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
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.
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!
Sean Kelly brings home some interesting facts including the quote from Nature. However, I don't quite agree with his taking issue with the failure of the analogy between the rubber sheathing insulation of a wire and the Myelin insulation of the nerves. Yes, there's no reason why a wire can't conduct electricity from point A to B if it doesn't have insulation - no reason, that is if it's not also shorted to something else in between points A and B. Hypothetically, nerves or brain cells without this insulation might be short circuited (in engineering terms, a short could be a hard short or a 'soft' short where some of the signal might be diminished in between points A and B).
According the NIH website, there are currently already 4 lines of embryonic stem cells that are eligible for federal funding which were already in place before President Bush's ban was instituted! So what was Ron Reagan Jr's speech all about at the Democratic convention? In his speech, he neglected to mention this as well as the fact that adult stem cells such as from bone marrow may be able to 'harvested' into brain or nerve cells.
Pretty good article, recommended reading!
01-17-2003 11:01 PM
