Scientist Speaks in Rapid City on Stem Cell Research
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Dr. David Prentice, Family Research Council
Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council was the keynote speaker at the South Dakota Family Policy Council‘s monthly luncheon on Wednesday in Rapid City.
With an effort beginning again to weaken or repeal South Dakota’s ban on embryonic stem cell research, the Coalition for Cures Not Cloning has been formed to help South Dakotans understand the issue.
A couple of months ago, we learned from Pure Pierre Politics and the South Dakota War College that Former State Treasurer David Volk and a group calling themselves South Dakotans for Lifesaving Cures planned to circulate a petition which purported to strengthen the state’s ban on human cloning, but in actuality was designed to undermine the state’s ban on human embryonic stem cell research. Within a few weeks, the full truth of an attack on the state’s embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) ban was revealed.
The South Dakota Family Policy Council invited Dr. Prentice, an internationally-recognized authority on stem cell research, to speak on the issue.
Dr. Prentice said many people don’t understand the difference between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells, and the research associated with each.
Both types of stem cell research fall within what is termed “regenerative medicine.” When a stem cell is given the right signal, it should form different types of tissues (bone, cartilage, heart, etc).
Prentice said we don’t hear nearly so much about adult stem cells as we do embryonic stem cells, yet all of the successful therapies devised from stem cell research have come from adult stem cells.
Back in 1981 scientists began to work with mouse embryonic stem cells, but didn’t manage to utilize human embryonic stem cells until 1998.
From Dr. Prentice's presentation (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
One of the major problems with embryonic stem cells is that they are difficult to control and can begin to form types of tissue other than the one you want them to–like tumors.
Another difficulty is that while ESC may function with some degree of success in the laboratory, said Prentice, it can be a very different story when the ESC are injected into a living body where they have to interact with other bodily cells.
Dr. James Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, who was the first to make a breakthrough with ESC, says scientists have overestimated the prospects for transplantation cures using embryonic stem cells.
Prentice said human cloning isn’t what we think of from the movies. Cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer–SCNT) is a process of obtaining a human embryo. A somatic cell is taken from the body, the nucleus is removed, then transferred into an empty egg to produce a single-celled embryo. This human clone can then be put into the womb of a mother.
Therapeutic cloning–as opposed to reproductive cloning–is done the same way, only the cloned human being is used for research.
When an MSNBC interviewer in 2005 tried to distinguish between human cloning for reproduction and human cloning for research, Dr. Thompson said: “See, you’re trying to define it away, and it doesn’t work. If you create an embryo by nuclear transfer, and you give it to somebody who didn’t know where it came from, there would be no test you could do on that embryo to say where it came from. It is what it is. It’s true that they have a much lower probability of giving rise to a child. … But by any reasonable definition, at least at some frequency, you’re creating an embryo. If you try to define it away, you’re being disingenuous.”
The language of South Dakota’s current law bans any human cloning. However, some other states define “human cloning” as involving implantation in a uterus…which–short of that–would open the door for and allow human cloning for research purposes, i.e. ESCR, so long as it was not implanted in a uterus.
Because ESC harvesting is very inefficient, it would take approximately 100 human eggs per patient to hope to cure any diseases. This would require massive egg donation by women to be used for research.
There are dangers associated with egg donation including increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. A female Stanford student named Calla Papademas is one such woman who found out about such risks after the fact.
Professor Ian Wilmut, the man behind the cloning of Dolly the sheep, has shunned cloning. He has also turned his back on a license he obtained to pursue human embryonic cloning, instead finding more promise for therapeutic research in an adult stem cell technique developed by Japanese and American scientists.
A Japanese scientist named Shinya Yamanaka and Dr. James Thompson (from above) managed to create iPS (induced pluripotent stem cells): adult stem cells induced to an embryonic-like behavior without requiring human embryos. These adult stem cells can come from human skin, hair, etc. This technique is cheaper and avoids the hurdles of ESCR.
What was behind Dr. Yamanaka’s change from embryonic stem cell research to adult stem cell research?
“When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka.
Dr. Prentice said we’ve been doing adult stem cell transplants for years, even before we realized what we were doing. Bone marrow transplants are an example of this; we didn’t realize in the early days of this procedure that it was not so much the marrow that caused the regeneration as it was the stem cells in the marrow.
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