Stem cell pioneer does a reality check – Cloning and stem cells- msnbc.com

One of my favorite scientists and articles. Dr Thomson, father of embryonic stem cells, tells the real story! – dg

“…embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies.”

“Ten or 20 years from now…there will be transplantation-based therapies, , but even if there was none, and it was a complete failure, this technology is extraordinarily important” Dr T.

James Thomson reflects on science and morality – Stem cell pioneer does a reality check

By Alan Boyle

Science editor – msnbc.com – updated 6:29 p.m. ET, Sat., June. 25, 2005

MADISON, Wis. — Seven years ago, when James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate and culture human embryonic stem cells, he knew he was stepping into a whirlwind of controversy.

He just didn’t expect the whirlwind to last this long.

In fact, the moral, ethical and political controversy is still revving up — in Washington, where federal lawmakers are considering a bill to provide more federal support for embryonic stem cell research; and in Madison, Thomson’s base of operations, where Wisconsin legislators are considering new limits on stem cell research.

Thomson, a developmental biologist and veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, made history in 1998 when he and fellow researchers derived the first embryonic stem cell lines from frozen human embryos. The breakthrough came after the news that a sheep named Dolly was born as the first cloned mammal — and together, the two announcements hinted at a brave new world of medical possibilities and moral debates.

Some of Thomson’s other pronouncements might seem more surprising: that supporters of stem cell research are overestimating the prospects for transplantation cures, that the current stem cell lines aren’t well-suited for such applications anyway, and that there’s no need to resort to therapeutic cloning right now — or perhaps ever.

Critics point out that embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies. Thomson acknowledged that the field was still in its formative stage: “There have been companies that have gone into stem cells, but nobody’s made any money.”

But he recently helped found a biotech start-up called Cellular Dynamics International that takes a different approach, aiming eventually to turn embryonic stem cells into human heart cells suitable for drug testing. “Nobody’s been able to test heart drugs on heart cells [outside the human body] before,” he said. “That will change medicine a lot quicker than actually transplanting those heart cells.”

Thomson predicted that in the long run, embryonic stem cells would play a more important role in fundamental research than in transplantation therapies — a view that doesn’t sit well with the critics.

“You have to ask the question, why would you destroy living human embryos just to study them?” said Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life.

In last week’s wide-ranging interview, Thompson explained the reasons behind the research, and touched on many other scientific and moral issues as well. Here is an edited transcript:

MSNBC: How do see this research developing in the next few years?

Thomson: I want to make a basic statement first — which almost never gets in the press, but I keep trying — on what I see as the legacy of these cells.

One is the basic science, and simply having better access to the human body. That’s the most important legacy. I’m very hopeful that there will be some transplantation applications for this technology, but they’re going to be very challenging. And it’s been so hyped in the press that people expect it to come the day after tomorrow. …

Ten or 20 years from now, I’m actually currently optimistic that there will be transplantation-based therapies, but even if there was none, and it was a complete failure, this technology is extraordinarily important.

via Stem cell pioneer does a reality check – Cloning and stem cells- msnbc.com.

Stem Cells Redux

Stemagen via Bloomberg News -Updated: March 9, 2009

Stem cells are how we all begin: undifferentiated cells that go on to develop into any of the more than 200 types of cell the adult human body holds.

Few quarrel with predictions of the awesome potential that stem cell research holds. One day, scientists say, stem cells may be used to replace or repair damaged cells, and have the potential to drastically change the treatment of conditions like cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and even paralysis.

All of these disease are already being treated outside the US with Adult/Repair stem cells. -dg

But the divisions over how to conduct that research have been deep and bitter. Most research has been conducted on embryonic stem cell lines  (in the US only! – dg) — cultures of cells derived from four- or five-day-old embryos, or fertilized cells. Opponents of embryonic stem cell research, which often uses embryos discarded by fertility clinics, want it to be severely restricted or banned outright as inhumane.

(actually, some don’t care about the moral issues, they just want the dying and debilitated to have opportunities for treatment ASAP! – dg)

The most important legislation relating to stem cell research is known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which first became law in 1996, and has been renewed by Congress every year since. It specifically bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos – a practice that is routine in private fertility clinics – or for research in which embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury.

via Stem Cells.

OHIO COUPLE HOPES BABY’S MARROW WILL SAVE SISTER, 1990, 92, 95 & 2008

THRIVING: Mary Ayala poses with daughters Marissa, left, and Anissa. Marissa saved the life of her sister Anissa with a bone marrow transplant in 1991.

