Ten Great Media Myths in the Debate Over Stem Cell Research

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Reverend Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Director of Education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.
This can be downloaded and printed to share with family, friends and co-workers. This is #3 of the 10 myths.
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Embryonic stem cell research has the greatest promise.
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Up to now, no human being has ever been cured of a disease using embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells, on the other hand, have already cured thousands. There is the example of the use of bone marrow cells from the hipbone to repair scar tissue on the heart after heart attacks. Research using adult cells is 20-30 years ahead of embryonic stem cells and holds greater promise. This is in part because stem cells are part of the natural repair mechanisms of an adult body, while embryonic stem cells do not belong in an adult body (where they are likely to form tumors, and to be rejected as foreign tissue by the recipient). Rather, embryonic stem cells really belong only within in the specialized microenvironment of a rapidly growing embryo, which is a radically different setting from an adult body.
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crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/964/Ten_Great_Media_Myths_in_the_Debate_Over_Stem_Cell_Research.html
 
… Stem cells are considered particularly promising as they can be directed to form the precise desired tissue and** do not trigger an immune response**…
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The theory is stem cells taken from the embryonic clone of a patient will not trigger an immune response. However, apart from the issue of harvesting thousands of secondary oocytes (mature eggs) in order to create a cloned embryo, apart from the need to kill these young embryonic humans in order to provide new stem cells for transplantation, there still remains a chance of rejection. This possible immune reaction derives from the fact that while the nuclear DNA obtained from the somatic (body) cell of the patient may be virtually identical, the mitochondrial DNA from the enucleated egg still remains in the cytoplasm (the egg white of the egg. The nucleus is like the egg yolk.) So the promise of no immune response remains speculative.
 
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