Another non-embryonic stem cell cure. Still waiting for embryonic stem cell cures.

[The Laughing Man]

Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells Cure Babies With Krabbe’s Disease

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- An amazing new discovery using umbilical cord blood could mean new life for newborn babies with a rare genetic disorder. Umbilical cord blood transplants can save the lives of newborns with Krabbe’s disease, helping their brains to develop normally.

The finding is the result of research by a team of scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center.

Babies with Krabbe disease lack an enzyme necessary for normal functioning of the brain and nervous system.

“The infants become irritable, lose all their developmental skills, become deaf and blind, have seizures and die,” said Dr. Maria Luisa Escolar, the study's lead author. "It is very painful for parents to watch their children deteriorate this rapidly. This study shows that finally there's a treatment that offers hope."

Most babies with Krabbe’s disease die before reaching the age of two, but the new findings could help to prolong their lives.

The research adds to a growing body of evidence that cord blood can save children suffering from more than 45 diseases, including Hurler syndrome, Adrenoleukodystrophy, metachromatic leukodystrophy, Tay-Sachs disease, and Sandhoff disease.

Oh, I'm sure that embryonic stem cell research will eventually catch up. We just gotta keep throwing money at it despite the lack of any progress in discovering cures.

[patteeu]

Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells Cure Babies With Krabbe’s Disease

...

Oh, I'm sure that embryonic stem cell research will eventually catch up. We just gotta keep throwing money at it despite the lack of any progress in discovering cures.

I'm curious. Does this mean that if researchers do produce results with embryonic stem cells that you will be in favor of those therapies and of further experimentation?

[CatholicSage]

I'm curious. Does this mean that if researchers do produce results with embryonic stem cells that you will be in favor of those therapies and of further experimentation?

Probably not. He, like me, enjoys the news of numerous benefits of stem cell research without the ethical complications of destroying human embryos.

[sixfootsvn]

Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells Cure Babies With Krabbe’s Disease

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- An amazing new discovery using umbilical cord blood could mean new life for newborn babies with a rare genetic disorder. Umbilical cord blood transplants can save the lives of newborns with Krabbe’s disease, helping their brains to develop normally.

The finding is the result of research by a team of scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center.

Babies with Krabbe disease lack an enzyme necessary for normal functioning of the brain and nervous system.

“The infants become irritable, lose all their developmental skills, become deaf and blind, have seizures and die,” said Dr. Maria Luisa Escolar, the study's lead author. "It is very painful for parents to watch their children deteriorate this rapidly. This study shows that finally there's a treatment that offers hope."

Most babies with Krabbe’s disease die before reaching the age of two, but the new findings could help to prolong their lives.

The research adds to a growing body of evidence that cord blood can save children suffering from more than 45 diseases, including Hurler syndrome, Adrenoleukodystrophy, metachromatic leukodystrophy, Tay-Sachs disease, and Sandhoff disease.

Oh, I'm sure that embryonic stem cell research will eventually catch up. We just gotta keep throwing money at it despite the lack of any progress in discovering cures.

Actually that is the problem with embryonic stem cells. NOT enough money being thrown into it, and we can that George W. Bush for that. Once the government reverses their position and does start putting more federal money into it, so will private investors and you will see plenty of discoveries then. Embyonic stell cells have more potential.

[EvoUK]

Shocking stuff- embryonic stem cells have more initial problems associated with them, so it takes longer for research to be carried out with their very limited american budget, not to mention the stock of embryonic stem cells they have access to. Who would have seen that happening?

Though it will be amusing to see in a few years america being the consumer, and not main producers, of this technology. Ah well, what can yeh do?

[Epoetker]

Actually that is the problem with embryonic stem cells. NOT enough money being thrown into it, and we can that George W. Bush for that. Once the government reverses their position and does start putting more federal money into it, so will private investors and you will see plenty of discoveries then. Embyonic stell cells have more potential.

Of course embryonic stem cells have more potential...as a matter of fact, all of them have the potential to become a human.

Unfortunately, the further back in the developmental stages you go, the less useful those cells become for treating illnesses in adults. They're obeying a set of instructions for developing a new human being, not for curing some as-yet-unspecified disease that would only affect the present human being 10, 20 years in the future.

We've had plenty of fun in biology injecting ESCs into mice and such-amazing how those undifferentiated cells can grow clumps of skin, hair, and teeth where they wouldn't even have been imagined before. I'm guessing the lack of a good amniotic extracellular environment throws the development off, so instead of having cute little baby mice budding off of the skin a la Gremlins, it's more like the tortured meld of the failed Ripleys in Alien Resurrection.

Such grotesqueries might have been merely the subject of academic jesting among bio TAs and RAs, but for the fact that we very foolishly decided to try the same thing out on a human. Nice having those clumps of skin, bone and hair forming right in the middle of your brain, ain't it?

Ah, but of course, the progress of science demands that we make such sacrifices, does it not? We refine our method, try another patient, if s/he dies from such a very predictable tumor overload, we refine it again, lather, rinse off blood from hands, repeat.

All despite the fact that adult stem cells have had no such track record-again, a very predictable result given what we know about them-they've already been differentiated, they've already stopped processing the instructions to create a new human being and started the cellular instructions to maintain an existing human. That's why they're so useful...and abundant, too. And quite often you can get them right from the patient him/herself-which negates all sorts of nasty immune-system-rejection issues.

The ESCR movement is about our ignorance of basic biology combined with our irrational fear of death and disease, which leads to blind faith in scientists, even to the point of selling out our basic ethical principles.

By all means, support ESCR if you still believe it will be helpful to humanity in the long run. But please tell me how you could do so and not support, say, studying Josef Mengele's well-written notes of his 'medical experiments' on Jews, or doing similar medical testing on prisoners, the retarded, and other 'undesirables' (meaning of term subject to change without notice.) Otherwise I'm going to call you the medical chickenhawk you are, only holding to your grand principles when someone else has to do the dirty work, suffer the mistakes, and dispose of the evidence.