1995

OHIO COUPLE HOPES BABY’S MARROW WILL SAVE SISTER

Published: Monday, April 3, 1995 12:00 a.m. MDT

The final stage has just begun for a couple who decided to have another child in order to give their 6-year-old daughter a chance to survive leukemia.

Christy Schwartz received high doses of chemotherapy over the weekend. She also will receive intensive radiation treatments to prepare her for a bone marrow transplant on Thursday.The procedure would kill Christy without the transplant.

“She is almost going to be dead and brought back,” her mother said.

Doctors say there is a 20 percent to 30 percent chance a transplant will cure Christy, who was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 11 months old.

She will receive stem cells extracted from her little sister Angelina’s umbilical cord just days after her birth in November. Stem cells are a component of marrow that create new blood cells.

Angelina, now four months old, is the fourth child of Jill and Randy Schwartz. They decided to conceive her after learning that no other family member’s bone marrow matched Christy’s, and that no suitable donor could be found in the National Bone Marrow Registry.

The couple got the idea after Jill Schwartz read about the Ayala family of San Bernardino, Calif., whose teenage daughter, Anissa, had leukemia. In 1991, Anissa received bone marrow from her baby sister, Marissa, who was conceived to provide a match despite criticism from medical ethicists.

That transplant was successful. Anissa is now 22, and still in remission. Marissa is 4.

There was only a one-in-four chance Angelina’s marrow would match Christy’s. A test 16 weeks into Jill Schwartz’s pregnancy confirmed they had beaten the odds.

“Ethically this is OK, as long as their motives are mixed: They want the child and they want to save their other kid,” said Dr. Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

via Deseret News Archive | OHIO COUPLE HOPES BABY’S MARROW WILL SAVE SISTER.

1990

It was at City of Hope that Anissa Ayala of Hacienda Heights, California was received a miracle in the 1990s. Diagnosed with acute leukemia, doctors and researchers were able to use umbilical cord cells from her younger sister Marissa to stop the spread of the leukemia and give Anissa a second chance at life. – http://scottrobinsonhondainthecommunity.com/

1992

Lifesaving Tot Again Helps Sister – As A Flower Girl

By Lynn Elber

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. – Anissa Ayala and her little sister, Marissa Eve, walk down the aisle this evening as bride and flower girl, one year after a bone-marrow transplant to which both owe their lives.

Marissa, now 2 1/2, was conceived to donate marrow to her big sister, who suffered from a deadly form of leukemia.

“Four years ago, things looked so gloomy, and now Anissa’s doing great,” her father, Abe Ayala, said on the eve of the wedding. “We’re being so rewarded. It’s amazing.”

Anissa, 20, and Bryan Espinosa, 25, are to marry before 350 guests at a Victorian mansion in this city 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920605&slug=1495590

2008

Ayala sisters appear on national TV -Siblings recently profiled in the Register regarding landmark bone-marrow transplant featured on ‘Good Morning America.’

By GREG HARDESTY – Wednesday, July 30, 2008 -The Orange County Register

PLACENTIA – Two sisters recently profiled in the Register regarding their landmark bone-marrow transplant 17 years ago appeared live on a national television program this morning  and kicked off a campaign to raise money for cancer research.

To view the seven-plus-minute segment on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” click here http://abcnews.go.com/gma. In the middle of the page, under the “Recently on GMA” and “Today” headline, click on the item headlined, “Having a Child to Save Your Child.”

Anissa Ayala, 36, of Placentia, and Marissa Ayala, 18, of Walnut, made the cover of Time magazine in 1991 for what was then a controversial and landmark donor story.

Marissa was conceived to save the life of her sister, who had leukemia, and was 14 months old when her marrow was transplanted into Anissa, then 19.

STEM CELLS IN 2000 – The pope, Bill Clinton and stem cells (a look back)

STEM CELLS IN 2000 – The pope, Bill Clinton and stem cells (a look back)

popejohnpaul_billclinton

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September 02, 2000 - By Gordon Prather -

© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

Well, you probably don’t expect Pope John Paul II and Bible-toting Bill to agree on abortion. So you were probably not surprised that, after Clinton announced the Final Federal Guidelines on Pluripotent Stem Cell research

last week, the pope immediately addressed in English an international congress being held in Rome of the Transplantation Society.

The Pope said, “Attempts at human cloning with a view to obtaining organs for transplants … insofar as they involve the manipulation and destruction of human embryos, are not morally acceptable.”

Now some newsies reported that the pope had come out against “cloning” humans, which he hadn’t. And from some news accounts you may have supposed that Bill Clinton had completely reversed his position of only three years ago, prohibiting the cloning of humans, which he hadn’t.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=20079

WHAT DO THE ACADEMY AWARDS, CHILI & DOLLY THE SHEEP HAVE IN COMMON?

drew-barrymore

Tonight, movie stars will be walking down a red carpet and you can watch them on TV from home or party with an academy of people at a nearby Oscar party.

