"The American College of Pediatricians (www.acpeds.org) calls for an end to embryonic stem cell research and recommends the exclusive support of already proven effective adult stem cell research."

News Release

quote:

An end to embryonic stem cell research?

Doubtful if this will have much impact. The American College of Pediatricians seems to be a small group of 'conservative' pediatricians founded in protest against the mainstream American Academy of Pediatrics support for LGBT parental rights.

The ACP has spoken out on a number political issues. These statements include, but are not limited to, defense of:

* Traditional married heterosexual couples as the ideal parents
* The welfare of the adoptive child as being of paramount importance rather than the "right to adopt"

The ACP has in consequence reported the deficiencies and social risks involved in:

* Same-Sex Marriage
* The contention that adoption by homosexual couples is "equivalent" to married heterosexual couples
* Contraception other than sexual abstinence (including Emergency contraception)
* Abortion

Answers.com

Thanks, Gar, I wasn't aware that they were a conservative group. While some on the left would obviously reel at the positions you mentioned above, I don't think the mainstream of Americans would find them totally untenable whether they agree with them or not.

However, my curiosity is over embryonic stem cell research. Have embryonic stem cells ever been used to treat or cure human beings, or are the results depicted accurately in the ACP news release?

It's a pretty specious argument to say that because an area of inquiry has not to date yielded useful results, it should therefore be abandoned.

Stem cell controversy

Embryonic stem cell research may have more potential than adult stem cell research. As Sid says, abandoning embryonic stem cell research now would be something like, around 1940, having said that we should stick with propellor-driven aircraft as jet engines just keep blowing up.

I am made uneasy by the primacy of research. There are whiffs of opinion that bother me:

1. Embryos grown in vitro or in utero and made available for research? We don't have a great track record with animal research. It is not humanely done, and much of it is trivial.

Why would it be different with embryos? And who is to say the embryo will be terminated before it has a nervous system? Who's the watchdog? The drug companies? The developers of surgical procedures? When a new device or procedure could be worth many, many millions?

2. Should all bodies be made available for research and organ donation by law?

Could that interfere with one's right to die in peace and comfort, and with dignity? Or will the relatives be whisked from the bedside while the 'organ donor' (no longer a patient)is harvested while the organs are still in optimum condition? Remember that anesthetic in the system could degrade the organs.

Here's a good rule of thumb: if you belong to a minority, and you do not have a 'voice' legally, you have no civil rights.

Much of medical research in "have" countries is devoted to extending life, when we have not enough jobs for our young people; or for reasons of sexual attractiveness or extended potency / sexual function. Is this the wisest use of research dollars?

There is no doubt that the 'pot of gold' for a researcher would be to find a non-surgical treatment for obesity that is effective and without side effects, that would allow people to eat food morning to night if they so desire and yet appear normal and even sexually attractive.

And we know that research will be directed to the areas in medicine where potentially the big bucks are.

Why not try to make what medical technology we have now (which only a hundred years ago would have seemed miraculous) available more equitably, rather than trying to ramp up research?

What is human life all about, anyway? We now that these days, 'normality' is not enough. People demand that they be mistaken for media idols, and if they aren't, they demand to be fixed.

I know that would be hard for the parents of a doomed child to accept; so perhaps if the research could be transparent to the public, so we know that only serious work is undertaken
(speaking now about embryonic stem cell research) it might be possible to keep it ethical.

But that's a pretty big 'if'.

quote:

Originally posted by sid1114:
It's a pretty specious argument to say that because an area of inquiry has not to date yielded useful results, it should therefore be abandoned.

I asked a question. Does this answer mean that useful results have not been yielded to date? I read this in the local newspaper last year and thought the editorialist might be inaccurate.

The wikipedia article confirms that there have been no successful clinical uses of embryonic stem cells so far. As Babs points out, there are wider ethical issues to be considered, but it's still disingenuous of those doctors to say that embryonic stem cell research should be abandoned because there have been no practical results so far.

"However, my curiosity is over embryonic stem cell research. Have embryonic stem cells ever been used to treat or cure human beings, or are the results depicted accurately in the ACP news release?"

With NNN having provided the answer, here's the "but":
(1) Embryonic stems cells were only successfully grown relatively recently. Adult stem cells have been researched in humans for much longer.
(2) Federally funded research has been limited to cells that cannot and will never be able to be used in treatment because of the way they were initially prepared. Scientist now know how to avoid this problem, but any cells they create in this way are not eligible for federal funding.

quote:

Originally posted by methos:
Federally funded research has been limited to cells that cannot and will never be able to be used in treatment because of the way they were initially prepared. Scientist now know how to avoid this problem, but any cells they create in this way are not eligible for federal funding.

Surely this can't be an impediment, if the promise is lofty and there are philanthropic or entrepreneurial backers. And what of all of these progressive European nations we always hear about? Everyone is not waiting on American taxpayers, are they?

European and philanthropic funding are, unfortunately, small compared to US federal funding. There's a lot of complaints by US scientists (in general, not just stem cell researchers) that federal science funding should be more, but to be honest, it's quite high compared to everything else. I say this as someone whose salary ultimately comes from a mix of the department of energy and the department of health, and who knows scientists in Europe.

That's not to say that other countries and other funding sources won't get us there; there are a lot of promising results with human embryonic stem cells and some "treatments" with animal embryonic stem cells (for those animals). It's just a lot slower with such a major source cut off.

The fact is, even if we were throwing more money at the problem, it is still so soon after we discovered how to grow the cells that we wouldn't have a any treatments.

Using embryonic stem cells is more complicated than using adult stem cells, so it's natural that adult stem cell treatments were developed first. However, just like we weren't satisfied with the medicine of the past (prior to bone marrow transplants, for example), we shouldn't be satisfied with the medicine of the present. It was about half a century between the first, unsuccessful, use of bone marrow (a type of adult stem cells) on cancer patients and when we finally got it to work. That doesn't count the time of study before the treatment was even attempted. Considering that we have had far, far less time to study human embryonic stem cell lines than there was between the first attempts at treatment using human bone marrow stem cells and the success of the treatment, it doesn't make sense to criticize embryonic stem cell research for not having a treatment yet.

Embryonic stem cell reseach has been licensed in Britain since 2002.I'll say no more