Stem Cell Cience Must Be

Stem Cell Cience Must Be Encouraged Not Restricted

Stem cell science is the key to the biggest revolution in modern medicine since the discovery of antibiotics in the early 20th century and the germ theory of disease and asepsis around the end of the American Civil War. Collectively, the many therapeutic applications of stem cell science hold the key to curing some of the most costly human diseases including, Alzheimer's, Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Huntington's, Parkinson's, Sickle Cell Anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease, among many others.

Stem cell science will also allow physicians to spare the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans who die every year while waiting for their names to move to the top of organ recipient lists or while waiting for a suitable donor organ to become available. Researchers have already demonstrated the ability to grow biological tissues and even to direct artificially-produced tissue cells to develop into specific types of tissue in animal experiments and in limited human applications. Animal experiments include reattaching spinal cords to restore sensation and movement after paralysis and those same methods are likely to be equally effective in cases of human paralysis.

With continued research and appropriate government funding, researchers could fully develop the capability of growing kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, in addition to skin and bones to replace failing organs or treat traumatic injuries. Furthermore, besides merely providing a source of artificially-grown replacement organs, stem cell science also completely eliminates the need for tissue-specific typing and for lifelong reliance on anti-rejection drugs after transplant.

Ordinarily, the recipient of a transplanted organ must take powerful anti-rejection medication for the rest of his or her life; otherwise, the transplanted organ would be destroyed by the recipient's natural immune system. Anti-rejection drugs prevent this by shutting down the patient's immune system; unfortunately, that also leaves the patient extremely vulnerable to many other types of infections and serious diseases normally prevented by the healthy immune system. As a result, organ transplant recipients have high rates of illness and a reduced life expectancy. Organs grown using tissue from the patient's own cells are not perceived by the recipient's immune system as a threat and do not trigger an autoimmune response to "protect" the patient.

Fetal stem cell research is the most important avenue of stem cell science and, unfortunately, it also generates the most opposition and controversy. The importance of fetal stem cell research in particular is simply that all human stem cells have a certain capacity to grow into different types of human tissue, fetal stem cells extracted from aborted fetuses or from umbilical cord blood, have a much greater flexibility: they can be directed into developing as virtually any type of human tissue required by physicians to treat specific diseases.

Unfortunately, a tremendous amount of valuable research has been put on hold ever since the ban of federal funding for stem cell research. In the United States, the vast majority of medical research of all types that eventually lead to cures for disease are funded by the federal government. The federal ban on stem cell research does not completely prohibit it, but the effect is nearly the same, just as it would be if the federal government withdrew funding for cancer or diabetes research.

The main opposition to stem cell research comes from the Religious Right who believe that any form of research using fetal stem cells is wrong, because according to their religious views, every fertilized human egg should be considered as much a human being as any living person, even a microscopic zygote consisting of nothing more than four cells of human tissue. Certainly, the concept of religious freedom in the U.S. protects their right to hold those religious beliefs whether or not they make sense scientifically and logically. However, religious freedom also protects the rights of everybody else who may not share those religious definitions of what human life is or when it "begins."

Because the Bush administration is both sympathetic and partial to the Religious Right, current federal law prohibits even the research use of frozen embryos created during in-vitro fertilization (IVF), even though any extra embryos created and left over in the IVF process are just destroyed as medical waste once the couple achieves conception.