Doc Shocks Oprah on Ethical Stem Cell Successes

By Bob Ellis on April 7th, 2009

Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox

Dr. Mehmet Oz was on the Oprah Winfrey Show last week, along with guest Michael J. Fox, and he gave them both a shock: “The stem cell debate is dead.”

Why did he say this?  Well, it’s because of the (a) tremendous problems that come with embryonic stem cell research, and the (b) tremendous successes already coming from adult stem cell research.

Embryonic stem cell research destroys the human embryo and thus destroys an innocent human life.  Embryonic stem cell research also has problems with tissue rejection (because the embryonic stem cells come from a foreign body, just as organ transplants experience tissue rejection), and the generation of tumors in the recipient.

Adult stem cell therapy has none of these problems.

What’s more adult stem cell therapy has already produced between 70 and 80 successful therapies for maladies including brain injury, stroke, retina regeneration, heart tissue regeneration, angina, diabetes, bone cancer, nerve regeneration, cerebral palsy, cartilage regeneration, Parkinsons, kidney damage, liver cancer, lupus, multiple sclerosis, leukemia and more.

Would you like to see what it looks like when emotionalism collides with reality?  Take a look at the video below.

Note: Reader comments are reviewed before publishing, and only salient comments that add to the topic will be published. Profanity is absolutely not allowed and will be summarily deleted. Spam, copied statements and other material not comprised of the reader’s own opinion will also be deleted.

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Categories: Commentary, Video
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  • Rayilyn Brown
    A teratoma (ovarian tumor) whicih often contains hair, bone, teeth, or body parts, also contains the human genome. Is it a "life"?
    Blastocysts used in ESCR are not fetuses, babies or persons and have no future at all unless they successfully implanted in a human uterus. They are microscopic undifferentiated cells in a petri dish produced in a lab and have nothing to do with pregnancy and are never taken from a human uterus. I
    wish everyone who claims personhood for these cells could actually see them.
    Another lie by the religious right.
  • How is the human embryo that gets destroyed for research any different than the human embryo that is allowed to live and finish its development? How is any genetically or materially different? You know that it isn't.

    If uninterrupted, it will become the same human being as any other human embryo.

    You are probably also smart enough to know that hair, bone and teeth will never become a human being.

    The excuse that "this human being is in the lab, so it's okay" doesn't cut it. If we put you in a lab, would it be okay to experiment on you? Apparently you think location and circumstance changes morality.

    Do yourself a favor and quit hiding behind excuses to allow the destruction of innocent human life.
  • Steven Riley
    Well, i guess this is a mute point because over the next 4 to 8 years we will have massive federal funding for ESC research. Once the research is started, it will extremely hard to stop it. The Christian right has a long history of impeding scientific research. Notice i said the Christian right because many mainstream Christians have contributed to science

    These hardliners have been against dissection of corpses in the past, transplant surgey in the early days and now its embronic stem cell research. They wii fail because most reasonable people of faith feel it is Gods way of helping man help himself. They never think that maybe God desires us to engage in such research. They assume to know His mind and assume to know exactly when life begins.
  • No, we have a long history of impeding harm to innocent human life, and sometimes that comes under the guise of "science."

    And yes, once the horse is out of the barn, it'll be hard to stop...even though all the money in the world won't stop ESC from destroying an innocent human life...and likely won't overcome some of the other problems ESC faces...that adult stem cell research doesn't.

    God did indeed build us with inquisitive, curious minds, and I'm glad he did. He also built us with the capability to make reasoned judgments based on the evidence at hand(which indicate pretty clearly when life begins), and he also gave us a conscience to discern right from wrong...which we ignore more and more these days.
  • Steven Riley
    Evidence at hand? Your simply stating that you truly believe that the spark of life occurs at conception because all the DNA is present to turn into a fully formed human. Evidence, by definition, states that proof has been furnished. Stating what you believe to be true offers no proof. By that logic, anything that Bob Ellis states to be true, is true and proof enough. Do you really ascribe to that kind of thinking ?
  • You don't have to take my word for it. The facts are as plain as day...to someone who isn't ideologically invested in denying them.

