NationStates Jolt Archive

Can someone point me in the direction of a study done on the successful use of embryonic stem cell research? Is it true that no progress has been made using embryonic stem cells but adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells have been priven successful without the destruction of life?

Can someone point me in the direction of a study done on the successful use of embryonic stem cell research? Is it true that no progress has been made using embryonic stem cells but adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells have been priven successful without the destruction of life?


Sounds like a bunch of jibberjabber balderdash.

You ought to enquire with a Major Research University.

Nice people there who have graduate degrees will be able to give you the most up-to-date and reliable information.

Nothing else would honestly suffice.

Sounds like a bunch of jibberjabber balderdash.

You ought to enquire with a Major Research University.

Nice people there who have graduate degrees will be able to give you the most up-to-date and reliable information.

Nothing else would honestly suffice.


Not what I meant to do....Just an inquiry.

Not what I meant to do....Just an inquiry.


Still though, science and especially cutting edge research science like this is expanding and changing so rapidly that the only place you can get honest information is from the researchers themselves.

And in my experience they are always thrilled to help somone with a *genuine* interest.

Check out http://savingsandclone.com

In this country, the human stem cell lines currently being foisted on the scientific community are almost entirely contaminated and unusable. Without new ones the likelihood of a good human application study being in any way fruitful is a billion to one.

There have been several studies with mice, cattle, sheep, and pigs using embryonic stem cell lines that have shown very promising results. Especially in the immuno-deficiency field, but to a slightly lessor extent in neurological studies. Adult stem cells and placental ones can be used for some of this, but not all of it. The earlier you catch the cells in the development cycle, the more generic they are, and the more versatile.

I believe that there have been some extra-national studies that have shown some success in transporting what was done with lower animals, but I am not completely sure.

The embryonic lines that scientists in this country wish to have open all come from en vitro clinics, and are going to be destroyed anyway. To say that allowing them to be used would in some way cause more 'destruction of life' is to be ignorant of the subject.

Sounds like a bunch of jibberjabber balderdash.

You ought to enquire with a Major Research University.

Nice people there who have graduate degrees will be able to give you the most up-to-date and reliable information.

Nothing else would honestly suffice.

I agree, there is no better source of knowledge than the people doing the research.
The next best thing would be to go to your library and use their computer to look at some online research journals. They can be wordy and confusing but you can get the same research papers as the ones leading researchers read. These journals are only available by subscriptions, often costing a couple hundred dollars an issue, but most libraries have access to them. The biggest problem with that, however, is the difficulty understanding what the heck the paper is saying, so talking to a person is still the best choice, unless you have a really good medical dictionary...

Can someone point me in the direction of a study done on the successful use of embryonic stem cell research? Is it true that no progress has been made using embryonic stem cells but adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells have been priven successful without the destruction of life?

http://www.stemcellresearch.org/

did anyone else hear the edward's quote about how when kerry is president people like christoher rieves will rise up from their wheelchairs becuase embrionic stem cell reasearch will be federaly funded again?

dumbass

In this country, the human stem cell lines currently being foisted on the scientific community are almost entirely contaminated and unusable. Without new ones the likelihood of a good human application study being in any way fruitful is a billion to one.


would be a billion in one IF adult stem cell lines were not also viable

but seeing as how they are why would you go out of your way to offend half of the country and take a human life to do the same research that you could do with a willing adult donner?

http://www.stemcellresearch.org/

did anyone else hear the edward's quote about how when kerry is president people like christoher rieves will rise up from their wheelchairs becuase embrionic stem cell reasearch will be federaly funded again?

dumbass
im surprised bush didnt make fun of christopher reeve, but mark my words, he will eventually slip up and make fun of him dying when talknig about stem cell research

would be a billion in one IF adult stem cell lines were not also viable

but seeing as how they are why would you go out of your way to offend half of the country and take a human life to do the same research that you could do with a willing adult donner?

Adult and placental lines are not as generic as embryonic, and also not as viable for many different kinds of research. They also depend on donors who are typically culturally opposed to this sort of thing (as evidence by constant blood and organ shortages).

