[BevReview Steve]

This is a hot topic in the news right now... Anyone know enough to explain it and maybe venture an opinion?

[kokopuffs]

Stem cells are primordial cells originating in the bone marrow, from which red and white blood cells arise. I'm not knowledgeable about efforts to develop organs and tissues from these cells. In vitro (inside a testube) development of organs from stem cells skirts (I think) the issue of transplant rejection.

I know a few people could use a new pancreas; they're fed up with insulin and syringes.

[ July 23, 2001: Message edited by: kokopuffs ]

[BevReview Steve]

Thanks kokopuffs.

A friend of mine sent me the following explaination which was very helpful.

What are stem cells?
Stem cells are cells that are undifferentiated. In other words, they have not been specified to become a certain tissue type. For example, you can take the cells from muscle, skin, liver and stomach and by looking under a microscope and by identifying the proteins that are expressed in them, you can identify where the cell came from based on its properties. These cells have not always been a specific tissue though. These cells all are the result of the initial division of the egg after fertilization. Following many thousands of divisions, each cell differentiates (goes from having an unspecified cell fate to a very specific cell fate) so that it can become a certain tissue type.

Why does this matter?
The ability of working with stem cells means that you can take a stem cell and by adding different mixtures of hormones, you can make it into any kind of tissue you want. This becomes especially useful when you are studying differentiation, but also very useful for studying many other things, such as drugs, to see how they affect multiple different tissue types in the human body.

Stem cell research has the potential to revolutionize drug design and medical research in the near future!

Where do stem cells come from?
Here is the sticky point! The adult human has very few stem cells floating around in their bone marrow. Besides the low number, bone marrow is probably the hardest part of the body to take tissue from and is VERY painful for the patient. therefore, this sorta rules that out as a source. The umbilical cord of newborns hosts a few stem cells also, but they too are in low abundance. It would also be a logistical nightmare to get every parent's permission to use their child's umbilical cord for this. Also, it is messy and more difficult than the third choice. The third place to find stem cells is in embyros. Embryonic stem cells are easy to isolate and in high quantities because a large number of cells in the embryo just prior to blastulation (formation of the mouth and anus) have not been specified to become tissue yet.

Where are the embryos from?
Another problem point. Embryos are killed in the procedure of harvesting stem cells. There is no way to take stem cells from an embryo and still get it to grow up properly. The most common way to get stem cells is from "left-over" embryos from fertilization clinics. These are embryos that were fertilized, but never implanted into a mother. They are frozen at the clinic indefinitely and eventually they are autoclaved to kill them and dumped in the garbage.

Recently, a company in Virginia paid egg donors for their eggs, fertilized them with sperm and then collected the stem cells from the embryos.

Why is this an issue in Washington?
The NIH and NSF (the two major government granting agencies) have been barred from funding any research that uses cells derived from embryos, including embryonic stem cells. Many researchers want this changed. Washington is working on deciding whether this funding reserach using these cells is "moral".

Hopefully this helps to clarify the issue.

[nancya]

It's a really important issue in the diabetic community. Apparently almost any tissue can be "made" from stem cells, including islet cells which produce insulin. The ethics and morality of using embryonic tissue is being hotly debated. I have diabetic friends who are opposed because they view it as killing someone potentially to help them. I understand that there is research being done on being able to use adult stem cells for the same purpose, which would really help the ethics debate. It is not an easy issue and I'm afraid that I am fence sitting. The question was raised recently in our diabetic chat -- you may disagree morally with the research to benefit yourself, but what would you do to be able to help your child?

[Joshua Tomczyk]

I do not understand what the problem is. Every year Fertility Clinics throw 1000's of embryo's in the trash. All which could be used for research. If they actually created a market for embryos then I would have a problem but since they are already thrown away it doesn't make sense not to use them. I don't understand why people do not get upset at the fact that they are throwing them away. They say that they are trying to protect all humane life, but they don't care that the exact same level of humane life is just thrown away. Personally think the ideas of cloning are far more dangerous to humanity than stem cell research. I couldn't imagine telling someone "Well we could help quadriplegics to walk again but we threw out all the research material"
just my 2 cents

[ July 26, 2001: Message edited by: Joshua T ]

[kokopuffs]

To those vehemently opposed to stem cell research, the issues appearing previous to this post have yet to hit even close to home.