Stem Cells Are Where It's At
Despite setbacks and controversy, promising research is underway.



Building Block: Rendering of some embryonic stem cells

By Mary Carmichael
Newsweek
Dec. 11, 2006 issue -

Seventeen years ago, Richard Burt, an immunologist at Northwestern University, had a crazy idea. What if he could press the "restart" button on his patients, destroying their faulty immune systems and building them new ones? The regeneration process would be hard, but he'd heard about something called stem-cell research that might help. It took eight years to get FDA approval. "When we did that first patient," he says, "you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife."


Today Burt has treated 170 patients with stem cells, and increasingly, others are following his lead. There are now more than 1,000 stem-cell therapies in early human trials around the world. The vast majority use cells from patients' own bone marrow, but doctors are also using cells from healthy adults, and last month saw the first patient treated with embryonic cells, which have triggered much debate in the United States. After years of being thought of as science fiction—the domain of animal labs and the distant future—stem-cell therapies are becoming a scientific fact.

Burt alone has now treated patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other immune disorders. He's just written up the results of a stem-cell trial for type 1 diabetes. Three years after treatment, some patients now have normal blood sugar and don't take insulin. Burt also plans trials for two diseases in which "nothing else really seems to work": Lou Gehrig's disease and a rare type of autism involving the immune system. He will treat his first autism patient in January.

Next year may also bring hope for patients with cancer and heart disease. The FDA has fast-tracked a stem-cell therapy for leukemia patients; it could reach the market in late 2007. And an approach that has helped many congestive heart failure patients abroad is also making inroads in America. Amit Patel, at the University of Pittsburgh, has injected 10 patients' own stem cells into their hearts in the United States and consulted on 2,000 similar operations worldwide. The stem cells ease the burden on the heart, largely by forming new blood vessels. They don't, however, create new heart muscle. To make that happen, scientists may need to use embryonic stem cells.

Some already have. Doctors with private funding have quietly been experimenting with cells grown from fetal material. Geron, a California biotech company, has used the technique to prevent heart failure in mice; it will petition the FDA for a human trial next year. Before that, the company hopes to start the first major American trial of embryo-derived stem cells as a treatment for spinal-cord injuries. By the time that trial starts, docs will also have results from the only use of embryonic stem cells in humans thus far. In November, doctors in Oregon injected them into a child with a rare, fatal neurodegenerative disorder called Batten disease. That's only one patient—but if those stem cells cure the disease and multiply, their uses are sure to as well.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16011377/site/newsweek/

FOOL'S GOLD RUSH IN CALIFORNIA
Californians were promised wonder cures if they passed Proposition 71 to fund stem-cell research in 2004. Turns out they have bought a $3 billion jug of snake oil, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

With the hype over, the scientists involved in the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine now admit they may not find cures over 10 years for even one of the diseases like autism, AIDS, Lou Gehrig's disease, lupus and multiple sclerosis that stem-cell activists had insisted a $3 billion state institute would find cures for.
"Gone are the allusions to healing such afflictions such as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases that dominated the 2004 campaign for Proposition 71 in 2004," the Los Angeles Times noted.
Not only were California's voters promised cures, they were also promised lower medical bills for their $3 billion "solution," unfortunately, Californians' average medical bills are still rising, coming in 7.7 percent higher in 2006 over 2005, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Additionally:

The medical groups who bucked hardest for the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act are making plenty of money off it, not just from grants, like the $150 million loan that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fronted for their favorite research institutions to skirt taxpayer suits, but also for the golden opportunity to buy California bonds to finance it.
The total cost of this state research institute for Californians won't be just $3 billion, but $6 billion, over 10 years, due to interest costs from the bonds issued, according to the California state legislative analyst.
The only people who get nothing out of this $3 billion boondoggle are the California taxpayers who are writing the checks, and the medical patients who have been sold a bill of goods by stem-cell activists about sure-thing medical cures from public, instead of private, funding, says IBD.

Source: Editorial, "Fool's Gold Rush In California," Investor's Business Daily, December 6, 2005.

For text (subscription required):

http://www.investors.com/editorial/e...50215194824086

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.ph...le_Category=16

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.ph...ticle_ID=13928

Support group welcomes stem cell Bill
December 06, 2006

THE House of Representatives vote lifting the ban on therapeutic cloning will keep hope alive for Australia's 1400 motor neurone disease (MND) sufferers, says a support group.

MND Australia said revoking the ban would now allow embryonic stem cell research that could increase the understanding of the cause of MND, help development of effective treatment and ultimately a cure.

Former Liberal health minister Kay Patterson's private member's Bill tonight passed the House of Representatives in a rare conscience vote.

The legislation will allow researchers to clone embryos using donor eggs and cells without sperm and extract their stem cells for medical research.

MND Australia chairperson Helen Sjardin-Howard said the organisation congratulated the MPs who tonight helped the bill pass through the Lower House.

“We will look forward now to increased possibilities for treatments and therapies that may come from stem cell research,” Ms Sjardin-Howard said.

“If stem cells do not prove to be the panacea for disease, and MND in particular, then they can be put aside and fresh directions can be taken in research.”

“MND Australia supported research which is legal, has sound scientific rationale and has the potential to bring us closer to finding a cause, treatment or cure for motor neurone disease,” she said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...9-1702,00.html