World’s Leading Scientists Meet to Examine Barriers for Stem Cell Therapies to Cure Spinal Cord Injury

World’s Leading Scientists Meet to Examine Barriers for Stem Cell Therapies to Cure Spinal Cord Injury

Following President Barack Obama’s decision to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, medical and scientific experts will converge at the University of Georgia to discuss how recent advances in stem cell research can be translated into cures for spinal cord injuries.

The second Spinal Cord Workshop, a program of the Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation, will be held on Saturday, April 4 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Every year close to 11,000 people sustain spinal cord injuries in the United States, while more than 200,000 Americans live each day with a disability caused by them.

“Because spinal cord injury usually occurs in otherwise healthy, young adults, it is an especially attractive candidate for a cure for stem cell therapy,” said Ann Kiessling, director of the Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation. “The big question is whether a ‘moon shot’ approach will produce a cure, or if there is still too much basic science yet unknown.”

The workshop is hosted by UGA’s Regenerative Bioscience Center. Additional support is provided by the UGA Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute, the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, and Millipore, Inc.

“The University of Georgia is fortunate to team up with the Bedford Foundation to host these leading experts in spinal cord therapies to discuss and develop new paths forward for spinal cord injuries,” said Steven Stice, director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center. “In addition, Georgia’s recent legislation aimed at restricting stem cell research makes this workshop an especially timely one.”

Created in 1996, the Bedford Stem Cell Research Foundation is a Massachusetts-based public charity and biomedical institute that exists to conduct stem cell and related research for diseases and conditions that currently have no cure.

The Regenerative Bioscience Center brings UGA’s expertise, resources and accomplishments in human embryonic stem cell research under one umbrella, while contributing to the University’s educational and outreach missions with student research experiences and public lectures, symposia, and workshops communicating the benefits and risks of regenerative bioscience.

The event serves as a follow-up to the inaugural Spinal Cord Workshop held at UGA in March 2008, titled “Spinal Cord Injury: What Are The Barriers To Cure?”

Workshop faculty this year include:
Hans Keirstead, Ph.D, associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology, University of California at Irvine, Reeve-Irvine Research Center; Douglas Kerr, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology, molecular biology and immunology, and director, John Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center; John W. McDonald, M.D., Ph.D., director, International Center for Spinal Cord Injury, Kennedy Krieger Institute; Steven L. Stice, Ph.D., professor, GRA Eminent Scholar, director of the Regenerative Bioscience Center at the University of Georgia and CSO, Aruna Biomedical Inc; Keith Tansey, M.D., Ph.D., director, Spinal Cord Injury Research, Shepherd Center; Scott Wittemore, Ph.D., professor and vice chairman for research, Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Louisville; Wise Young, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair, Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Rutgers University, and director, W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience.

Registration information for the 2009 workshop, as well as video from the 2008 workshop talks, is available online at: http://www.spinalcordworkshop.org

via PR-USA.net – World’s Leading Scientists Meet to Examine Barriers for Stem Cell Therapies to Cure Spinal Cord Inju.

Repair Stem Cell Institute Warns About Real Cost of Embryonic Stem Cell Research

RSCI’s Chairman expressed his concern that since few people can afford to travel outside the country for medical treatments, America needs to put more focus on approving ultra safe adult stem cell treatments to alleviate the suffering of millions diagnosed with so-called untreatable diseases.

Bangkok, Thailand (PRWEB) March 31, 2009 — Don Margolis, founder of the world’s first stem cell treatment company and chairman of the Repair Stem Cell Institute, today issued a statement which took strong exception to Washington’s emphasis on embryonic stem cells over both Repair (Adult) Stem Cells and induced Pluripotent stem cells (iPS).

