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Jewish World Review April 27, 2005 / 18 Nisan, 5765 Getting beyond the arguments over stem cells By Kathryn Lopez
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
These days it's common to hear that "conservative" or "pro-life" policy
toward stem cells is a disservice to folks like the late President
Ronald Reagan who suffered from Alzheimer's. Quite a bit of the media
coverage about the new pope, Benedict XVI, has emphasized that he's
against stem cell research. In a recent Washington Post article, Ivy
Reyes, who had stopped by a Manhattan church to say a prayer for
pontiff, emphasized to a reporter: "I'm hoping he can find a balance
with the science."
If you follow the media's lead, we are to believe that the pope, like
President Bush, is against stem cell research. But neither of them is
against stem cell research. Actually, I don't know anyone who is against
stem cell research. And I would know, because I agree with the Vatican
and the U.S. president on this topic.
My posse is against embryonic-stem cell research, and against cloning to
create embryos for use in stem cell research (or any research). But
we're not against stem cell research.
Embryonic stem cell research is not the only hope for mankind, as we are
typically led to believe. The prospects of adult stem cell and umbilical
cord stem cell research are repeatedly ignored by media and activists
who could use both to promote funding of and research in stem cell
projects and totally avoid the ethical chaos that comes with working
with human embyros.
Earlier this year, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh, put his
Church's view clearly in a pastoral letter on human life: "Adult stem
cell research ... has been described as the most promising advance in
medical science in the last decades. The Catholic Church is not opposed
to the development of these therapies and remedies for a host of
ailments and deficiencies that afflict the body. Stem cell research
using stem cells from ethical sources is a continuation of the work that
has been done for millennia by physicians and researchers seeking cures
for illness and healing for the sick."
Adult stem cells made a memorable appearance in the presidential
elections last fall, when, during the second prime-time debate,
questioner Elizabeth Long asked: "Senator Kerry, thousands of people
have already been cured or treated by the use of adult stem cells or
umbilical cord stem cells. However, no one has been cured by using
embryonic stem cells. Wouldn't it be wise to use stem cells obtained
without the destruction of an embryo?"
Senator Kerry didn't have much of a response, and most folks glossed
over it and moved on. His running mate, meanwhile, would later
shamelessly use the death of Christopher Reeve to play snake oil
salesman: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work
that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher
Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
But Long was right-on with her question. And the Democratic ticket was
painfully and dangerously deaf and dumb.
After a nation watched Ronald Reagan's son praise the medical promise of
embryonic stem cells at the Democratic convention, Ronald D. G. McKay, a
stem-cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders
and Stroke, called the contention that embryonic-stem cells will cure
Alzheimer's "a fairy tale."
As Michael Fumento, author of "BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is
Changing Our World," (Encounter Books, 2003) (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) one of the few commentators
who've shone a light on adult stem cells, has written: "Scientists have
already discovered at least 14 types of ASCs that ... could perhaps be
'trans-differentiated' into all the types of cells we need."
And adult-stem cells are not mere pie-in-the-sky hopes of potential
medical progress. Adult stem cells are cells at work today. Dr. Scott
Gottlieb has written, "Adult stem cells have already been used for more
than 20 years as bone marrow transplants to reconstitute the immune
systems of patients with cancer and to treat blood cancers such as
leukemia."
Umbilical cord stem cells are another potentially fertile opportunity
for medical progress. Cord blood is rich in stem cells. A mid-April
report from the Institute of Medicine, the results of a yearlong study,
recommended the establishment of a national network of cord blood stem
cell banks for just this reason. Congress, which has a cord-blood bill
on the table, should focus on this concrete alternative to endless yapping.
As the report notes, 4 million babies are born every year in the United
States and the majority of their umbilical cords are thrown away. They
could be used to treat some 11,700 Americans annually, according to the
Institute of Medicine. That'd be a concrete start.
We're all adults here — and adult and umbilical cord stem cells make
sense for new medical research. How about a mature discussion, free of
some of the hollow hype? Lives depend on it.
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