Now we know exactly who to blame for blocking stem cell progress

I had expressed bewilderment before that patients were having to leave the United States and go to other countries to get treatments with adult stem cells. I've learned who the culprit is: It's the Food and Drug Administration:

The FDA’s stance is that a person’s own stem cells must be tested as a new drug- ie. subject to 7-10 years of clinical trials and testing for each disease/condition it is used for.

If I'm understanding this correctly, any time a new use is discovered for using a patient's own stem cells, doctors elsewhere in the world can just treat it like a medical procedure and start treatment, but US doctors have to wait for clinical trials and FDA approval.

On the one hand, I'm all for not jumping the gun and unleashing new and potentially dangerous processes. But adult stem cells have a strong record of success without the risks and side effects of embryonic stem cells.

Paul Harvey blamed prolifers for the fact that Don Ho had to go to Thailand to get stem cell treatment for his heart. Now we know who to blame.

I've signed up at Safe Stem Cells -- I want my nephew to walk again. I want my fellow citizens to be able to get the kind of care right here at home that patients are getting overseas.

Cue crickets chirping

A Stem Cell First- New Organ Created and Transplanted Using Adult Stem Cells

Granted, it was a simple organ, or rather structure, since I'm not sure a section of trachea counts as an organ. But it's more than the Dr. Frankensteins have been able to do with their gutted embryos.

Even the faintest hint of the possibility of success in lab rats with embryonic stem cells gets shouted from the rooftops. But even the most spectacular results with adult stem cells are relegated to Section B page 13, right under the "bus plunge" snippet.

And the spell is broken!

One down, how many more to go? Dolly creator Prof Ian Wilmut shuns cloning.

The scientist who created Dolly the sheep, a breakthrough that provoked headlines around the world a decade ago, is to abandon the cloning technique he pioneered to create her.

Prof Ian Wilmut's decision to turn his back on "therapeutic cloning", just days after US researchers announced a breakthrough in the cloning of primates, will send shockwaves through the scientific establishment.

Well, no it won't. Doctors have been using adult stem cells in successful treatments for years. There's no reason to think that this particular guy catching on will drop the scales from anybody else's eyes.

Still, it's nice to see one embryo-obsessed scientist come to his senses.

Does the MSM *want* my nephew to stay paralyzed?

It's prolifers, those of us opposed to ESCR (embryonic stem cell research) who are painted in the MSM as being mean-spirited and wanting to keep people disabled and sick. But how come these champions of patients' rights keep silent about adult stem cell research (ASCR) that is restoring function to spinal cord injured patients?

This is the second facility I've learned of that is having success like this. The other, in Portugal, has treated 30 patients successfully, with published peer-reviewed results on the seven patients who have completed the 18-month follow-up. Look at these results from Ecuador:

Dr. Luis Geffner presented a preliminary report on September 17 at the 2007 Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting in San Diego. From May 2006 to August 2007, 38 patients with SCI were treated at Luis Vernaza Hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. They were treated with autologous bone marrow stem cells – meaning the cells were extracted from the patients’ own bone marrow, taken from the hip bone (iliac crests).

Of the 25 patients who provided more than three months and up to 14 months follow up: 15 gained the ability to stand up, 10 could walk on the parallels with braces, seven could walk without braces and five could walk with crutches. Three patients recovered full bladder control, and 10 patients regained some form of sexual function. No adverse events or abnormal reactions to implantation were observed.

The press release, intended to attract investors, says, "More information on the study is available upon request, including video of some patients who underwent treatment." Let me tell you, I'm making that request!

I'm getting really, really angry. The gatekeepers of the MSM are manipulating the general public and people with these injuries, keeping them in the dark about ASCR treatments that are working to help patients right now, because they want us to think that the only possible cures are ones that involve killing embryos. They're more interested in painting us as monsters than they are in seeing people like my nephew walk again.

Why is it that once somebody embraces the idea of ESCR, they become in thrall to it this way, that they'd deny people like my nephew this information?

HT: JJ

Stem cells: This time, it's personal

I'm getting a quick education in spinal cord injury research since my nephew's accident. (Continued prayers, please! He has a wife and a little girl at home, 3 years old.)

This is exciting:

Olfactory mucosa transplantation is a procedure by which the adult stem cells are removed from the nasal mucosa and transplanted into the specific areas of damaged tissue. Such a procedure has already shown very positive results in the treatment of spinal cord injury. .... Dr. Carlos Lima, a neuropathologist at Egaz-Moniz Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal, developed the procedure and has successfully treated approximately 30 patients who were suffering with spinal cord injury.

