President Obama asserted that his administration’s policies are based “on the soundest science” in lifting the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research and cutting federal funding for adult stem cell (ASC) research. While research on embryonic stem cells has yet to yield a single medical therapy, adult stem cells for which Obama refuses to provide funding have yielded treatments for more than 70 human conditions.
Early on, ESCs were expected to provide breakthrough medical treatments. However, ESC research has been a colossal failure. To date, not a single medical condition has been treated using embryonic stem cells. Until this year, the FDA had not approved a human trial for any ESC treatment. After more than 20 years of animal research, scientists do not have a way of preventing tumors caused by uncontrollable growth, immune-rejection of foreign cells and genetic abnormalities caused by ESCs.
Meanwhile, adult stem cells provide a constant stream of medical successes. The FDA has approved more than 1,400 human clinical trials involving ASC therapy. The more than 70 human conditions currently being treated because of ASCs includes arthritis, brain tumors, bone, breast, leukemia, liver, lymphoma, ovarian, prostate and testicular cancers, cerebral palsy, congestive heart failure, corneal reconstruction, coronary artery disease, Crohn’s disease, fractures, graft vs. host disease, heart tissue regeneration, immune deficiency, kidney damage, Lupus, multiple sclerosis, nerve regeneration, neuroblastoma, organ replacement, Parkinson’s disease, pulmonary hypertension, sickle cell anemia, spinal cord injury, tendon and ligament damage, type 1 diabetes and more.
Initial concerns regarding adult stem cells’ inability to differentiate into different cell types like ESCs were put to rest in 2007 when Japanese biologists were able to easily reprogram ASCs to an embryonic state. Dr. Anthony Atala of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine also used ASCs from amniotic fluid to create “muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells.”
In October 2008, a research team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies produced embryonic-like induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from ASCs. Adult stem cells from a variety of sources like bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and placental tissues can now be reprogrammed “to become all the cell types in the human body, including heart muscle cells and dopamine-producing neurons,” according to the Salk report. Dr. Juan Calos Izpisua Belmonte, who lead the research team sees tremendous benefit in this “efficient and practical way of generating patient-specific stem cells, which unlike human embryonic stem cells, wouldn’t be rejected by the patient’s immune system after transplantation.”
According to Director of Education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center Rev. Dr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, “Research using adult cells is 20 to 30 years ahead of embryonic stem cells and holds greater promise… because stem cells are part of the natural repair mechanisms of an adult body, while embryonic stem cells do not belong in an adult body (where they are likely to form tumors and be rejected as foreign tissue by the recipient). Rather, embryonic stem cells really belong only within the specialized microenvironment of rapidly growing embryo, which is a radically different setting from an adult body.”
Regardless of the ethical questions surrounding ESC research, the utter failure of ESCs to provide any medical benefit juxtaposed with the tremendous benefit already realized through ASCs should be enough “sound science” to direct scarce federal dollars toward research that has a proven history of yielding results. President Obama’s executive order is clearly based on something less than the “soundest science” and he owes the American people an honest explanation for such irresponsible spending and disregard for both scientific results and ethical practices.
