When you speak out the cowards come out, sort of.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs. Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you." Matthew 5:10-12

On Friday 10 Nov I wrote a piece entitled All Submissions May Be Edited. It was about a letter to the editor that I sent to the Des Moines Register. Well, the cowards strike again. Just like the person who responded to my post Michael J. Fox proves Ann Coulter Right, I did get a response, &, no surprize, the letter wasn't signed. & I can tell you why very simply, the person knows that if he/she signed his/her name then I could respond & prove the claims made by the person were wrong.

I expect pot shots to be taken at me, that is a given. & it doesn't bother me. So, I don't expect any pity when people attack me. Jesus was attacked for telling the truth, so were the Apostles, as well as many Christians down through the centuries. That is not why I am writing this. Why I am doing this is that even though I can't respond directly tothe person who wrote the letter, I can refute what he/she said & hopefully give anyone reading this some insights on how to answer similar arguements. I will do this over several entries in the next few weeks to keep any 1 from becoming too long to read. & even then I won't even try to put everything into it that I could. There are a couple of excellent websites with in depth info on stem cell research & what is & isn't working. It will also make it easier to find the specific area you may be interested in. (At the bottom of each new entry I will put links to the previous entries.) You also need to understand that with some people no matter how many facts you have to refute what they say they won't budge. "I've got my mind made up, don't confuse me with the facts." & that is what these website present, facts about treatments that are already working, about research using adult & umbilical cord blood stem cells that is offering real hope not might 0r may like fetal/embryonic.

Naturally the 1st problem I have to deal with is the fact that the Des Moines Register cut out half of my letter including the sources to back up my claims I made in the letter. In this case I can deal with that when I respond to part of the comments in the letter. (You can read both my letter as written & as published at the All Submissions link above.) The bigger problem is there is 1 claim that I can't refute as well as I'd like because the writer makes a claim that I can't directly prove the writer knows is true. But I can question if it is true. Here is how I would do it section by section of the letter: (The quotes from the letter written to me will be in italics to enable you to know who said what.)

Gina Schatteman offered more than opinion. She has expert background.

How do you know that she has espert background? Do you know her personally? Have you investigated the University of Iowa Website to see if she works there & her claim is true?

In the case of Dr Schatteman, I did check things out. She has her doctorate in chemistry. She is an associate professor & her area of specialization is exercise & integrative physiology. & yes, she is involved with a study to understand how bone marrow-derived stem cells help repair and maintain blood vessels and the consequences of stem cell dysfunction on vascular physiology. Yet she goes on to say that this type of stem cell "were only recently identified in adults." This raises some questions. She claims she has been working with adult stem cells for more than a decade. There is no evidence of this either way in the info on her page as to how long she has been doing this. & if she has only been involved with this study of the recently discovered bone marrow type then she can't have been doing this for over 10 yrs.

1 focus of the study she is involved in is to "delineate the mechanisms by which diabetes alters stem cell function, and to determine if stem cell dysfunction is in part responsible for severe cardiovascular disease associated with diabetes." She goes on to state: " In support of this hypothesis, we have shown, that treatment with circulating stem cells significantly accelerates the restoration of blood flow to the limbs of diabetic, but not non-diabetic mice suffering from circulatory impairment. Our ultimate goal is to provide a framework whereby clinicians can devise means to manipulate and/or transplant blood or bone marrow stem cells to treat vascular disease in diabetic patients." These facts raise some questions about some of the claims made in Dr. Schatteman's original letter.

Dr. Schatteman said in the letter: "(T)here is nothing that would make me happier than to know that adult stem cells can be the answer to diabetes, . . . Unfortunately, this is not the case. While adult stem cells may be able one day to slow the progression and treat the symptoms of these diseases, it is only embryonic stem cells that truly offer the promise of a cure." If adult stems cells aren't the answer why is she wasting time & money on this research? Wouldn't it be better to work on finding a cure than dealing with the symptoms?

As I said adult stem cells do offer hope. I will go into this in detail in the next entry as it fits in as a part of a response to the next section of the letter I received.

To be continued . . . .