In one case, a female individual was paralyzed from the neck down with a C6 vertebral burst fracture after surviving a car accident at the age of 16. Although doctors at several hospitals in the U.S. emphatically assured her that she would never walk again, one specialist informed her of a new procedure that had been developed in Portugal. Within 6 months of receiving a stem cell transplantation from Dr. Lima that involved the use of her own stem cells derived from her own olfactory bulb, she was told by her physical therapists that her spinal cord had begun healing, and MRI scans confirmed that 70% of the lesions that developed after her injury had resolved into normal spinal tissue. She continued to acquire sensation in her extremities and eventually was able to stand and walk with the aid of a walker.

Another patient who was left paraplegic after a car accident with vertebral injuries to T7 and T8 was able to walk again, with braces, within one year after receiving Dr. Lima’s stem cell transplantation. Yet another patient, who was left quadriplegic from a spinal cord injury, regained bladder control and arm and leg movement after being injected with stem cells from her own nasal mucosa by Dr. Lima.

Dr. Jean D. Peduzzi-Nelson, a professor of psychological optics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, has collaborated with Dr. Lima on this new technique and has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation regarding the scientific efficacy and safety of this procedure. Dr. Peduzzi-Nelson as well as other scientists, physicians and neurologists in the U.S. are now seeking Congressional and FDA approval for this treatment to be legalized and made available in the United States. (Emphasis mine. People are being successfully treated with this method, but all the brouhaha raised by people obsessed with only wanting embryonic stem cells are getting all the media attention!)

Other therapies have shown positive results when patients with spinal cord injuries were treated with mesenchymal stem cells in combination with CD34. One patient in particular who was paralyzed below the mid-chest level with a T5 injury regained feeling and muscle control in the pelvis, along with restored sensation in his feet, after receiving 3 such treatments. The patient continues to improve. Mesenchymal stem cells are adult pluripotent progenitor cells with the ability to self-renew indefinitely and with differentiation capacities that yield a variety of tissue types including cartilage, bone, muscle, tendon, ligament, fat and nerve. CD34 refers to a group of clustered differentiation molecules, also known as transmembrane glycoproteins, that function as cell-to-cell adhesion factors and which also mediate the attachment of stem cells to the extracellular matrix. They are found in abundance in umbilical cord blood, endothelial cells and in bone marrow hematopoeitic cells, from which they may be isolated via immunomagnetic methods. Undifferentiated CD34+ mononuclear cells are pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells and as such exhibit a vast range of differentiation capabilities.

Adult stem cells offer the same pluripotency as embryonic stem cells, but without the danger of forming teratomas (tumors), which remains a serious risk from embryonic stem cells. It is neither necessary nor desirable to use embryonic stem cells in the treatment of spinal cord injuries or other disorders, since a growing number of studies are showing increasing success with adult stem cells. In fact, the only stem cell studies that have ever shown success in the treatment of any human disease have involved adult stem cells, since no study has ever been conducted in which a disease was successfully treated with human embryonic stem cells, although this fact is not generally reported by the media. Ever since researchers first isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998, there has never been a successful treatment for any human disease in a human being by embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells have in fact proven to be very problematic, whereas bone marrow and cord blood stem cells, by contrast, have been safely used by doctors for over 40 years. Human umbilical cord blood in particular is now known to be a rich source of growth factors and cytokines, both of which are necessary for the regeneration of tissue, and stem cells that are derived from human umbilical cord blood have been shown to be more effective at tissue regeneration than are other types of stem cells that lack such additional factors. Ethics and politics aside, adult stem cells are highly preferable to embryonic stem cells purely for scientific reasons.

Here are some success stories.

This young woman had success in Portugal. Here is her doctor's paper in the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine. READ IT!! It's amazing.

Well it's late here in the Land of Spit and Bailing Wire. Additional information about treatments that might help Benj would be very welcome.

Healed hearts on the horizon -- but no pithed embyros! Bummer!

Heart patients to get valves grown from their cells

What a shame that the ASC researchers keep kicking the asses of the ESC researchers!

Come on, guys! Try poducing ONE cure that's not just pie in the sky! The ASC geeks are mopping the floor with you!

No news is big news

"Big News" is really No News in the embryonic stem cell industry...

Read about how the MSM is ago over the news that embryonic stem cells can heal the hearts of rats -- something doctors have been doing on humans for four years now with adult stem cells. It was just such a procedure that saved the life of singer Don Ho.

Funny that the MSM doesn't get nearly so excited when adult stem cells provide cures!