    Is there life in the human embryo? I think even you would have to conclude that there is (it obviously isn't an inanimate object like a particle of rock).

    When you combine the fact that there is life in the human embryo with the other factors I mentioned, the conclusion is inescapable for the objective, rational mind that this is human life we're dealing with.

    It's amazing how the simple issue of convenience can cloud one's mind to an otherwise obvious truth.
  • Steven Riley
    I am saying I dont know when life begins.I think you might need to consider a genetics course, if one of your 'facts' is if all the DNA is present to make a human at the moment an egg is fertilized, it is human. Unfortuneately, all too often when the DNA from the egg first combines with the DNA from the sperm, the alignment of base pairs goes askew and the newly formed DNA genome is not human at all. Just because all the DNA is there and combines doesnt mean that very first combination is that of a human genome. I think if your honest, all you can say is that at conception( first replication of DNA) a percentage will become life and a percentage will not. Not all fetilized eggs are human life.Some just turn out to chemical complexes All I am saying is that your statement that if all the 'building blocks' are there, it is therefore life, is incorrect. Right ?Can you just comment on that ?
  • Well, duh! If you pile up a bunch of lumber, nails, wallboard, paint and shingles in a haphazard fashion, you might have all the elements, but you don't have a house, either.

    The assumption (a pretty basic one, I believe) behind my statement is that we have a human genome here. If you have genetic elements that don't comprise what meets the criteria for a human being, obviously you don't have a human being...and none of that matters.

    I doubt that what you would have would be of any use to the eager ESC researcher, either.

    Steven, it seems that you are reaching to some pretty extraordinary (and irrational) lengths, and perhaps fishing for some red herrings, in order to avoid that otherwise obvious truth: ESC research destroys innocent human life.
  • Steven Riley
    No, I am not fishing but trying to figure out myself the 'life begins issue' , because it is so germain to the devisive abortion question. Your comment on DNA is correct and my analogy was wrong. By the way,I am against abortion, but for a different reason than you. My precious daughter is adopted. Need I say more. Thank you.
  • Thanks, Steven. I also appreciate that you adopted your daughter; that was a wonderful act.

    I'm glad to hear that you oppose abortion, though I'm not sure what the reason is.

    But the inability or unwillingness to examine the issues of life, pregnancy and human development is a typical trait among the pro-abortion crowd. While we can never be 100% sure of the exact moment when human life begins (just as we can't be 100% sure of most things in life), a careful and objective examination of the facts surrounding the issue takes us to a pretty inescapable conclusion.

    For what it's worth, I used to be pro-abortion. The reason I was is because I simply consumed the shallow pap the "mainstream" media feeds the public without question. When a friend challenged me to investigate the science and the morality of the issue for myself, I took him up on the challenge...and reached the very uncomfortable but inescapable conclusion that I had been condoning murder. Admitting I had been wrong wasn't easy--especially considering the gravity of the issue, and that I had known a couple of people who had abortions and did nothing but pat them on the back before and after--but I couldn't live with myself if I attempted to hang onto something I knew was false.

    I only wish someone had taken the time to lay out those facts to me much earlier in my life (as one would expect the media to do, if it was interested in living up to the claims the industry makes about itself).
  • Steven Riley
    I feel life is such an exceedingly rare event considering the infinitesimal chances of it occuring in the universe. We only have one and it is brief. Why not fill it with goodwill and kindness towards all, because they too have overcome enormous odds to be part of this brief escapade. Like a beautiful meadow or work of art, life should be cherished but much more.I believe life on earth began hundreds of millions years ago and i am part of an unbroken chain of lifeforms since the beginning. Having no biologic children that chain will be broken when I die. One tip of the tree of life dead ends. I am so fortunate to have been here at all.Even more, pure luck allowed me to be one of the lucky ones who has had a good life. Now that puts me in rarefied air. I am against abortion not because i think it is murder, but because it prohibits someone from living.It is the only chance they will have.

    I would hope others would allow life to have chance, but it's their choice to make. I wont make it for them
  • Thanks for your honesty and openness, and I appreciate your comments.

    But we decide every day as a society not to give one person the choice of whether to allow another human being to live...as long as the human being in the crosshairs is out of the womb where we have to look it in the face in death.

