The Politics of Stem Cells

How many times I have the read the line in the media that "embryonic stem cells hold more promise than adult stem cells" and have asked myself, "How can they know that?"  Just because embryonic stem cells become every cell in the body inside a growing embryo, does not mean they can and will become every cell type in a lab.  And even if scientists had already made all 200 cell types in the lab from embryonic stem cells (which they haven't), ESCs still have never been used to treat a single patient.  Looking at the overwhelming clinical facts, it is adult stem cells that have more promise.

But that doesn't stop our elected representatives from trying to permanently ram the funding embryonic stem cell research down our throats by introducing legislation.  Rep Diana DeGette is the worst offender.  She and others have introduced HR 4808 which would turn the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research into law so that no future President can defund it.

Rep. DeGette is a true believer in ESC research, but once again, I have no idea why.  I am not sure she does either.  In the American Thinker today, Gene Tarne and David Prentice point out this very fact:

At that same hearing, Rep. Diana DeGette commented that "I know that these wonderful patients who are here today who have been cured by adult stem cells, mostly for blood-related diseases, would never say that somebody with diabetes or somebody with Parkinson's or somebody with nerve damage or somebody with macular degeneration -- all diseases for which embryonic stem cell research has shown promise and adult stem cells have shown no clinical promise -- no one would say those people should not be cured..."

She was zero for four. Rep. DeGette seemed embarrassingly unaware of the year-old JAMA study showing adult stem cells' efficacy for juvenile diabetes patients -- and Rep. DeGette is co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus. 

Parkinson's? In 2004, both Dr. Michel Levesque and Dennis Turner, a Parkinson's patient Levesque treated with Turner's own adult stem cells, testified regarding the positive results of the treatment. Leveque subsequently published his findings in the peer-reviewed Bentham Open Stem Cell Journal.

Nerve damage? Published studies using adult stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries include a 2006 report by Portugal's Dr. Carlos Lima in collaboration with Dr. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson of Wayne State University. They published a second report in 2009 using adult stem cells to treat more spinal cord injured patients.

Macular degeneration? Far from showing "no clinical promise," University of Louisville researchers have announced plans for a human trial of adult stem cells for macular degeneration. Rep. DeGette also seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the patient who testified was treated with his own adult stem cells for heart damage, not a "blood-related disease."

In their must-read-the-whole-thing piece, Tarne and Prentice point out other lawmakers who really do not know which end is up when it comes to stem cell science and yet still feel compelled to tell us what we need to fund.  My favorite is this gem from Tom Harkin:

In 2007, Sen. Tom Harkin  waved away evidence for adult stem cells, saying, "Scientists have known about adult stem cells for forty years, and they still haven't provided the answer for juvenile diabetes." He said this on the very day that the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published clinical trial results using adult stem cells in a treatment that reversed juvenile diabetes in patients.

Oh the irony.  But this is par for the course in Washington these days.  If you say it enough times somehow it just has to be true.  But what DeGette and Harkin and others like them do not realize is that while they argue that those against embryo destructive research are politically and not scientifically motivated, it is really they who are ignoring the science and pushing a political agenda.