Promise them anything

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Promise them anything
29
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 2:47pm

Edwards: 'When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again'...

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2004
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 7:50pm
Oh and I think I asked you if you were for or against stemcell research? And why not if you're not for it? I'm just wondering.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 8:25pm
Why not post a few quotes from Nancy Reagan and her thoughts on this issue? "

Is Nancy Reagan a candidate for Presidentr?

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-27-2003
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 8:32pm
How exactly is John Kerry a taitor?
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-27-2003
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 8:34pm
Like Bush did Please!!!!!!!!!!!
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 8:38pm
Not only that, he's going to cure Alzheimer's too! Even though most scientists agree that stem cell research holds little promise for Alzheimer's, apparently George Bush's presidency is somehow connected to not finding a cure for it. And even though privately funded stem cell research is ongoing and has not come up with a cure for anything, somehow John Kerry being president is going to change all that, federal funding is going to mean that in the next eight years stem cell research will cure everything!
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 8:51pm
This procedure was the result of adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells created by destroying fertilized human eggs. Many people are unaware there's even a difference, and presume any advances in the field of "stem cells" are the result of embryonic stem cells, when actually the opposite is true-most successful stem cell procedures have been done using adult stem cells taken from a patient's own body, and are not part of Bush's ban on federal funding of new embryonic stem cell research.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-smith042302.asp

April 23, 2002, 8:45 a.m.

Spinning Stem Cells

A damning reporting pattern.

By Wesley J. Smith

The pattern in the media reportage about stem cells is growing very wearisome. When a research advance occurs with embryonic stem cells, the media usually give the story the brass-band treatment. However, when researchers announce even greater success using adult stem cells, the media reportage is generally about as intense and excited as a stifled yawn.

As a consequence, many people in this country continue to believe that embryonic stem cells offer the greatest promise for developing new medical treatments using the body's cells — known as regenerative medicine — while in actuality, adult and alternative sources of stem cells have demonstrated much brighter prospects. This misperception has societal consequences, distorting the political debate over human cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and perhaps even affecting levels of public and private research funding of embryonic and adult stem-cell therapies.

This media pattern was again in evidence in the reporting of two very important research breakthroughs announced within the last two weeks. Unless you made a point of looking for these stories — as I do in my work — you might have missed them. Patients with Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis received significant medical benefit using experimental adult-stem-cell regenerative medical protocols. These are benefits that supporters of embryonic-stem-cell treatments have yet to produce widely in animal experiments. Yet adult stem cells are now beginning to ameliorate suffering in human beings.

Celebrity Parkinson's disease victims such as Michael J. Fox and Michael Kinsley regularly tout ESCR as the best hope for a cure of their disease. Indeed, the Washington Post recently published a Kinsley rant on the subject in which the editor and former Crossfire co-host denounced opponents of human cloning as interfering with his hope for a cure. Yet as loudly as Fox and Kinsley promote ESCR in the media or before legislative committees, both have remained strangely silent about the most remarkable Parkinson's stem-cell experiment yet attempted: one in which researchers treated Parkinson's with the patient's own adult stem cells.

Here's the story, in case you missed it: A man in his mid-50s had been diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 49. The disease grew progressively, leading to tremors and rigidity in the patient's right arm. Traditional drug therapy did not help.

Stem cells were harvested from the patient's brain using a routine brain biopsy procedure. They were cultured and expanded to several million cells. About 20 percent of these matured into dopamine-secreting neurons. In March 1999, the cells were injected into the patient's brain.

Three months after the procedure, the man's motor skills had improved by 37 percent and there was an increase in dopamine production of 55.6 percent. One year after the procedure, the patient's overall Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale had improved by 83 percent — this at a time when he was not taking any other Parkinson's medication!

That is an astonishing, remarkable success, one that you would have thought would set off blazing headlines and lead stories on the nightly news. Had the treatment been achieved with embryonic stem cells, undoubtedly the newspapers would have screamed loudly enough to be heard. Unfortunately, reportage about the Parkinson's success story was strangely muted. True, the Washington Post ran an inside-the-paper story and there were some wire service reports. But the all-important New York Times — the one news outlet that drives television and cable news — did not report on it at all. Nor did a search of the Los Angeles Times website yield any stories about the experiment.

Human multiple-sclerosis patients have now also benefited from adult-stem-cell regenerative medicine. A study conducted by the Washington Medical Center in Seattle involved 26 rapidly deteriorating MS patients. First, physicians stimulated stem cells from the patients' bone marrow to enter the bloodstream. They then harvested the stem cells and gave the patients strong chemotherapy to destroy their immune systems. (MS is an autoimmune disorder in which the patient's body attacks the protective sheaths that surround bundles of nerves.) Finally, the researchers reintroduced the stem cells into the patients, hoping they would rebuild healthy immune systems and ameliorate the MS symptoms.

It worked. Of the 26 patients, 20 stabilized and six improved. Three patients experienced severe infections and one died.