In honor of National Chili Day, check out some local establishments serving up their chili recipes. Also, perhaps you should try to get in a game of golf for But don’t forget to recognize Walking the Dog Day and take your pooch out for a much needed stroll.Golf In America Day. Even if there’s still snow on the ground in your neighborhood, you might be able to swing a club a little. You just won’t be able to see where the ball went .

Today Was …
… the day in 1997 when scientists in Roslin, Scotland announced that they’d successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly. … the day in 1959 when Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500 … the day in 1989 when Jethro Tull won the first heavy metal Grammy

CATCH UP…with a twist! (Part 2) – Stem Cell Breakthrough Helps 85% Of Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Stem Cell Breakthrough Helps 85% Of Type 2 Diabetes Patients.  Yes this is an amazing breakthrough…but what is more amazing is that it took place a full 3 years ago!  At this rate, the US will never CATCH UP! to Dr Vina.  -  DG

CATCH UP!

Stem Cell Breakthrough Helps 85% Of Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Article Date: 07 Feb 2006 – 4:00 PST

A study carried out in Argentina by a team of researchers from a Not-For-Profit Organization called ‘Don Roberto Fernandez Vina Foundation’ (San Nicolas- Buenos Aires, Argentina) demonstrated that stem cells implanted into type 2 diabetes patients, in direct form into the pancreas, improve the production of Endogenous Insulin, increase the levels of “C Peptide”, decrease blood glucose levels and glycated hemoglobin levels faster than other treatments. 84% of the patients that had received the autologuous bone marrow cells could also abandon the drugs that stimulate insulin production or the insulin that they had been receiving previously.

There were no complications at all, demonstrating the safety of the technique, since the extraction, the cellular implants and evolution of the patients…

via Stem Cell Breakthrough Helps 85% Of Type 2 Diabetes Patients.

Of stem cells, what would Gandhi say? (2005)

Of stem cells, what would Gandhi say?
By Pankaj Mishra
Published: MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2005

LONDON: In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted U.S. federal financing for stem cell research. The decision, which was shaped at least partly by the Republican Party’s evangelical Christian base, and which disappointed many American scientists and businessmen, provoked joy in India.

The weekly newsmagazine India Today, read mostly by the country’s ambitious middle class, spoke of a “new pot of gold” for Indian science and businesses. “If Indians are smart,” the magazine said, American qualms about stem cell research “can open an opportunity to march ahead.”

Just four years later, this seems to have occurred. According to Ernst & Young’s Global Biotechnology Report in 2004, Indian biotechnology companies are expected to grow tenfold in the next five years, creating more than a million jobs. With more than 10,000 highly trained and cheaply available scientists, the country is one of the leading biotechnology powers along with Korea, Singapore, China, Japan, Sweden, Britain and Israel.

A top Indian corporation, the Reliance Group, owns Reliance Life Sciences, which is trying to devise new treatments for diabetes and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and create human skin, blood and replacement organs genetically matched to their intended recipients.

Some scientists have even more ambitious ideas. Encouraged by the cloning of a sheep by British scientists in 1996, they plan to do the same with endangered species of Indian lions and cheetahs.
excerpted from http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/21/news/india.php?page=1

STEM CELLS IN 1991

BONE MARROW STEM CELL

1991

Scientists Claim to Have Isolated Stem Cells

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

Published: November 5, 1991

A CALIFORNIA researcher described yesterday how he and colleagues had isolated human stem cells, the cells that give rise to all cells of the human immune and blood system.

If the long-sought achievement can be confirmed, it could lead to ways to treat cancer, AIDS, sickle cell anemia and many other diseases, the scientists said. It could also improve the chances of success for organ transplants.

via Scientists Claim to Have Isolated Stem Cells – New York Times.

STEM CELL IN 1983

BIG BEN, LONDON

LONDON – 17 August, 1983
Bishops condemn use of human embryos for research

The Bishops have issued a strong statement condemning government scientists’ recommendations yesterday approving the use of human embryos for scientific research…

In adult stem cell research, experimental procedures involve the removal of cells from an adult with the intention of using these cells for positive medical purposes.

Independent Catholic News.

STEM CELLS IN 1981

NEWT

THE NEWT IN US

Research on regeneration is a rapidly expanding field and increasingly attracts commercial interest, but therapeutic applications are clearly not around the next corner…

Newts, hydras and planarians are the stars of this ‘circus of wonders’ and can replace, in an apparently effortless manner, missing or injured tails, limbs, jaws and heads.

The newt in us.