Just this week, we have 2 more stories in the news about stem cells used in human trials. In one case, a Parkinson's disease sufferer was helped, and in another case, a child with a brain disease, stem cells made the situation worse. 

 

If you just listened to the campaign ads from past elections, you might be led to believe that only the embryonic or fetal stem cells held the promise of cures and relief from serious diseases. You might be led to believe that Republicans are heartless people, refusing to offer any relief to sufferers, such as actor Michael J. Fox, because of some moral hang up* with harvesting the unborn stem cells to help the living.

 

But once again, the facts prove otherwise. It is the ADULT stem cells that have shown promise and the EMBRYONIC stem cells that are fraught with problems.

 

First, the stem cell success: Adult Stem Cell Research Reverses Effects of Parkinson's Disease in Human Trial: (My emphasis throughout posting)

Los Angeles, CA (LifeNews.com) -- Scientists have published a paper in a medical journal describing the results of the world's first clinical trial using autologous neural stem cells for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

 

A leading bioethics watchdog says the results show more money should be put behind adult stem cells. UCLA researchers published their results in February issue of the Bentham Open Stem Cell Journal which outlines the long term results of the trial.

"We have documented the first successful adult neural stem cell transplantation to reverse the effects of Parkinson's disease and demonstrated the long term safety and therapeutic effects of this approach," says lead author Dr. Michel Levesque

...The team was able to inject the adult stem cells without the need for immunosuppressants. Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cell injections don't cause a patient's immune system to reject the cells.

..."Of particular note are the striking results this study yielded -- for the five years following the procedure the patient's motor scales improved by over 80% for at least 36 months," Levesque wrote.

..."While the data show that the technique needs refinement, this patient went for several years with little to no symptoms of his disease, even with only half of the brain treated with his own adult stem cells," [said Dr. David Prentice of Family Research Council.]

Prentice says the results continue to prove that adult stem cells outpace their embryonic counterparts.

That indeed is good news! Do read the entire article.

 

Now contrast that success with this stem cell failure:  Report: Fetal stem cells trigger tumors in ill boy

WASHINGTON (AP) - A family desperate to save a child from a lethal brain disease sought highly experimental injections of fetal stem cells—injections that triggered tumors in the boy's brain and spinal cord, Israeli scientists reported Tuesday.

Scientists are furiously trying to harness different types of stem cells—the building blocks for other cells in the body—to regrow damaged tissues and thus treat devastating diseases. But for all the promise, researchers have long warned that they must learn to control newly injected stem cells so they don't grow where they shouldn't, and small studies in people are only just beginning.

Tuesday's report in the journal PLoS Medicine is the first documented case of a human brain tumor—albeit a benign, slow-growing one—after fetal stem cell therapy, and hammers home the need for careful research. The journal is published by the Public Library of Science.

The boy underwent several injections of fetal stem cells from age 9 -12. His condition did not improve. Tests revealed 2 new tumors were at fault necessitating surgery.

But was the boy prone to tumors anyway or were the fetal stem cells to blame? A Tel Aviv University team extensively tested the tumor tissue and concluded it was the fetal cells. Among other evidence, some of the cells were female and had two normal copies of the gene that causes A-T—although that boy's underlying poor immune function could have allowed the growths to take hold.

In this case, the boy's condition may not have been treatable with any kind of stem cell, but it is known that the embryonic type have been prone to growing unwanted tumors in the animal tests.

And which kind of stem cell research do President Obama and the Democrats support giving government funding to?  The kind of stem cells that DON'T work, the EMBRYONIC ones.

 

Why? I believe because they are desperate to prove that we need to consider the embryo nothing more than a piece of tissue. It fits into their agenda to promote abortion.

 

There are more than 70 beneficial treatments already being used on human beings that come from using ADULT stem cells. You can read more about current treatments at Stemcellresearch.org It is pretty exciting.

 

 

*I don't expect a person without religious convictions to understand this, but if you are a person of faith, I ask you to consider this: I believe God is a benevolent God. He created everything. He knows what works and what doesn't.

Do you really think He would make the only cure to a disease be at the expense of another living being? I don't. If it were true, that would be a cruel choice indeed. Thankfully, we don't have to make that choice. In fact, the opposite is true. As it stands now, the promise of cure is coming from ADULT stem cells, not those obtained from destroying an embryo. 

 

Sampling of positive ADULT stem cell results: Treating MS Symptoms With Stem Cells, Stem-cell transplant wipes out HIV, The miracle teabag: Stem cells in a pack help stroke victim to talk again

Investor' Business Daily: Stem Cells: Ideology or Science?  

 

Links: 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Vicki McKenna, Jay Weber, The Right View Wisconsin, Mark Levin, The Heritage Foundation, CNS News

Don't you love it?  Grow your own transplant parts from your own stem cells. Claudia Castillo gets windpipe tailor-made from her own stem cells: (My emphasis)

A woman has been given a new section of windpipe created from her own stem cells in an operation that could revolutionise surgery.

Claudia Castillo, 30, who lives in Barcelona, has become the first person to be given a whole organ tailor-made for her in laboratories across Europe.

A graft from a donor was used, but because it has been imbued with Ms Castillo’s own cells, there is no sign that her body will reject the organ.