Don Margolis – the world’s leading Adult Stem Cell advocate

Margolis said, “This leads to one key question which no one in America seems to ask: Why is the FDA, which indiscriminately rushes unproven deadly drugs to AIDS patients, forbidding six million dying heart patients access to long-proven SAFE stem cell therapy?” Is it because heart patients don’t count in politics while AIDS patients do? Or is there another reason why they allow drugs such as Vioxx and forbid risk-free stem cells?

Margolis added that Repair Stems Cells are right now, every week, improving dozens and dozens of lives all over the world. He emphasized that “Patients stricken with disabling diseases such as congestive heart failure, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, ataxia, autism, COPD, emphysema, Crohn’s, and optic nerve disorders, among 100+ other conditions, are receiving successful stem cell treatments today on every continent but North America!”

“When the President lifted the partial ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research stem cell research, he did not mention that Embryonic Stem Cells (ESC) have never worked on humans or animals and never will,” Margolis said. “He also didn’t mention that Embryonic Stem Cells, when injected into your body, can cause deadly tumors as they have in thousands of lab animals.”

Mr. Margolis pointed out that just five days before the ESC announcement, Dr. Bernadine Healy, former director of the National Institutes of Health, published an article in U.S. News & World Report which states, “To date, most of the stem cell triumphs that the public hears about involve the infusion of adult stem cells.” Healy concluded that “during the first six weeks of Obama’s term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells . . . are obsolete.”

In support of Dr. Healy’s point, Margolis quoted three world-class embryonic research scientists. First was Dr. James Thomson, the godfather of embryonics: “It is more than ironic that the scientist who first isolated and cultured ESC once said ’embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies.'” Margolis went on to note that “Dr. Thomson’s observation is even truer today. The number of diseases treatable with RSC is rapidly approaching 200, while the ESC count still sits on zero, despite the efforts of a thousand ESC researchers on four continents not hindered by the Bush era regulations.”

Margolis then discussed the recent extraordinary discovery of induced Pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which can easily replace the need for ESC. “The potential of iPS is so big,” Margolis said, “that even Dr. Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned the famous Dolly the sheep, abandoned his license to attempt human cloning, stating that researchers ‘may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate.'”

“And end it we must,” Margolis added, “before billions more dollars are wasted while millions of patients are forced to sit on Death Row, waiting for 21st century alchemy to magically transform embryonic stem cells into repair stem cells.”

In closing, Margolis quoted Dr. Colin McGuckin, a noted UK embryonic research leader at Newcastle U. before departing for more useful RSC research in France: “The best estimates of the embryonic scientists here at Newcastle is that embryonic stem cells may not be able to help people this side of 50 years. That’s my lifetime. We can’t wait that long.'”

Mr. Margolis agrees: “The real cost of embryonic research is not the wasted billions, but 50 more years of unnecessary suffering by those who can be helped today.”

About The Repair Stem Cell Institute: The Repair Stem Cell Institute’s mission is to educate and inform everyone about the rapid advances being made in Repair Stem Cell research, so all can intelligently exercise freedom of choice in medical care. If you, or a loved one, are seeking treatment for your “untreatable” medical condition, visit http://www.repairstemcells.org for our list of the eight most experienced and successful stem cell treatment centers in the world, as well as the standards we apply to them.

via http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/03/prweb2276914.htm

OPRAH! MICHAEL J FOX! DR MEHMET OZ! THE STEM CELL DEBATE IS DEAD!!

Dr Mehmet Oz says to Michael J Fox, Oprah & ~7.2 million viewers:

“I think, Oprah, the stem cell debate is dead.”

“The problem with embryonic stem cells is that embryonic stem cells come from embryos, like all of us are made from embryos, and those cells can become any cell in the body, but it’s very hard to control them and so they can become cancer.”

“I can take a little bit of your skin, take those cells, get them to go back in time so they are like they were when you were first made, and then they will start to make that dopamine & I think those cells, because they won’t be as prone to cancer & because they’re your genes will be the ones that are ultimately used to cure Parkinsons.”

