October 13, 2010

First Clinical Trial Starts on Human Using Life-Destroying Human Embryos





     Geron Corporation logo


Geron Corporation's first clinical trial involving life-destroying human embryonic stem cells got under way on Friday at Shepherd Center in Atlanta.

 Dr. David Prentice, senior fellow for life science with the Family Research Council, said that adult stem cells have already improved the health of over 70 spinal cord injury patients.
 He said that Geron is aware that their embryonic cells won't work past one or two weeks after the injury. But that's not the case with adult.

 "Adult stem cells have been used in spinal cord injury patients all the way up to 15 years after the injury," Prentice said. "15 out of 20 spinal cord patients improved significantly using their own adult stem cells. Adult stem cells are really helping patients now, thousands of patients, dozens of diseases, and it doesn't rely on destroying human life."

 Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in human exceptionalism for the Discovery Institute, is amazed at the media's obsession with embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) when the advancement in adult stem cell research is far more impressive.

 "Several years ago, in early human trials, adult stem cells (taken from the nasal passage) restored feeling to people with long term spinal cord injury, yet received almost no coverage despite being reviewed in peer reviewed journals," said Smith. "If that had been an embryonic stem cell success, the headlines would have been so big it would have taken up the entire front page. Apparently for the media there's only one right kind of stem cell research."

 Smith added that this is not a debate about science, but rather about ethics.

 "The ethical issue is that embryonic stem cells can only be derived from destroying nascent human beings, that is human embryos," he said. "The fact that adult stem cells are doing well is important in that ethical debate, because it is often couched in terms of 'without embryonic stem cells there is no hope.'"

Source: CitizenLink
Publish Date: October 12, 2010