The February 26th CBS 60 Minutes Sunday show is the second this month which has focused exclusively on destructive, unethical embryonic and fetal stem cell trials (and their trials due to Federal funding limits). The lack of balanced reporting is obvious.
Scientists say the pace of research has been slowed down by President Bush’s 2001 ban on the use of federal money to create new lines of embryonic stem cells. Researchers need those new stem cells to expand their work, because the existing lines are at least five years old and may have been weakened over time, limiting their value. However, extracting new stem cells destroys human embryos, which the president strongly opposes.
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"These are the cells that go to make up the heart muscle cells," Robbins explains. "They all started out as cells from embryos. With the potential to develop into any type cell."
Robbins hopes to one day inject the cells, which actually beat like a heart, into someone whose heart has suffered some kind of damage.
In theory, those cells would then replace the damaged part of the heart.
And
But there is one area of stem-cell research that is now ready for human testing and it may be the only chance that Joanna and Marcus Kerner have to save the life of their 6-year-old son, Daniel. The FDA recently approved a clinical trial using brain stem cells from fetal tissue to treat the rare and always fatal neurological disorder called Batten disease, which Daniel was diagnosed with a year and a half ago. The Kerners' doctor gave them the grim prognosis.
No one at CBS one even mentions Don Ho!
The research is reported as novel, although adult and umbilical cord research in each of these areas is ongoing and showing results. Here's my letter to the show:
Your reporters have done 2 stories in the last month concerning destructive embryonic stem cell research. The story from February 26 is most troubling, because research trials are already far enough along to prove the usefulness of ethical, non-destructive adult and umbilical cord stem cells in the very neurological problems you describe. Look into Dr. James Baumgartner's work in Houston, where they are recruiting pediatric patients for a trial of autologous bone marrow stem cell therapy.
Here's my commentary on the February 13th show.
3 comments:
The clinical study you speak of consists of injecting a child's own bone marrow. Children that have Batten Disease are missing or have a mutated gene. Injecting their own stemcells would make no sense at all. Perhaps you need to do more research before you make such brave statements.
In the controversey over life versus embryonic stem cells and neural fetal stem cells the lines are becoming blurry. The banners that bear the standards of both sides should not engage in a shouting match or even an intellectual debate. Rather, choose life for all. No one is advocating that the use of stem cells and nueral fetal stem cells should or will increase the incidence of abortion, rather the fear is that even broaching the subject will increase the incidence of abortion and thereby defeat the love and devotion of so many to preserve the sanctity of life. Rather, if we die and our organs are capable of saving another life we should all try to see that there is no moral prohibition on transplanting a heart or a kidney, a cornea or a liver, in the hopes of saving another human being, of restoring life or sight, the beat of the human heart, the ability to take the gift of life that has been bestowed by God on us all and change the world for the better. There is no greater love of life than to lay down one's life for another so that another may live. Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world. God gave his only begotten son. In the tenets of Christianity the concept of sacrificing one's self to save the many rings throughout history. We stand on the verge of turning a page in medical and human history. To deny the validity of the promise of stem cells to heal and give life to dying children is to turn our backs on hope and faith. Each of the children who will endure the pain and suffering, who has endured the pain and suffering of incurable disease are close to God. Their struggle for life brings us all closer to God, each of them has a "Purpose driven life" Listen to their hearts slowly fading and dying each month, hear the cry of their families, and the universal suffering they are enduring and then walk in the shoes of the parents, brothers, sisters, and families, friends, and hear the tears spattering on the ground in a perpetual rainfall of sadnesss. Know that there has to be hope, that hope lies with the potential for cure, that cure lies with research, and that stem cells have shown that there is promise and that the children may actually be saved. These children can not cry out aloud for help, they can barely raise their heads from the shadow of death. Please, in all that is holy and sacred, give them the chance for life that stem cells may provide, use the cells of those who would hope for life, and save those who can be saved. If you honor life, then use life rather than throw it out in the afterthought of uncaring fear. There is no difference in God's eyes between transplanting a heart and saving the life of a child with a terminal illness. Please reach inside yourself and find the compassion to open your eyes and heart to the hope of saving a child, children, all of us who can benefit from the promise of stem cell research. We must walk upon this earth together, let us join hands and climb past fear and mistrust and search for hope and faith and the promise of curing disease that steals the lives of children, that causes horrific death and suffering, may God Bless you with insight and understanding from this day forth and forever more. Now pardon me as I go to put my son to sleep. Tonight he will not die, and by the grace of God and work of the God given talents of researchers racing to find a cure, he will not die tomorrow.
There's a post that addresses the first comment at http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2006/03/answering-reader-bravely.html
These comments, especially this last comment, call for our compassion.
It is the highest human value to sacrifice ourselves for others, as Anonymous says. We can't do any better than to follow Jesus' example.
However, we cannot compel others to follow Him.
We cannot force or cause another to be our savior. If the other is weak, helpless and at our mercy, then we are using another human being for our own purposes.
The embryos that are frozen are the brothers and sisters of children already born to fill the empty arms of men and women who longed to be parents. If we kill them to use them in our experiments, it is wrong.
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