ON THE CUTTING EDGE: Embryonic Stem Cells Are Worthless, Says MIT Scientist
Wall Street Journal editor Peter Landers interviews "stem cell heretic" James Sherley, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor at MIT who works with adult stem cells for two reasons: He believes that killing embryos to suck out their stem cells is unethical, and it is also bad science (a viewpoint that The Stiletto emphatically shares).
Landers reports that Sherley "thinks embryonic stem cells, to be useful, would have to be turned into adult stem cells first. In that case, he asserts, there is no need to rush into research with the embryonic cells." Here’s why:
The transformation of an embryonic stem cell … is a one-way street: Once one of the cells turns, say, into a pancreatic cell, it can't go back. That's different from adult stem cells, which typically divide into two - one "differentiated" cell with a specific function and another stem cell. In this way, adult stem cells keep their own numbers steady, even as they regenerate the organ they belong to.
By contrast, tissue derived from embryonic stem cells would quickly wither away, contends Dr. Sherley, unless some of the embryonic stem cells first produced into a self-sustaining colony of adult stem cells. Or, he cautions, if the tissue stayed in a more primitive form, it would keep dividing uncontrollably and cause cancer. His conclusion: It's easiest and safest to start with adult stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells by themselves "can't cure or repair these mature tissues," he says. "They cannot serve the function they are being advertised for."
Meanwhile, Japanese researchers working with mice found a way to reprogram skin cells to make them behave like embryonic stem cells. As The New York Times explains:
Years of patient research have identified many of the genes that are active in the embryonic cell and maintain its pluripotency, or ability to morph into many different tissues. Last year, Dr. [Shinya] Yamanaka and his colleague Kazutoshi Takahashi, both at Kyoto University, published a remarkable report relating how they had guessed at 24 genes responsible for maintaining pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells.
When they inserted all 24 genes into mouse skin cells, some of the cells showed signs of pluripotency. The Kyoto team then subtracted genes one by one until they had a set of four genes that were essential.
If this biochemical technique works with human skin cells, embryonic stem cell research can be carried out without harming or killing embryos.
However, none of this is likely to influence House Dems, who seem Hell bent on passing legislation allowing funding for embryonic stem cell research using embryos donated by patients of in-vitro fertilization clinics that would "otherwise be discarded."
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