money should be spent on adult and other tissue stem cells (amniotic, placental, umbilical cord) which are producing results, and on other areas of ill-health not connected with stem cells, such as treatments for heart disease and cancer.
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