That is a very positive advance offering great hope. But rather than making headlines, the test got less attention than successful animal studies using embryonic cells. The Los Angeles Times ran a brief bylined description, while the New York Times and Washington Post only published wire reports. Once again, the media's almost grudging coverage prevented society at large from becoming acutely aware of how exciting adult-cell regenerative medicine is fast becoming.

Meanwhile in Canada, younger MS patients whose diseases were not as far advanced as those in the Washington study have shown even greater benefit from the same procedure. Six months after the first patient was treated, she was found to have no evidence of the disease on MRI scans. Three other patients have also received successful adult-stem-cell grafts with no current evidence of active disease.

It's still too early to tell whether the Canadian patients have achieved permanent remission or a cure, but there can be no question that the research is significant. Yet the story was only publicized in Canada's Globe and Mail and in reports on Canadian television. American outlets did not mention the experiments at all.

These Parkinson's and MS studies offer phenomenal evidence of the tremendous potential adult cell regenerative medicine offers. At the same time, the unspectacular coverage these breakthroughs received highlights the odd lack of interest in adult stem-cell research exhibited by most mainstream media outlets. Nor are these stories the only adult-stem-cell successes to have gotten the media cold shoulder.

It's worth recapping just a few of the other advances made in adult-cell therapies and research in the last two years, all of which were significantly underplayed in the media:

Israeli doctors inserted a paraplegic patient's own white blood cells into her severed spinal cord, after which she regained bladder control and the ability to wiggle her toes and move her legs. (I only saw reporting on this case in the Globe and Mail, June 15, 2001.)

Immune systems destroyed by cancer were restored in children using stem cells from umbilical-cord blood. (There was a good story in the April 16, 2001 Time, but other than that I saw no reporting.)

At Harvard University, mice with Type I diabetes were completely cured of their disease. The experiment was so successful that human trials are now planned. (This was reported in the July 19, 2001, Harvard University Gazette, but I saw no coverage at all in the mainstream press.)

Diabetic mice treated with adult stem cells achieved full insulin production and all lived. This is in contrast to an experiment in which embryonic stem cells injected into diabetic mice achieved a 3 percent insulin production rate and all the mice died. (According to the May 2001 STATS, published by the Statistical Assessment Service, the embryo experiment made big news while the media ignored the adult cell experiment.)

How many humans have been treated by embryonic stem cells? Zero. Indeed, before human trials can even be safely undertaken researchers will have to overcome two serious difficulties that stand between patients and embryonic-cell regenerative medicine: 1) ES cells cause tumors, and 2) ES cells may be rejected by the immune system. Surmounting these difficulties — if they can be surmounted at all — will take a very long time and much expense. There is no risk of rejection with adult cells, by contrast, because they come from the patients' own bodies. Nor, at least so far, does adult-stem-cell therapy appear to cause tumors. This puts adult therapies years ahead of the game.

The media continue to imply that embryos hold the key to the future. But increasingly, it looks as if our own body cells offer the quickest and best hope for regenerative medicine. The time has come for the public to insist that the media stop acting as if adult stem cells are the "wrong" kind of stem cells, and report to the American people fully and fairly the remarkable advances continually being made in adult regenerative medicine.

— Mr. Smith is the author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. His next book will be A Consumer's Guide to Brave New World, a discussion of the business, science, and morality of human cloning.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 9:05pm
I heard this statement today. He sounded just like a trial layer, it REALLY bothered me. I've been looking into this stem cell controversy lately, clearly, if anyone is simply getting their information about this research just from the politicians, they are being misled. So very, very sad. Talk about using fear tactics and playing on peoples emotions and desparation to help their loved ones. There is no way in this world that stem cell research is going to reverse spinal cord damage that leads to paralysis in the next 4 years, and possibly never. The biggest reason for the excitiment over embryonic stem cell is that they can become any cell in the body, once they move to the next phase in their developement, they have more limited possibilities for the type of cell that they can become. But there is so much they do not know about what will actually happen with these cells, and no guarantees that they will be successful. There has been some promising research, but not at the level that we are led to believe. Theres a lot of information out there. I wouldn't suggest stopping at one or two sources, and remember that the labs that are looking for funding, tend to skim the downsides and play up any and all positives. I found the Univ. of Wisc. Madison's site to be informative. It was there that this research started, *way* back in November of 1998!!! (Tells just how much this research is in it's infancy) NIH has information at http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics There is a foundation for stem cell research: www.stemcellresearchfoundation.org University of Wisconsin-Madison: www.neww.wisc.edu/packages/stemcells/facts.html#3

And from the Univ. of Utah: www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0201/articles/condic.html if it doesn't work the article is in the Jan 2002 issue

and there was plenty more. These links are pretty much just about the basics of stem cells research, not the updates on how it is progressing, or not.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 9:44pm

As someone already pointed out, that's not the subject of this thread, so why are you so intent on ignoring

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 10-12-2004 - 9:56pm

Ok, I'll bite, how is Bush trying to buy the election?

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

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