Skin Cells May Become Stem Cells Says Washington Post
This piece is another of many recent research advances demonstrating the astonishing potential of adult stem cells. This story describes how skin cells have been reverted to embryonic-like stem cells. The potential consequence is that cloned embryos might not be needed to obtain the treatment benefits that the proponents of therapeutic cloning have claimed that procedure could provide. (The process would involve fusing an embryonic stem cell, like those already approved for federal funding by Pres. Bush, with the patient's own skin cell.)
Good for the Washington Post for printing it, and for Rick Weiss, the Post science reporter for reporting it. Weiss is pro therapeutic cloning and has implied that opponents of these technologies are Taliban. But he is also a good journalist. For example, when President Ronald Reagan died, some biotech boosters used the event to push embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning as a way of helping cure people with Alzheimer's. They still do. But Weiss was the only mainstream reporter and the Post the only major outlet of which I am aware to report that stem cells are very unlikely to be a viable treatment for Alzheimer's. When asked why biotechnologists were permitting Alzheimer's victims and their families to believe an untruth that ES cells offered them hope, Weiss quoted one as stating cynically that "people need a fairy tale." So much for compassion.
Most establishment media outlets continue to underreport adult stem cell successes. And they usually continue to list Alzheimer's as one of the diseases that may be cured by cloning or ES cell research. But these two Post stories are pleasant exceptions.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:14 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
I saw this discovery covered in today's Boston Globe. One thing I am not clear on is this: once a skin cell reverts to an embryonic stem cell, is it possible for it to grow to an embryo and thereby become a clone?
No. Apparently it would do away with the need for creating an embryo at all. It would revert the skin cell to an embryonic stem cell state. This procedure would, it seems, do away with the need for therapeutic cloning altogether, using stem cells already approved for federal funding under the Bush policy. It does require using a preexisting ES cell for the fusion policy. It would qualify for federal funding under the Bush policy.
A stem cell is not an embryo. It is a cell that is not differentiated into a specific type of cell, e.g., blood, bone, fat, etc.
At the point that they extract this stem cell, can they be 100%certain that removal doesn't damage the embryo, and how many cells does an embryo have?
While this discovery eliminates the use of cloning to create a stem cell line, it does not eliminate the moral difficulty of using the result of a purposeful death. ie. that the embryonic stem cells used to start the line has been taken from an embryo, causing that human's death in the first place. There is still moral difficulty here, even if it prevents future deaths.
I vote for the use of adult stem cells (there is no moral difficulty) and especially the use of cells from umbilical cords. The advances keep on coming, and no human pays with their life.
I am the head of my pro-life committee at church, and I am trying my hardest to have our reporters report correctly on the stem cell issue, so that America knows that there is an ethical alternative! So far most reporters just repeat what the AP feeds them, and don't know their facts. Unfortunately there is much misleading information, and hardly a word about adult stem cell advances.
Thank you for continuing to get the word out there!
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