This is a huge story: Scientists in the UK have transformed umbilical cord blood stem cells into a liver. From the story: "As it stands, the mini organ can be used to test new drugs, preventing disasters such as the recent ‘Elephant Man’ drug trial. Using lab-grown liver tissue would also reduce the number of animal experiments." Eventually, scientists hope to generate this technique into liver therapies–and perhaps even transplants. Wow!
Let’s see if the US media ignore or underplay this. After all, it is an experiment that does not undermine the Bush stem cell funding policy, so it really isn’t news.
[Via Wesley J. Smith]
Maybe we ought to start running commercial with a celebrity with some dehibilitating disease complaining about how all the attention on so far unpromising embryonic stem-cell research was diverting funds from worthwhile cord and adult stem-cell treatments. That by concentrating on research that might some years down the line produce results we ignore capabilities that are in some cases only days or months away. That we demonize those who don’t care about the sick by promoting untested and forecasted remedies.
Of course those who promote ESCR wouldn’t like the same approach used on them and of course I wouldn’t really advocate turning the tables thus. For one thing the argument isn’t fully fair because non-embryonic stem-cell research is being funded by companies who see this as fruitful research and don’t have to try to scare up government money. Though I think there is some merit to the argument since when you have a number of scientist working on ESCR they are not working on something that yields results now.
The other thing I find strange about the whole state-funded ESCR push is exactly when in history has a cure for anything been found through this approach. Maybe I am missing out something on science research history, but exactly what cure has ever been funded by a state?
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Notably, the ESCR agenda is diverting funding away from a far more profitable line of research – namely, ASCR. How many millions of dollars are spent on ESCR (which has produced ZERO results) which could have been spent on ASCR (which has over 70 treatments in clinical trials)?
Do you think it bothers any of these ESCR advocates that they’re hurting the progress of science regarding ASCR?
Nah…the irony is completely lost on most of them.
May God deliver us,
Regarding state funding of cures, Jeff, penicillin is a pretty good example. The substance was isolated in 1928 but for various reasons aroused little interest until the eve of the Second World War. Then it took a lot of work, of course, to transform a laboratory curiosity into a widely used treatment.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s lab in Peoria made major breakthroughs in production methods. Both the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Production Board were heavily involved in developing penicillin. I don’t mean to underplay the role of private industry, which was very substantial, but I doubt that the drug would have had nearly as great an influence in the absence of heavy state funding. (The reference I have to hand emphasizes the U.S. role, though the British were also key players.)
As for what this implies about ESCR . . . there will always be opportunity costs, as you suggest. Skilled technical workers who are busy with one project aren’t available to work on something else. Or other resources may be in short supply.
I don’t think the trade-off is really best seen in terms of cures soon from adult or cord stem cells versus the unfulfilled claims of cures that promoters says will eventually come from ESCR. That is, it’s fine to be skeptical of pie-in-the-sky claims, but the ethical objections to treating human beings as objects will endure even if technological developments eventually reduce the force of reservations based on pragmatic grounds. There was a time when it was not known whether contraceptive pills would work, and though we know now that there are all sorts of medical and social side effects, that technology has largely accomplished at a clinical level what its early developers imagined might be possible.
Where do you get all the funny Mahoney jokes? I love them. I would like to find some for my own site. God bless you!
I just don’t get why we don’t hear more about umbillical cord blood stem cells and their promise. I donated mine from all three of my deliveries in an easy, painless process, using what would usually be medical waste. The absence of information on this subject really leads me to the conclusion there is deliberate evil at work here.
Insulin was discovery at University of Toronto, which currently and pressumably in the past as well given government money that aided in someway that discovery.
The Kiln vaccine for Polio was also created in either Manitoba or Saskatchewan, and those provinces have traditionally had strong ties to government funded medical research.
So I’m sure you could find other examples of government funds contributing to cures or treatments for diseases.
I was aware of examples of federal funding, I was referring to state funding of medical research.
Oh, “state” in that sense!
Well, the cure for rickets was found by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, if that counts.
http://www.warf.ws/about/index.jsp?cid=26
Otherwise, I couldn’t say one way or t’other, I’m afraid.
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