Vatican To Fund Adult Stem Cell Research

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The project – a collaboration between the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Italian equivalent of the National Institutes of Health – will attempt to coax intestinal stem cells (found in everyone’s gut) to turn into multi-potent stem cells. These are cells that, like embryonic stem cells, have the potential to develop into any kind of cell in the body. It’s already been done using adult skin cells, though using them to treat major diseases is likely a ways off.

“Our goal is to make these (intestinal stem) cells become cells of any kind in our body,” says Dr. Alessio Fasano, a professor of pediatrics, medicine and physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who is coordinating the new consortium.
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The Catholic Church has long opposed embryonic stem cell research, saying it needlessly destroys embryos and has little value. It has butted heads with the Obama Administration repeatedly over the issue.

In the scheme of things, the $3 million the Church has pledged for the adult stem cell research project is a piddly amount. In California alone voters approved spending $300 million a year for stem-cell research in 2007 and NIH is planning to spend $1.07 billion on it this year. But, the purpose of this grant is to explore if using intestinal stem cells could really work.
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Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is there a moral issue to discuss here?
 
HickmanJosh said:
one of the primary sources for research into stem-cells is a human embryo
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Yea, for embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican is allowing/promoting adult stem cell research, which does NOT harm embryos.
 
rusty20 said:
Yea, for embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican is allowing/promoting adult stem cell research, which does NOT harm embryos.
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EXACTLY! The adult, who’s stm-cell is being researched is already alive, and embryonic research is fiddling with a human life.
 
Adult stem cell research has yeileded more results and more cures than embryonic stem cell use, in fact, ESCR has caused more problems and more injuries!

Yet, still the pro-aborts push it. It really makes me wonder if the whole poitn is because they like to kill someone.

Its like the whole “foetal tissue research will cure AIDS and all other diseases and help the economy” rubbish that was peddled in the early 90s. That’s why parital birth abortion was invented, not to save the mother, but to ensure intact foetal organs that could be “gifted” to research institutitions which in turn woudl “donate” funds to the abortion clinic which the organs came from.

But we dont’ hear about FTR any more, do we?
 
It is funny how the media is making it sound like astonishing new news that the Catholic Church supports any sort of stem cell research. :rolleyes:

~Liza
 
lizaanne said:
It is funny how the media is making it sound like astonishing new news that the Catholic Church supports any sort of stem cell research. :rolleyes:

~Liza
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I’ll tell you what I’ve noticed about the media.

When a breakthrough is made with adult stem cells teh media simply refers to it as “A stem cell break through”, they don’t want the public to konw there’s a very moral distinciton between embyronic and adult.

But when there’s some hint of a brain fart with an embryonic stem cell line, they’re screaming it from the roof tops. There was actually a case in NZL a few years back where a woman went to China for some embyronic/foetal stem cells to be injected into her diseased brain. She actually said “Well, I dont’ agree with abortion, but so what, that 8 month old foetus is dead, its not like they need those cells anymore, some good may come of their death” or words to the effect. After the procedure she had a slight improvement in her speech and ability to feed herself.

About a month later she was even worse than before the procedure, and a few months later she was dead. When she had been told prior to the procedure she could probably live another 10 years.

.Her adventures to China, and teh so called “success” was front page news, and on several major news programmes. When she died, prematurely, it was hush hush, and I think there were a few sentences in one of the back sections of the paper.
 
why don’t they just harvest the cord blood stem cells from newborns? we were considering saving ours when we had our baby but it was too expensive. i would have donated it for research if anyone was taking it
 
choy said:
why don’t they just harvest the cord blood stem cells from newborns? we were considering saving ours when we had our baby but it was too expensive. i would have donated it for research if anyone was taking it
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I’ve heard lots of good about cord blood. Unfortunately, most of the time I believe it just ends up as medical waste. There’s no moral issues I can see with using cord blood stem cells. Heck, we’ve got people having babies every day, so it’s not like we’d be doing anything unethical to get some.
 
curlycool89 said:
I’ve heard lots of good about cord blood. Unfortunately, most of the time I believe it just ends up as medical waste. There’s no moral issues I can see with using cord blood stem cells. Heck, we’ve got people having babies every day, so it’s not like we’d be doing anything unethical to get some.
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And yet all we tend to hear about from the media is “Oh, if only the President would let us make embryos, we need their stem cells, we need it to cure puppies and little girls with piggie tails and the environment!”

There’s plenty of non-fatal sources of stem cells.
 
Outstanding! This is wonderful news. Let us pray for earth shattering breakthroughs and therapies such that embryonic stem cell research will be abandoned forever.
 
We did store our babies cord blood. And a grandparent graciously pays the annual storage fee. This procedure is done immediately after your baby is born and just after the cord is cut. Daddy or someone should be in charge of having it transferred immediately. (probably someone other than Daddy…) And I THINK you can donate your babies cord blood if you don’t want to pay to have it stored. Worth looking into…
 
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