“I think we are single digit years away from making a big impact in the lives of Parkinson’s disease but also diabetics, heart disease, people who have had a lot of problems.”

you can see the video here:
http://www.oprah.com/media/20090319-tows-dr-oz-brain

A Grim Fairy Tale – America’s Doomed Love Affair with Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Part 6 – Follow the Money, Not the Science

romeo & juliet

A Six Part Series

by Don Margolis, Founder of the Repair Stem Cell Institute – http://repairstemcells.org

A Grim Fairy Tale – Part 6

There are six reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick Americans.

Reason 6: Follow the Money, not the Science

There is just no way that anyone can make money, in the long run, from the disaster known as embryonics. Sure, in the short run there can be some old boy network exchanges of cash between funders and research facility executives, but once the word got out that embryonic stem cells can cause cancer or destroy immune systems, the money train was diverted, as seen by Geron (GERN) stock: $75 in 2000, $1.95 in 2008 until Wall Street, seeing Obama about to win, started its own profiteering, ripping off investors to the tune of $43,000,000.   See “Geron Marches On” in our March 5 Special Newsletter:

http://repairstemcells.org/CMSModules/Newsletters/CMSPages/GetNewsletterIssue.aspx?issueId=8

The dead end research of embryonics protects the huge profit margins of Big Medicine’s profitable drugs, no matter how deadly (Vioxx et al); profitable medical machines, no matter how toxic (drug eluding stents); profitable tests no matter the risk (mammograms); and profitable hospitalizations, no matter how useless (too numerous to mention). Support for the real cure of RSC could ravage those profits. Small wonder that the money and their controlled media have been attacking the only stem cells that actually work, calling RSC “snake oil.”

As Sharon Begley points out in her recent Newsweek article, “Doctors have long resisted having science guide their practice.” Add to that the list of science-resisting profiteers: pharmaceutical companies, medical device makers, health insurance companies and health management organizations, and it becomes much clearer why ESCs, which will never cure anything and affect profits, have been heavily promoted, while RSCs, which can diminish the current outrageous profits, have been heavily disparaged.   Just another reason why the American Medical System has been proven the worst in the developed world. See “Why Not the Best” at:

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2008/Jul/Why-Not-the-Best–Results-from-the-National-Scorecard-on-U-S–Health-System-Performance–2008.aspx

A Grim Fairy Tale – America’s Doomed Love Affair with Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Part 5 – The Magic of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

romeo & juliet

A Six Part Series

by Don Margolis, Founder of the Repair Stem Cell Institute – http://repairstemcells.org

A Grim Fairy Tale – Part 5

There are six reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick Americans.

Reason 5: induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC)

There are many ways of creating embryonic-like stem cells good for lab research by using what our Institute heartily endorses – adult cells. Dr. Bernadine Healy calls iPSC “a blockbuster discovery made in 2007.” iPSC are created by reprogramming DNA from adult skin; therefore, they bypass the need for embryos or eggs. As such, they have the advantages of significantly lower costs, ease of production, genetic identity with the patient, and no ethical dilemmas. Even the most respected pioneers of embryonic stem cell research, Dr. James Thomson (U.S.) and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka (Japan), both of whom have our highest admiration, independently reached the conclusion in 2006 that it was preferable to re-direct research to development of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC). But despite their heroic efforts, all the ESC profiteers care about is money, and the real money is in government funding, huge grants, and not one cure really expected.

Click here for:

Reason 6: Follow the Money, not the Science

A Grim Fairy Tale – America’s Doomed Love Affair with Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Part 4 – Real Scientists Prefer to Research Adult Stem Cells

romeo & juliet

A Six Part Series

by Don Margolis, Founder of the Repair Stem Cell Institute – http://repairstemcells.org

A Grim Fairy Tale – Part 4

There are six reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick Americans.   

Reason 4: Real Scientists really prefer to research Adult Stem Cells.