The embryonic lines that the scientific communities are asking for are already going to be destroyed. They come from en vitro clinics that cannot afford to keep refrigerators full of the things forever. If it offends a persons sensibilities so much, then they should A) petition to make en vitro and other reproductive science illegal or B) volunteer to host one of the frozen embryos.

Neither of those things are going to happen, hypocritically enough, so I really don't think it matters if their sensibilities are offended.

From the US government Bioethics site: http://bioethics.gov/reports/stemcell/chapter4.html


As of July 2003, 12 ESC preparations (up from 2 such preparations a year earlier) out of a total of 78 “eligible” preparations of human ESCs were available for shipment to recipients of U.S. federal research grants.xii The review by Ludwig and Thomson2 lists more than 40 peer-reviewed human ESC primary research papers that have been published since the initial publication in 1998.

Although isolated from different blastocyst-stage human embryos in laboratories in different parts of the world, ESCs have a number of properties in common. These include the presence of common cell surface antigens (recognized by binding of specific antibodies), expression of the enzymes alkaline phosphatase and telomerase, and production of a common gene-regulating transcription factor known as Oct-4. At least 12 different preparations of ESCs have been expanded by growth in vitro, frozen and stored at low temperature, and at least partially characterized.13 Some of these ESC preparations have been “single-cell cloned.”

Human ESCs have been differentiated in vitro into neural (neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes), cardiac (synchronously contracting cardiomyocytes), endothelial (blood vessels), hematopoietic (multiple blood cell lineages), hepatocyte (liver cell), and trophoblast (placenta) lineages.2 In the case of neural and cardiac lineages, similar results have been obtained in different laboratories using different preparations of ESCs, thus fulfilling the “reproducible results” criterion described above

So there is not as much research volume yet on Embryonic Stem Cells as compared to adult, placental, or umbilical varieties - largely because of a lack of availability to the research community. Of the 78 controlled lines, two years ago only two were made available, and last year only 12 were being sent out. Still, reproducable results have already been noted as this research finally gets underway.

did anyone else hear the edward's quote about how when kerry is president people like christoher rieves will rise up from their wheelchairs becuase embrionic stem cell reasearch will be federaly funded again?

That's the problem with leaving these decisions to politicians. Society should help create ethical guidelines for science, but it should be scientists the ones that make sure these guidelines are being followed.

would be a billion in one IF adult stem cell lines were not also viable

but seeing as how they are why would you go out of your way to offend half of the country and take a human life to do the same research that you could do with a willing adult donner?

You have little understanding of the situation. Embryonic stem cells are needed to pursue those avenues in which adult stem cells do not work. For instance, neurons are not replaced by any adult stem cell line. Thus, we need a line that could be used in neural applications. In addition, there are many clinical cases in which using a person's own adult stem cells would not be viable, as their own DNA is what is causing the disease.

Saying that we have one possible avenue of research and should thus ignore all the others is like saying we should have stopped researching antibiotics the minute we discovered penicillin.

Can someone point me in the direction of a study done on the successful use of embryonic stem cell research? Is it true that no progress has been made using embryonic stem cells but adult stem cells and umbilical stem cells have been priven successful without the destruction of life?

If you are looking for clinical studies with embryonic stem cells, you most likely not find any. None of the current lines can ever be used in clinical studies, so the science cannot currently advance to that stage.

Is it true that no progress has been made using embryonic stem cells? Absolutely not. Quite a bit of progress has been made. However, you must remember that scientists have been researching embryonic stem cells for a smaller amount of time than adult stem cells.

Why study embryonic stem cells?
- They can be used in applications (such as neuronal) in which there are no adult stem cells. This is because they are totipotent (can become all cell types) rather than pluripotent (can become many cell types) or completely lineage specific (can only become one or two cell types).

- They provide insight into the mechanisms of cancer formation and treatment.

- They can be isolated, cultured, and passaged much more easily and for longer periods of time than adult stem cells.

- The embryos that would be used for most lines are going to be destroyed anyways. Any that would be used for research into therapeutic cloning would not be able to progress past the blastocyst stage anyways.

And these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.