The Success Stories Just Keep Mounting Up

More from the Tell Me Again Why We Would Ever Need to Create &/or Kill Unborn Babies to Get Stem Cells? file:

It looks like scientist may have found a way to reprogram cells without running into any of the ethical problems that comes with the use of embryonic stem cells. Acoording to a report in the Washington Post (Scientists Reprogram Adult Cells' Function) "Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses."

"Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive."

According to research leader Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute: "It's kind of an extreme makeover of a cell. The goal is to create cells that are missing or defective in people. It's very exciting." It is too early to get overly excited. I need to be assured that there is nothing in the process that requires aborted fetal or embryonic material. But if so here is 1 more proof there is no need for embryonic stem cells to be used at all.

Meanwhile, at a conference on transplantation in Sydney Australia last month, Dr. Anthony Atala leader of a team of researchers at the Wake Forest University in North Carolina reported the team's success using stem cells extracted from amniotic fluid to grow new organ tissue." Talking to The Age Dr. Atala said: "The hope is … that if you have a baby diagnosed prenatally with a defect then you can take cells from the amniotic fluid and then expand those cells in large quantities and create the tissue or organ that is needed." He said that by using amniotic fluid and placental stem cells there is the potential to cure "any abnormality that would not be lethal before a baby is born."

Using the amniotic fluid & placental stem cells the team has grown liver, pancreatic, nerve and kidney tissue. In 2004 they grew a bladder that was successful transplanted into a human being. (Stem Cells in Baby's Own Amniotic Fluid Used to Help Form New Organ Tissues ) Again there seems to be another ethical source of stem cells that is shopwing great current potential, not somewhere down the maybe road.

Then there is this report on the Family Research Council: Adult Stem Cell Success Stories 2008 Update: January-June. The article lists 15 different areas that are having success NOW using adult stem cells.

Sadly, even with all these positive reports there will still be some scientists so sold out to the "culture of death" that they will still try & justify the use of cloning, SCNT & embryonic stem cells. What William Lowry, a scientist from UCLA said last February will still, unfortunately, be heard from many others: "It is important to remember that our research does not eliminate the need for embryo-based human embryonic stem cell research, but rather provides another avenue of worthwhile investigation." (Human Skin Cells Reprogrammed Into Embryonic Stem Cells) I beg to differ, it does more than eliminate the need, it proves there never was any need to use embryonic stem cells in the 1st place.