It’s kind of the “Field of Dreams” branch of science based on the hypothesis that “if you build it, they will come.” How well does that work? Just ask ES Cell International (ESI), a company established in 2000 in Singapore, which was the most embryonic- stem-cell-friendly country in the world.

ESI built tremendous facilities and gave jobs to almost any Western ESC researcher who wanted one. But, in 2007, down hundreds of millions of dollars, they did what Wall Street did in 2000 – they chucked embryonics into the trash bin as “unworkable.”

Alan Colman, ESI’s chief executive at the time of its demise, reasoned that “the likelihood of having products in the clinic in the short term was vanishingly small” and admitted to “a tinge of disappointment.”

Or, just ask Dr. Colin McGuckin, until recently a professor of regenerative medicine at Newcastle University (U.K.) and one of Europe’s leading embryonic researchers. He left Newcastle for France where the research atmosphere is much more receptive to adult stem cell research. It was reported by Times Higher Education that when leaving, McGuckin claimed that “A vast amount of money in the UK from the Government has gone into embryonic stem-cell research with not one patient being treated [italics added], to the detriment of (research into) adult stem cells, which has been severely underfunded.”

Take the recent case in California, which had almost $300 million of stem cell funding to distribute, but no researcher worthy of receiving it. Not surprisingly, the money went to powerful and well-connected friends to build new facilities to “attract scientists.”   As Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels might have said 75 years ago, “Once you have “them” believing the Big Lie, you can get away with anything.” In this case, sell “them” cures which will never come and give the money to your friends.

Click here for:

Reason 5: induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC)

A Grim Fairy Tale – America’s Doomed Love Affair with Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Part 2&3 – Embryonic Stem Cells are bad medicine

romeo & juliet

A Six Part Series

by Don Margolis, Founder of the Repair Stem Cell Institute – http://repairstemcells.org

A Grim Fairy Tale – Part 2&3

There are six reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick Americans.

Reasons 2 & 3: Embryonic Stem Cells are bad medicine.

Actually, they’re very badmedicine. Nicholas Wade, the well-respected scientific reporter, editor and author who writes for the Science Times section of The New York Times, wrote in his article, “Rethink Stem Cells? Science Already Has,” the day after Obama’s announcement:   Embryonic stem cells have their drawbacks. They cause tumors and the adult stem cells derived from them may be rejected by the patient’s immune system. Furthermore, whatever disease process caused the patient’s tissue cells to die is likely to kill induced cells as well.

Causes cancer (reason 2).

Starts a war with your immune system (reason 3).

That’s really about as bad as it gets! And, to date there are a lot of guesses, but no successes, as to how to combat these inevitable results.   Recent studies at the Stanford University School of Medicine show that embryonic stem cells transplanted into mice were dead within ten days after inducing immune system rejection. That was actually the best news you can find about ESC. The mice didn’t die in that war, the cells did!

Dr. Bernadine Healy of US News and World Report, concluded just ten days ago that “the worst they [RSC] seem to do after infusion is die off without bringing the hoped-for benefit.” Maybe that’s not good medicine, but it certainly isn’t bad – or fatal. Gee-a medicine which can help the majority of those treated and not harm anyone? For sure, we have never heard of such a medicine before—not even aspirin—unless you include “an apple a day!”

Click here for:

Reason 4: Real Scientists really prefer to research Adult Stem Cells.

A Grim Fairy Tale – America’s Doomed Love Affair with Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Part 1 – There is NO NEED

romeo & juliet

A Six Part Series

by Don Margolis, Founder of the Repair Stem Cell Institute – http://repairstemcells.org

A Grim Fairy Tale – Part 1

There are six reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick Americans.

Reason 1: Quite frankly, there is no need.

