Fetal Stem Cell Therapy Produces Tumors in Boys Brain, Spine

As some in South Dakota move to repeal the state’s ban on embryonic stem cell research (SB 195), Breitbart.com reports an experimental fetal stem cell therapy used on an Israeli boy who had a rare, fatal genetic disease  called ataxia telangiectasia, or A-T.

The case was published in the journal PLoS Medicine. 

Unfortunately the fetal stem cell therapy had the same effect commonly seen in embryonic stem cell research: tumors.

Israeli doctors pieced together the child’s history: When he was 9, the family traveled to Russia, to a Moscow clinic that provided injections of neural stem cells from fetuses—immature cells destined to grow into a main type of brain cells. The cells were injected into his brain and spinal cord twice more, at ages 10 and 12.

Back home in Israel at age 13, the boy’s A-T was severe enough to require that he use a wheelchair when he also began complaining of headaches. Tests at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv uncovered a growth pushing on his brain stem and a second on his spinal cord. Surgeons removed the spinal cord mass when the boy was 14, in 2006 and they say his general condition has remained stable since then.

But was the boy prone to tumors anyway or were the fetal stem cells to blame? A Tel Aviv University team extensively tested the tumor tissue and concluded it was the fetal cells. Among other evidence, some of the cells were female and had two normal copies of the gene that causes A-T—although that boy’s underlying poor immune function could have allowed the growths to take hold.

This is a sad outcome for this poor boy, but unfortunately not a surprising one.  

In addition to destroying innocent human life, embryonic stem cell research faces this hurdle of tumor generation, and also tissue rejection.  Just as organ transplant recipients’ bodies reject the foreign tissue, so the body rejects stem cells from another body (the destroyed human embryo).

Adult stem cell therapy, on the other hand, faces none of these issues.  It does not destroy innocent human life.  It does not have problems with generating tumors.  It does not have problems with tissue rejection because the stem cells come from the nasal, dental and other tissue of an adults own body.  

And unlike embryonic stem cell research, which has not produced a single successful therapy, adult stem cell therapy has produced around 80 successful therapies including brain injury, stroke, retina regeneration, heart tissue regeneration, angina, diabetes, bone cancer, nerve regeneration, cerebral palsy, cartilage regeneration, kidney damage, liver cancer, lupus, multiple sclerosis, leukemia and more. 

Just yesterday I wrote about the latest success in reversing the effects of Parkinsons. 

There is no need to shed the moral fiber of our civilization by destroying innocent human life in the name of research, especially when adult stem cell therapy has proven so successful.

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