More good news on the adult stem cell front. The blind can see. From the story:
Patients blinded in one or both eyes by chemical burns regained their vision after healthy stem cells were extracted from their eyes and reimplanted, according to a report by Italian researchers at a scientific meeting. The tissue was drawn from the limbus, an area at the junction of the cornea and white part of the eye. It was grown on a fibrous tissue, then layered onto the damaged eyes. The cells grew into healthy corneal tissue, transforming disfigured, opaque eyes into functioning ones with normal appearance and color, said researchers led by Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena’s Center for Regenerative Medicine…Many of the patients she treated had been blind for years as result of tissue and blood vessels growing over damaged parts of the eye. Some had been through failed surgeries and alternative treatments.
It increasingly seems likely that regenerative medicine will involve mostly involve ethical approaches. As for basic research, the IPSCs are already permitting tailor made, condition specific stem cell lines to be created. No wonder the urgency over ESCR has substantially abated.
June 22nd, 2010 | 1:23 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Stand In The Gap, J. Robert Howell, Aida Azcuy, Wesley J. Smith and others. Wesley J. Smith said: Adult Stem Cells Restore Sight to People With Damaged Corneas » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog http://shar.es/mEWia [...]
June 22nd, 2010 | 2:51 pm
“No wonder the urgency… has… abated.”
Why not investigate if scientists gave a reason indicating why this purported urgency has abated, rather than make stuff up?
Maybe the clamor over ESCR has subsided because:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/07/researchers-ple.html
Why would scientists stop calling for new avenues of research simply because one that has been used for 40 years is still producing as expected? That makes little sense. If we saw results 40 years ago, 20 years ago, and still 10 years ago, we would expect to see progress even today. There’s no evidence scientists got blindsided by success with adult stem cells and then decided ESCR isn’t worth it. Therefore, it seems more likely that the sense of urgency would dissipate for other reasons, as I linked above.
June 22nd, 2010 | 3:28 pm
The recent advances in adult stem cell research were not expected even 10 years ago. Indeed, other than for things such as treating leukemia, we were repeatedly told that ESCR offered the only or best hope for these kind of things. They were wrong, or perhaps, inaccurate for political motivations.
June 22nd, 2010 | 4:05 pm
Yup, it’s a good thing that the ESCR research progressed far enough to allow the development of IPSC’s before you & W were able to get it outlawed. Feel free to go on ignoring that, though.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Actually, Yamanaka didn’t use ESCR, while Thomson did. In fact, one reason he tried IPSCs is that he saw embryos under the microscope and thought of his daughters (as I recall). Imagine that. I did what I could to suipport outlawing human cloning (SCNT), not ESCR, and will again. I supported Bush’s funding restrictions. Distinctions with a difference. Nuance, padraig. Nuance.
June 22nd, 2010 | 4:38 pm
“…perhaps “inaccurate for political motivations.” I don’t think there was any “perhaps” about it. It was in LARGE part for political and ideological motivations. Kedwards said that if John F. Kerry, became president, people like Christopher Reeve would get of his chair and walk again. Kerry himself said, cures are at our fingertips if we’d just elect him. Then there was the effort that tried to make i look like opponents of ESCR/SCNT didn’t care about sufferers-as if those politicizing the pain for sufferers did. That was hugely political. It was hugely political in 2006. So was the opposition to IPSCs… there’s nothing ideological or poltical about them. While Ed Markey was calling Bush a Luddite and Harry Reid and the congress wouldn’t fund IPSCs, Bush did by executive order. No wonder they don’t talk about ESCs. The man (Bush) who they called an idiot, a loser (Reid) a Luddite etc turned out to support the real winners with non-ESCs. No wonder they don’t talk about it much. They have egg all over their faces. No wonder Obama revoked the Bush IPSC funding directive http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/263fnapt.asp. They don’t want any reminder that the man they spent so much time trashing picked the winner and they picked a loser. To me the lack of attention to IPSCs by the politicians and the unwillingness by so many to fund it says that if anyone didn’t care about sufferers, it was the ESC political proponents. If they really believed in pluripontent stem cells, they would have jumped right on board.
I don’t think there was any “perhaps” about it Wesley. You have shrapnel in you like the rest of us to prove it!
June 22nd, 2010 | 7:35 pm
You’ll be interested to hear this, Wesley: Recently here in Michigan a young home schooler who is doing some sort of internship with the local paper was allowed to publish an opinion piece on stem-cell research. I haven’t gotten hold of a copy of his opinion piece yet, but evidently it was anti-ESCR. In response, a local pastor (of all things) chose to write a letter to the editor in which he opined that the student’s opinion piece was a sign of why home schooling should be heavily regulated–namely, because a home schooler came out anti-ESCR and was not being “informed” of all the wondrous promise of ESCR! This, the pastor opined, was evidence of the terrible “indoctrination” caused by home schooling! Wild, isn’t it? I mean, the shoe is so much on the other foot: students taught as he would like them taught are going to be given the _erroneous_ impression that ESCR has much more promise than it really does have and are going to be kept uninformed about the advances in IPSCs and adult stem cell therapies.
I should really try to get the links for all the relevant articles.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 10:49 pm
The pastor has been subjected to a lot of media over a decade that wildly hyped ESCR and neglected adult stem cell research. That is beginning to change now that the point isn’t to “get Bush.”
June 22nd, 2010 | 8:53 pm
[...] Read the rest here: Adult Stem Cells Restore Sight to People With Damaged Corneas … [...]
June 23rd, 2010 | 9:11 am
Yamanaka and Thomson work together, Wes.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:36 am
They collaborate. But the original IPSCs were done separately, padraig.
June 23rd, 2010 | 1:41 pm
Doesn’t matter, Wes. Yamanaka’s work wouldn’t have happened without Thomson. Now Thomson’s work builds on Yamanaka’s as well as his own. (or Gail Martin’s, as mentioned at Speaking of Research at http://speakingofresearch.com/2010/06/21/faseb-excellence-in-science-award-for-stem-cell-pioneer/
)
You can try to rewrite history all you want but the facts are there.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
June 23rd, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I told history accurately. I have also never said that ESCR doesn’t have scientific merit. This is an ethics debate, not a science debate.
June 23rd, 2010 | 2:31 pm
Could someone please define IPSC for me, a bear of little brain?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Not of little brain at all. Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell is a skin or other body cell, in which genes are inserted via a virus, or now, better vectors. causing it to revert or change into a pluripotent stem cell that can then be turned into any other tissue in the body like an embryonic stem cell. This process is already being used to study diseases and for testing of drugs for specific genetic maladies. Scientists hope it could one day be used in treatments, although that part becomes difficult because of tumor concerns, like ES cells, and potential difficulties such as not being near immortal like ES cell lines, that is, they cannot be kept indefinitely in a cell line state. IPSCs are close to ES cells, but there are some differences being discovered. So, it is not a panacea, at least, not yet.
June 23rd, 2010 | 4:48 pm
padraig: “Yamanaka’s work wouldn’t have happened without Thomson.”
– and both Yamanaka AND Thomson have expressed their strong reservations, at the very least, to the destruction of human embryos. You don’t need to be part of the religious right or Catholic Church (or whatever bogeyman the left wishes to build up) to hold such ethical qualms.
June 24th, 2010 | 9:59 am
bmmg39, you are exactly right. The embryonic stem cell researchers that Wes demonizes and the IPSC developers that Wes praises are, in fact, the same people. They were all highly motivated to find an alternative to destroying embryos both for ethical reasons and to solve the problem of host rejection of externally derived stem cells.
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