The Big Stem-Cell Breakthrough

[Beaver]

An article in The Daily Standard…

weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/886hpnnn.asp

 

[Rosalinda]

Buffalo, I’m still looking for the mass media to pick up on this major story. Catholic Education Resource Center picked up the story by Wesley Smith.

Two scientists from Newcastle University, Nico Forraz and Colin McGuckin, have built dime-sized human livers using stem cells found in umbilical cord blood. The livers are already sufficient for use in drug testing — perhaps in place of using some animals and humans as research subjects. The scientists believe that within five years, stem-cell generated liver tissue could be sufficiently perfected for use in treating human diseases caused by injury, disease, and alcohol abuse. Perhaps in 15 years, the technique could even be employed to manufacture whole human livers suitable for transplantation…

catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0087.htm

What are they waiting for to report this news? The passing of Ammendment 2 in Missouri? Heaven forbid, the public should begin to think maybe we can do without ESC’s and eventually harvesting body parts from cloned human beings after all is said and done. Be that as it may, researchers still want them desperately. After all, the end justifies the means and they can learn so much basic science studying these tiny embryonic children; not to mention all the money they can earn from resulting drug therapies and patented embryonic stem cell lines.

All too well do they realize that the promise of patient specific stem cell therapy is pie-in-the-sky. It is too expensive for one thing; not enough donors oocytes for another. Not to even mention, the foreign mitochondrial DNA from the donor oocyte may well cause an immune rejection reaction in the patient after he receives an injection of stem cells produced by nuclear transfer. That isn’t expected to be a big problem though. Just another opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to make more money with anti-rejection therapy.

Yep, folks step right up for some more snake oil.

 

[Beaver]

In a debate on PBS the scintist said only Embronic Stem Cell could produce organs and this is why we must proceed with this research. Could this be the reason…

 

[bones_IV]

In a debate on PBS the scintist said only Embronic Stem Cell could produce organs and this is why we must procede with this research. Could this be the reason…

So, if someone would take a pro-life activist to a concentration camp and shoot them down would you support that?

 

[bones_IV]

In a debate on PBS the scintist said only Embronic Stem Cell could produce organs and this is why we must proceed with this research. Could this be the reason…

But it’s still violating the personhood of the embryo’s.

 

[Rosalinda]

Sorry, Beaver. That PBS scientist had no basis in fact for what he said. It is mere speculation and it is deceptive. The only way embryonic stem cells could grow patient specific organs would mean cloning from the somatic cell of a patient in need of the organ transplant using SCNT. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the same technique used to create Dolly. This method of cloning is extremely inefficient. Only 2% of cloned animal embryos come to birth and many have congenital abnormalities.

Dr. Hwang in South Korea fraudulently claimed to have successfully cloned the first human embryos using nuclear cell transfer when in fact DNA testing last year proved he had not succeeded. If and when the technical problems are eventually worked out they still will not succeed in creating an identical twin clone of the patient as the mitochondrial DNA from the oocyte will not match the nuclear DNA from the donor/patient. This is the lesson learned from the Hwang scandal. There is no such thing as “virtual genetic identity”.

So where are these organs going to come from you may ask yourself Beaver? These cloned human embryos will need to be implanted in either human uteri, perhaps into mammals such as horses, cows or ultimately into artificial wombs mass produced in laboratories. As far-fetched as it sounds, many cloning advocates, including Mr. Neaves of the Stowers Institute of Missouri deny, the status of human beings to anyone who is not the product of sexual fertilization. They believe nuclear transfer only produces “stem cells”. So if human life has degraded in their minds to no more than a mere research tool they have no compunction or reservation whatsoever to allow these embryonic children to develop until their organs are suitable for harvesting.

Which is why it is imperative there should be no constitutional right to maim and kill the tiniest and youngest members of the human family. Too many lives have been wasted already.

There is no way scientists know of – short of fetus farming – to transform embryonic stem cells into pure tissue
types suitable for transplant: “Although embryonic have been shown to have the potential to turn into virtually
any cell type found within the body, no studies have demonstrated the controlled generation of a uniform cell
type.” (Harvard Medical School Professor Charles Vacanti, “In tissue engineering, embryonic stem cells may not

be the way to go”;

stemcellresearch.org/facts/WheresTheBeef.pdf