stem-cell research Options

[smile4me]

do you support stem-cell researching? why or why not?
should federal funding be given to these researchers?
do you support embryonic or adult stem cells (or both)?

[ghetosmurph]

There are many tales of the medical miracles ESCs will allegedly bring us: cures for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, you name it. Most people dont really have any idea what ESC research is. And as a rule, they don't mention possible alternatives—namely, so-called adult stem cells (ASCs), which are obtained without the ethical conflicts of harvesting human embryos.

The mainstream media are doing a lousy job of informing the public on the state of stem-cell science. By and large, they're telling people all about the potential of ESCs—especially the supposed ability to become any type of cell—without talking about certain little drawbacks, like a tendency for ESCs to be rejected and even to become cancerous.

More importantly, the media aren't telling people how much more advanced ASC research is, or how rapidly it's making breakthroughs. Certainly they're not telling people about it nearly as often as they're hailing the promise of ESCs—and when they do, they tend to undermine the news with pooh-poohing, often-groundless quotes from ESC advocates.

Adult stem cells routinely treat or cure more than 80 different diseases, while no ESC research is anywhere near becoming a human clinical trial. In their minds, ESC backers have a purely scientific motivation while ASC backers have a religious one. As people picture themselves standing for the cause of reason against the forces of dogma, they also don't realize that the ESC research vocabulary—so filled with "mays" and "coulds" and "one days," promising a miraculous future somewhere down the road—reflects a dogma all its own. Douglas Melton, a diabetes researcher well known for attacking successful ASC efforts than making any real progress on his own with ESCs, is one of the most-quoted stem-cell experts in the country. But what, precisely, has Melton accomplished toward curing diabetes with ESCs? When interviewed by The Wall Street Journal last year, the most he could say was "We are convinced we can do it. We just don't know how." That's not science; that's faith. But it's not a religious faith, and so people don't see it for what it is.

Ira Black, a neurologist at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, is one of the most important ASC researchers in the country, the author or co-author of more than 200 studies. He's also head of one of four labs that has published results showing the ability to convert ASCs into all three basic "germ layers" formed during early embryonic development. (One gives rise to connective tissues, muscles, and the circulatory system. One leads to development of the skin and the nervous system. The last gives rise to the gastrointestinal tract, respiratory tract, and endocrine glands.) The importance of such findings can't be overstated, since the only advantage ESCs ever appeared to have over ASCs was the ability to become all cell types. With that gone, the excuse for ESC research vanishes.

Embryonic stem-cell backers often charge their critics with caring for abstract religious doctrine, not for suffering people. Yet that description arguably may be best suited to many if not most of the ESC advocates themselves. ASC researchers, on the other hand, are almost always practicing physicians. They watch people suffer; they watch them die. They want to help them and to do so as soon as possible.

ECS advocates have done a good job of misleading people into thinking it will produce a cure for many human maladies, and so the public has demanded ESC work because they're misled, meanwhile, maybe billions of dollars and millions of lives will be wasted.


this is a brief summary of a magazine article by Michel Fumento, a well researched journalist.... I hope this gives you all a little look at how slanted your atguments for ECS are........