What? Is this blasphemy? For years, we have read in newspapers and magazines, or heard about on TV special reports, that embryonic stem cells will allow us to live healthy and potentially endless lives. Are you saying this is not true? That we have been lied to?   You betcha! Science itself will destroy the illusion of embryonic stem cells, while adult stem cells, which we call Repair Stem Cells (RSC), are widely recognized as the most powerful medicine the world has ever seen, capable right now of treating over one hundred so-called “incurable” diseases and improving the quality of life of millions of patients.

Anthony Hollander, a professor of rheumatology and tissue engineering at the University of Bristol (U.K.) was clear about this issue: “With the [adult stem] cells we can really make a difference to patients’ lives, and we can do it now, not in ten year’s time as promised for embryonic stem cells.”

Even more to the point is Dr. Bernadine Healy, M.D., in her article in the March 4, 2009 U.S. News & World Reports: “There is a markedly diminished need for expanding these [embryonic stem] cell lines for either patient therapy or basic research. . . . Even as the future of embryonic stem cells has dimmed, adult stem cell research has scored major wins evident just in the past few months. . . . To date, most of the stem cell triumphs that the public hears about involve the infusion of adult stem cells.” [italics added] We wonder why “most” was used instead of “all.”

If you disagree, send us an ESC triumph on a human patient and we shall humbly apologize.

Click here for:

Reasons 2 & 3: Embryonic Stem Cells are bad medicine.

A Grim Fairy Tale – America’s Doomed Love Affair with Embryonic Stem Cell Research – Intro – The Romance is an Illusion

romeo & juliet

A Six Part Series

by Don Margolis, Founder of the Repair Stem Cell Institute – http://repairstemcells.org

A Grim Fairy Tale – Intro

On Monday, 09 March 2009, President Barack Obama spoke the words that many had longed to hear: “Today . . . we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers, doctors and innovators, patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years: We will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it?   At last, those who are totally lost in the haze of Alzheimer’s Disease will be able to think for themselves again. Finally, the victims of spinal cord injuries will once more – in the words of Christopher Reeve – be able “to walk to the door to greet you.” Once and for all, diabetics will no longer have to fear incipient blindness and amputations. In the near future, cancer will be but a footnote in medical textbooks.

As President Obama said, there will come “a day when words like ‘terminal’ and ‘incurable’ are potentially retired from our vocabulary.”   We can compare this new-found bliss in the relationship between government and science to a young couple, once head-over-heels in love, unfortunately split apart by forces beyond their control, then after 8 years, finding each other, getting married, and living happily and healthily ever after into their golden years.

What could be better? This is great a great story. In fact, it’s a terrific story! And, it’s all possible because American scientists will finally be able to develop the much-publicized panacea of embryonic stem cell (ESC) treatment.

Sadly, though, it’s not so terrific for you and me. It’s Big Pharma and its collaborators in the super-lucrative medical industries that caught the bride’s bouquet with its fragrant, green-colored blossoms. You and I, on the other hand, we must share the bouquet made of blank paper, shot full of holes.   We are not Cinderella, and ESC is not our Prince Charming, come to awaken us to a sun-drenched world of everlasting health. ESC treatment is an illusion, a myth, a well-crafted Grim Fairy Tale.

There are six reasons why embryonic stem cells will never make it out of the lab and into the bodies of sick Americans.

Click here for:

Reason 1: Quite frankly, there is no need.

OPINION – Embryonic stem cell research is a waste of money | StatesmanJournal.com | Statesman Journal

When you couch the argument as one in which we are looking for treatments only; this is a difficult position to argue against.

Embryonic stem cell research is a waste of money

March 30, 2009, Gayle Atteberry

President Obama’s recent decision to fund embryonic stem cell research with millions of taxpayer dollars is … completely unnecessary.

Embryonic stem cell research has a proven 100 percent failure rate.

Ten years of extensive research with embryonic stem cells in America and worldwide has produced not one human cure. Development of tumors in test animals has negated any progress made in animal trials…

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20090330/OPINION/903300312/1049/OPINION