Today’s News & Views
June 27, 2005

Dave Andrusko can be reached at dandrusko@nrlc.org

Breaking Through the Blackout

"SAN FRANCISCO--Despite optimism and enthusiasm, stem cell researchers arriving here Thursday for a conference are rowing hard against strong currents of financial, political and technical turmoil. There's even talk of trying to temper heightened public expectations that cures for diseases are imminent."

"Stem cell science conference opens amid hope and trouble," Associated Press, June 22.

Better than most, I honestly appreciate the importance of not drawing facile comparisons. I nonetheless firmly believe that the California Gold rush-like mad dash to fund lethal embryonic stem cell research will peter out, just as did the glossy claims twenty years ago made for the remedial powers of tissues harvested from the brains of aborted babies. What's my evidence?

I could list umpteen items, let me offer just two. To begin with, more and more you read admissions from proponents of extracting embryonic stem cells that medicinal applications are well off into the future. There are probably a ton of reasons for this new-found candor, but what matters is that the public is ever-so-gradually hearing that a cure for everything from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's is NOT just around the corner.

Second, the near-total media blackout of any positive news about stem cells from non-embryonic sources is crumbling. Even a year ago, it seemed as if no one in the "mainstream" media would acknowledge that stem cells from cord blood and bone marrow and placentas and a host of other non-objectionable sources were already up and helping patients.

Now, you see stories such as the one written last week by the AP's Paul Elias. There he is, at the third annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research convening in San Francisco, and poor-mouthing the claims made for embryonic stem cells.

"'Many of the technologies we hyped to the general public haven't worked yet,' Celgene Corp. president Alan Lewis told Elias. Lewis also noted that "venture capitalists 'are very cautious' about investing in [embryonic] stem cell companies because of uncertainty over the field's future."

In an article that borders on schizophrenic, Elias then gives a couple of paragraphs to die-hards, who insist Utopia is just around the corner.

Then he's zigs back to his thesis: "Even the most outspoken proponents of the technology concede they are years away from actual drugs based on [embryonic] stem cells." With a final zag, he ended with a few paragraphs from those who insist they're reinvigorated.

We're seeing some realism about embryonic stem cells at the same time we're also reading stories like, "The Other Stem Cells," which ran in the Boston Globe last week. (The Globe LOVES embryonic stem cell research.)

The subhead captures the thrust of the article: "Although embryonic stem cells dominate public discussion, a number of companies are building treatments, and businesses, around adult stem cells."

The story, by Diedtra Henderson, begins with an account of a company that "expects to have an adult stem cell-based therapy on the market by late 2007 to combat potentially fatal tissue rejection among leukemia patients undergoing bone marrow transplants."

She then cites two more examples: adult stem cells are squirted "into damaged knees after surgery to regrow meniscus, restoring the tissue that acts as a shock absorber and preventing onset of arthritis."

"The third experimental therapy being tested in humans -- including patients here at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine -- uses adult stem cells to help replace tissue damaged by heart attacks."

If that weren't enough, we then are told, "Meanwhile, a University of Pittsburgh researcher is tapping adult stem cells in an FDA-approved, university-financed safety trial to rally these cellular repairmen to help fix failing hearts."

These cells "act like a homing beacon to the heart," said Dr. Amit Patel, director of the university medical center's cardiac cell therapy center. "'The heart's just sending out an SOS signal saying 'Here! Come help me.' "

What I found particularly intriguing is that these adult stem cells "enlist other cells that deliver building blocks needed to partially restore heart function." You get the point, I'm sure.

This does not in any way change the simple fact that we will need to fight this battle out, day in and day out, for the foreseeable future. The hysteria/hype around the alleged curative powers of stem cells extracted from human embryos has developed enormous momentum.

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