Tag Archives: Stem cell

BiomedNews

Poll shows most Americans for embryonic stem cell research

Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatm...
Image via Wikipedia

As the fate of a decision about funding sources for it hangs in the balance, US News & World Report notes that Harris just conducted a poll about embryonic stem cell research. Results show that a clear majority of Americans across many faiths and credos believe it is neither immoral nor unethical.

In August the federal government appealed U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision about stopping federal funding for this wildly promising field of research. An appeals court put the ban into suspension so that funding for research could continue.

I just realized that 3 of my last 5 posts on this blog have been about the heartening promises of stem cell research, so you don’t have to guess my opinion about it. And I pray the judges are all listening carefully to the fact that citizens of faiths as diverse as Catholics to born-again Christians are in favor of moving ahead. Many even realize that the United States—in addition to already being embarrassingly low on the infant mortality scale among global nations—will fall light years further behind other countries who develop healing technologies with stem cells.

I haven’t been able to determine yet if US District Court judges are appointed or elected, but we can only hope that such an unenlightened ruling is not motivated by a short-sighted desire to hold onto a judgeship.

There are too many lives to be saved and too much suffering to be prevented for us to refuse the gift that God has given us with the miracle of learning how to use stem cells for healing and regrowth.

Enhanced by Zemanta

BiomedNews

Using stem cells to find drugs’ potential side effects

A colony of embryonic stem cells, from the H9 ...
Image via Wikipedia

If we needed any further proof of how far-reaching the effects of stem cell research can be on making medicine not only less invasive but also more efficient and effective, now comes another momentous discovery.

According to a BusinessWeek article, a couple of pharma companies have developed a way to use stem cells to develop “human” tissue (independent of a living, breathing person), and they’re using the tissue to test drugs for potentially dangerous side effects.

The cost to develop a new drug—which can in some cases exceed $4 billion—usually includes animal trials and then human trials. Researchers have found that stem-cell-generated tissue—they are regularly producing 7 billion heart cells a month from skin and blood stem cells (not embryonic)—mimics the reactions of actual human tissue. And that allows scientists to test drugs for bad effects long before human trials would normally be scheduled.

The happiest part of this report is that this isn’t just the promise of stem cells—this work is actually going on now. One of the pharma companies used the stem-cell tissue to re-test a drug they’d worked on earlier and discarded because of a bad side effect on test animals. They found the drug had exactly the same results on the stem-cell tissue as it had had on the animals. The company realized if it had had this capability back then, it could have stopped development much sooner and saved a bundle.

Consider the potential benefits of making full use of this capability:

  • How much faster might useful drugs get through the pipeline and out to the patients who desperately need them?
  • How much might the cost of new drugs come down with pharmaceutical companies saving millions of dollars in development costs?
  • How many animal lives might be spared because research can be done on this “artificial” tissue instead of on rabbits or mice or chimps?

I say again, with stem cell miracles around every corner, we’ve at last discovered heaven’s own way of healing. And what we do with that power now and in the future will be limited only by our own imaginations .

Enhanced by Zemanta