| CNN reported a year ago, August about the breakthrough discoveries through lab testing on rodents that embryonic stem cells could revitalize myelin cells - protective cells that line the nervous system and permit it to operate. Damage to myelin results in neural failure and which manifests itself as varying degrees of paralysis, such as that which plagues actor Chrostopher Reeve.
Reeve is pissed because he can't get the same treatment the rats did due to government regulation of this research. What confuses me is why there's no indication that embryo's are not the only source of stem cells - he might have enough stem cell material in his own bone marrow to beat his predicament.
Funny, they also liken the myelin to a rubber coating around a wire that allows the wire to conduct electricity and that without that coating the wire would cease to conduct: uh, no. Last I checked, rubber is an insulator not a conductor and metal wires conduct without regard to rubber coatings - but it was a nice attempt at a layman's analogy 
Another article from Nature on the subject mentions, among other things:
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Recent work with adult stem cells, however, has made some researchers question whether a tight focus on ES cells is necessary. Small numbers of stem cells exist in adult tissues, where they help to repair our bodies. Compared with ES cells, these adult versions are thought to have a more restricted capacity for development into different tissue types. But if they could be used as a source of replacement tissue, adult stem cells would avoid the destruction of a human embryo — a fundamental moral objection to approaches based on ES cells.
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Anyway.. I just want to make it clear that embryonic stem cells, as pointed out, being the most highly objected facet of stem cell research, is not the ONLY type of stem cell research...  Pretty good article, recommended reading! | |