Researchers and surgeons from Britain, Italy and Spain collaborated to grow tissue from Ms Castillo’s own bone marrow stem cells, using them to fashion the new bronchus – a branch of the windpipe. They believe that one day the approach will be used to create engineered replacements for other damaged organs, such as the bowel or bladder. In five years they hope to begin clinical trials in which laboratory-made voice boxes are implanted into patients with cancer of the larynx.

Please notice that this breakthrough did not come from embryonic stem cells, the stem cell research that the Democrats are so gung ho on. This comment rather says it all from the Times: 

We continue to have vast success with adult stem cells, but the Obamamaniacs still want to use live embryos, (which have not had one cure in over 25 years), to satisfy the pro-abortion crowd.  ...John Frank, Reading, USA

Stem cell research was a big issue during the presidential campaign. Obama ads lied about McCain and Palin's stance on stem cell research. Truth is, the adult stem cell research that Republicans support is already yielding about 73 benefits to human patients. You can read more about it at CNS, and on the Stemcellresearch.org site.

Embryonic stem cell research, touted by Democrats, has hit snags in that when embryonic stem cells were introduced to rats, tumor growth resulted. From CNS:

Stem cells obtained from human embryos, however, have not been successful in yielding results in scientific research thus far.

Why should we support that embryonic type stem cell research when adult stem cells are already being used successfully  on humans? That does not make cents or sense!

Please, comment content should relate to the subject of the post. Although I try to respond to many, do not interpret my lack of a response as agreement.

 

Links: 

 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Vicki Mckenna, Jay Weber, The Right View Wisconsin, Mark Levin, CNS News

For years I was a vegetarian. I ate a lot of soy and soy based veggie-meat substitutes. I did it for health reasons. Boy, was I wrong!

A few years ago I started seeing a D.O. (Osteopathic Doctor) because I felt so exhausted. After a number of tests it was determined I had an under active thyroid and an allergy to soy. She added that most people were allergic to soy because it is in so many processed foods.

Today I received an email health alert from Dr. Mercola. (My holistic dentist recommended his website and so I signed up for his health alerts.) Today's alert was all about Dr. Daniel, the author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food, and the dangers of soy.

Why is soy so heavily promoted as a health food? Because it is BIG business. Like so many things in our society, if you "follow the money" you find soy has little to do with health and everything to do with increasing sales.

“One of the most effective things they [the soy industry] did was, some years ago, they recognized that they had a whole lot of soy that they wanted to sell, but they didn’t have a market for it because most people perceived soy products as something that was a communist food or fascist food. Or soy was perceived as a hippie food …

So either way soy did not have a good image and they got to thinking, “Well how can we make soy into an upscale food that people will want to buy and want to pay well for?” And what they did was absolutely brilliant. They came up with the idea of turning it into a health food. And that way rich people and upscale people would start to popularize it and the image would improve and then middle class and lower class people would want to eat it as well.

A soy heavy diet is detrimental enough for adults, causing among other things thyroid disorders, but it has even more drastic effects on children.  Soy based infant formula is especially harmful to the long term health of children.

Soy is bad enough for adults, but children and babies who are still developing are particularly vulnerable to soy’s hormone-mimicking effects. This means avoiding soy infant formula like the plague, and also not eating soy products if you are pregnant, is a health necessity.

Not only does soy infant formula have profoundly adverse hormonal effects, but it also has over 1,000 percent more aluminum than conventional milk-based formulas. Many soy foods also have toxic levels of manganese. Soy formula has up to 80 times higher manganese than is found in human breast milk.

In terms of the hormonal dangers, a Lancet study showed that the daily exposure to estrogen-imitating chemicals for infants who consume soy formulas was 6-11 times higher than adults consuming soy foods.

And the blood concentration of these hormones was 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than estrogen in the blood. An infant exclusively fed soy formula receives the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of up to five birth control pills per day.

But don't take my word for it, look into this issue for yourself. Before you reach for that "Silk" soy milk, soy based energy bar, or worse yet, soy based infant formula, read and watch the YouTube in this link as well as Dr. Mercola's comments at the end.

 

Note: My holistic dentist informed me that the only soy products people should eat are tempeh and miso, both a fermented form of soy. The fermentation process removes the harmful affects of soy.

Links: 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin,  Vicki Mckenna

That may seem obvious to you. To some animal rights activists it is not.

Two weeks ago, two ads in Brookfield Now presented both sides of the argument: for and against animal testing at the Medical College of Wisconsin. This week I saw only a pro letter.

A column by Eugene Kane caught my eye. In it he presented some interesting quotes and interviews. On the pro side, the medical college statement reads, "As a medical school, it is essential that we remain true to our mission, which is to improve human life by educating the next generation of physicians..." On the con side, "According to Angela Speed, public relations specialist for the humane society, the shelter feels there's no compelling reason for the college to use dogs when top medical colleges like Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins don't. She said those universities use pigs instead."

So why not just use pigs, sheep, or goats? Because they are hoofed animals and not anatomically like the human. I can still remember back to my college days of physiology and anatomy class. We dissected cats. Why cats we asked? Because they were anatomically and physiologically similar to humans: The bones, muscles, and organs of felines and canines are arranged and function much like a human's.

By the way, I owned and loved a cat for 16 years. We affectionately called him our firstborn. We now own an adorable Maltese mutt, who rounds out our family to a nice even number of 4.

Seems pretty simple to me: People before animals.