Stem Cell Breakthroughs

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Stem cell breakthrough that could end the storm

A major breakthrough in stem cell science could quell the controversy surrounding the cutting-edge medical research, it was revealed.

Scientists have shown for the first time that amniotic fluid is a rich source of stem cells, suggesting the powerful cells can be ethically harvested.

Stem cell breakthrough hyolds political promise

So far, we've been successful with every cell type we've attempted to produce from these stem cells,

[BrassFusion]

Harvesting stem cells from fetuses that have been aborted anyway is not unethical. So as awesome as it is that amniotic fluid appears to be a source of viable stem cells (for now), it should in NO WAY influence research done on cells from other sources.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I soppose you could take that stance... if this wasn;t such a major breakthrough.. that actually works. See, you may not read about it in these artcles.. but we have grown full organ's that are in real live people with Amniotoc stem cells. All that has ever been grown from fetal stem cells are cancers.

Fetal Stemm cell research gets lots of funding... just not from the Federal government... it's gets around 3billion a year from private funding... so far.. cancer is the only thing it has produced.. thats why most research is being done on Amniotic and Adult stem cells... they dont kill.

[BrassFusion]

I soppose you could take that stance... if this wasn;t such a major breakthrough.. that actually works. See, you may not read about it in these artcles.. but we have grown full organ's that are in real live people with Amniotoc stem cells. All that has ever been grown from fetal stem cells are cancers.

Fetal Stemm cell research gets lots of funding... just not from the Federal government... it's gets around 3billion a year from private funding... so far.. cancer is the only thing it has produced.. thats why most research is being done on Amniotic and Adult stem cells... they dont kill.

That sounds fabulously unlikely, and even if it was true, it wouldn't change my opinion.

Hell, that's what research is FOR!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

What part seems unlikely?

[BrassFusion]

What part seems unlikely?

all of it?

Edit: In fact...

I actually read those articles you posted. The first one contains a section that pretty much sums up what I was trying to say:

Jim Dobbin, chairman of the All-Party Party Pro-Life Group, said he would welcome the use of stem cells from the amniotic fluid, provided they could be extracted without harming the unborn baby.

However, other scientists cautioned that more work has to be done to establish the true potential of these stem cells.

Professor Stephen Minger, a stem cell expert from King's College London, said that while it would be useful to have other sources of stem cells, there would always be a place for embryonic stem cells in research.

'This isn't a way of saying we don't need embryonic stem cells,' he said. 'This is interesting work but it needs to be reproduced on a large scale.'

He added that it is unclear whether the cells would still be of use after being stored for a long period.

...and the second one is rife with errors. It looks like it was written by some high school newspaper flunky. Not that it contains ANY of the wild claims you were making involving "cancer," or "whole live organs in humans from amniotic stem cells," anyway.

Back it up, Mark, as usual.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

OK.. deny reality.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1607792.htm

Custom-made bladders grown from patients' own cells have been successfully transplanted and work, in some cases for years, scientists report.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/34102.html

Already there is nearly $4 billion in private and state monies committed to stem-cell research over the next decade, with another three-quarters of a billion dollars under active consideration

Ok, so it's not 3billion a year.. it's 4billion over the next 10

As for Cancer from Fetal stem cells.. do your own research. Find a treatment derived from Fetal stem cells that has been approved for use without raising the risk of developing cancer. Oh wait.... just find a Stem Cell derived treatment that uses Fetal stem cells... No one has been able to do anything with them but grow cancer in any lab, anywhere. Thats why the University of Madison (where Stem cell research started) wotn touch them.. they may have great potential.. but they are far to unstable.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/stem-cells

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Look.. I'm not saying it wont someday be possible to get treatments from Fetal stem cells... but today.... We know that we cant do much of anything with Fetal stem cells without turing the patient into a big ball of cancer... we also know that we infact have made treatments with adult, embilical and amniatic stem cells... So.. to me... it's a waste of money to keep plugging away at Fetal stem cells research that might some day save lives when we have a viable alternative that works just as well today. Put the money into the one that works.

[Shade Everdark]

Just for the record, it's the University of Wisconsin-Madison, or simply the University of Wisconsin.

Just sayin'.

(And it IS my alma mater, so of course I'm a bit of a stickler about it.)

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Well, you have a right to be a stickler about it... and um.. didn;t know that about you... I know more people than I thought with degrees from there.

[BrassFusion]

Mark, you're reading too much and not enough into all these articles. Not one of them backs up either of the claims that:

1. Amniotic stem cells have been successfully used to treat human cases

or

2. Fetal stem cells are useless to research because they are cancerous.

You're not making a very good case for yourself. Maybe if you didn't go into things with such a strong bias you could learn more about what's really going on around you.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

You should take that advise. I am baseing my view on more than these few articles. These are just what i could google up on a moments notice. I have been reading about the human bladder transplants in Pop-Sci and a few medical journals... you know... real paper and ink. They have been really hush hush about how they did the bladder transplants until they had published thier work.. which they did last week. They were immediatly cut down by people who want Fetal Stem cell research to be funded and the fact that a far more stable, less contriversial method of doing the same damn thing scared them... Why would we fund Fetal Stem Cell research if another research makes it moot.

I read far more about this subject than you know. My reasons for being for or against any of the various methods are based on SCience.. not politics or religion.

Fetal Stem Cell research is decades away from giving us even one viable medical treatment. All known studys have produced nothing but new ways to kill small animals with cancer.

Adult, Embilical and Amniotic Stem cells have treaments that work RIGHT NOW... and more break throughs are happening every day.

I want my money to be invested in something that Works.

[BrassFusion]

The article said that the bladder was grown from a tissue sample, not from amniotic stem cells. Human livers function the same way.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Uh-huh... and how did they do that?

How do you get an adult cell to reproduce itself when it is of a non-regenerative type? Such as any of the organ cells.

[BrassFusion]

Uh-huh... and how did they do that?

How do you get an adult cell to reproduce itself when it is of a non-regenerative type? Such as any of the organ cells.

Apparently they used "progenitor" cells from the subjects' bladders.

Atala's team worked with immature cells known as progenitor cells from the patients' bladders.

The researchers have been working for 16 years to find ways to first identify and separate these cells, then to coax them into growing on a scaffold into the two main cell types found in bladders.

...

Atala works with stem cells, the body's master cells, but in this case, his team made use of progenitor cells, which are slightly further along the pathway from a 'blank slate' master cell.

And just for fun, I searched for the word "amniotic" on the page. It didn't come up.