    We should extend that protection (as we once did) to all human life, whether we have to look it in the face before killing it or not.
  • Rayilyn Brown
    There are no successful adult stem cell treatments for Parkinson's disease, which I have had for 13 years. For the past 5 years I have followed 3 phoney claims of the Family Research Council and it is simply not true that there have been 70- 80+ "cures" from ASCs. There are 9 after 40 years of research and most of the cancer treatments are for blood replacement due to suppression by chemo, not aimed at the disease itself.
    The religious right continually lies about this and Obama's lifting of the bush restrictions has activated them again. Ask them to produce Dennis Turner, Parkinson's disease "cure".
  • There is no cure for Parkinsons disease, and no one claims there is. Either you're buying the liberal disinformation propaganda, or manufacturing it yourself.

    Adult stem cell therapy has, however produced treatments that diminish the symptoms associated with Parkinson's.

    Embryonic stem cell research has produced....well, nothing.

    Why are you so zealous to destroy innocent human life when there is a non-destructive alternative that is already enjoying tremendous success? You really should ask yourself that question.
  • Thanks, Wayne!
  • Steven Riley
    Adult stem cells are showing great promise and hopefully will continue to do so. And yes ESC do appear to have barriers, but since when do barriers prevent science from finding out whats out there. Lets just look at the science part of it-we havent fully studuied ESC yet. Turn science loose on both cell lines and lets find out. Thats the only way we will know for sure and its called research. Dr. Oz is stating an opinion. He may be correct, but let the full research tell us, not premature opinion.

    There were once vitriolic moral arguments over organ transplants, because the first ones done yielded terrible results.and organs from a live person were transplanted in to another,thus ending the life of the donor.True, that donor was going to die anyway, but so are the majority of embryos frozen in labs that will be discarded.
  • If the destruction of innocent human life were not involved, there would be no reason not to pursue ESC...though with a fair amount of caution due to the problem with tumors and tissue rejection.

    But when innocent human life is destroyed, there is nothing that can justify going down that road.
  • Steven Riley
    You have no proof it is a life, just a religious opinion. We dont need those dictating science. The past is a teastament to that.
  • oops
  • No, it is not merely "religious opinion." Why is it liberals worship science...until science interferes with convenience?

    And I believe I have explained this to you before.

    The human embryo has the unmistakable and unique spark of life in it from conception. The human embryo contains human DNA; not cat DNA, not tree DNA, not iron ore, but human DNA. That human DNA is unique; the genetic profile does not match the father, Bob Hope, Harrison Ford or even it's mother--this makes it a unique human being. The human embryo is genetically complete at conception; it needs no further genetic information to become more than it already can, and if uninterrupted, will grow into a fully developed human being, no different than you or I.

    By any rational conclusion, such a situation is undoubtedly a human life...that is, unless we want to use it for some purpose we deem expedient, or unless we simply deem that human life inconvenient to our self-actualization goals.

    See, I didn't use a single reference to the Bible or any other religious text.
  • Steven Riley
    Again, I agree with your analysis of DNA but no ones knows when the spark of life occurs because God has not specifically made that known to us. One person could believe that the spark occurs at conception and another could believe it occurs four weeks after conception. Neither have facts behind them and thus are opinions.

    I fully understand and it makes sense to say the spark of life begins at conception, but Istill maintain it to be an opinion- a well thought out one, but nontheless an opinion.Remember an opinion is a belief stronger than an impression and less stronger than absolute knowledge..

    And see I quoted no science books :-)
  • Do you really need science books quoted to verify facts that are this obvious? Or is that simply your weak protest that helps you avoid a truth that you really do grasp already, but find inconvenient?
  • Fran Heiser
    NOW THE KEY IS FOR THOSE IN CHARGE TO LISTEN AND ALLOW LIVES TO BE SAVED RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA.
  • There is a group of physicians, patients and other interested people working together to get treatment with adult stem cells legalized in the U.S. as it should be. Please ask your family and friends to sign up ("JOIN"), and get as many doctors to sign up as well. Please see The American Stem Cell Therapy Association site

    http://www.stemcelldocs.org
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