Dr. Prentice, Senior Fellow for Life Sciences
at the Family Research Council
Explains Why Embryonic Stem Cells Are Not Necessary
Still confused by the stem cell debate? Don’t feel alone. Medical professionals and the public alike still have many questions about the different types, or sources, of stem cells as well as their potential and actual effectiveness for clinical treatments.
Embryonic stem cells continue to receive the majority of news coverage, yet remain the least likely stem cell to help patients. In fact, even the embryonic stem cell advocates are beginning to admit failure. The California Company, Geron, f
credit New York Times
irst to receive approval to inject embryonic stem cells into a few patients, gave up on their trial and shut down all of their embryonic stem cell research. After a year, none of the patients showed improvements, though they will need to be monitored for many years to come for potential tumor formation. Even celebrity stem cell promoter Michael J. Fox recently admitted that “[embryonic] stem cells” were unlikely to help any patients any time soon. Given that embryonic stem cells are ethically tainted, requiring the destruction of young human life or even creating a new human life via cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer) specifically for destruction, it’s heartening that many are seeing the many problems associated with this type of stem cell.
Adult stem cells remain the only type of stem cell used successfully to treat human patients. They are the one price of viagra and only gold standard for clinical treatments with stem cells. Adult stem cells have many advantages. They can be isolated from numerous tissues, including bone marrow, muscle, fat, and umbilical cord blood, just to name a few. And isolating the adult stem cells from tissues of a patient or a healthy donor does not require harming or destroying the donor, giving adult stem cells a decided ethical advantage over embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells also have a proven track record for success at saving lives and improving health on a daily basis. Over 50,000 people around the globe are treated each year with adult stem cells. The diseases and conditions successfully treated by adult stem cells, as shown by published scientific evidence, continue to expand, with published success for numerous cancers, spinal cord injury, heart damage, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, and many others.
Here are a few samples of adult stem cell advances in the last year.
* Heart damage.
* Muscle repair.
* New windpipes.
* Grow your own transfusion.
If you’d like to see a few more samples of the tremendous success of adult stem cells, see the videos at http://www.stemcellresearchfacts.org