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the Stem Cell Page time and ignorance are the enemies |
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Book Review Stem Cell Wars: Inside Stories from the Frontlines
By Eve Herold |
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October 17, 2006
There are approximately 100 million Americans suffering from diseases and injuries that are currently incurable. As most who are suffering through these conditions can attest, nobody plans to be stricken. Such misfortune is fraught with disbelief, questions, anger, helplessness and a myriad of other thoughts and emotions, often yielding to acceptance. But deep down inside, in one’s heart of hearts, hibernates the eternal dream - the feeling of hope cocooned in the belief that some day, that which afflicts us can be cured.
What can break the spirit, however, is ignorance - that black hole of devouring despair, fueled by the inability to understand what has changed. Perhaps as a natural defense mechanism, most newly diagnosed patients begin to read everything they can find and grow their personal knowledge bases about their own particular afflictions. Eventually, they can speak with a modicum of expertise about what has happened to them.
Some may even attempt to stay ahead of the curve by reading publications of scientific findings in medical and scientific journals. Too often, though, what laypersons find is that such reports create more questions than answers. Most of us simply haven’t acquired the advanced medical knowledge to fully decipher the technical jargon and gauge its relevance to our particular conditions, let alone understand upon which rung of the ladder to a cure such research may currently rest.
And so it begins, but until we have a personal reason motivating us to search for such information, how (or why) would we know what is driving, impacting or influencing the research? Most of us remain disengaged until the catastrophe strikes and even then we tend to take a more narrow perspective. We typically ask, “What does this mean for me, or my loved one?” We lose sight of the forest for the trees.
But recent discoveries have broadened our view. The fact that pluripotent stem cells were discovered in mice some 25 years ago, led to the isolation of human embryonic stem cells in 1998. Scientists now have at its source, the potential to create any kind of cell in the human body. Researchers will be studying the development of both healthy and diseased cells, and learning what genetic secrets can be unlocked to unleash treatments and cures.
It’s no longer just a sport of individuals, if you will, but now comprised of teams in a larger league. It’s not just about Mike’s diabetes, or Aunt Martha’s Parkinson’s or Mom’s Multiple Sclerosis. It’s about all of them. There are now over 70 diseases and injuries targeted for treatments and cures on a single playing field of medical pursuit.
Over the eight year history of human embryonic stem cell research, many have come to realize the potential, many understand the impact, but nobody has offered a broadly based, comprehensive assembly of information, critical to patients and their families. That is until now.
Eve Herold has written the first definitive book for ‘John Q. Patient’ on the state of the industry today. Stem Cell Wars is replete with primer-like explanations of the biology, the techniques, the dreams and possible directions, but it is so much more.
Herold also walks us through the political history and influences, and helps us come to grips with the ethical questions. She details religious pressures, economic forces, demographic data, governmental and scientific oversight, and patient advocacy. She skillfully outlines all of it, then neatly ties it all together with what this means for patients today and patients tomorrow – which ultimately means all of us.
Two particularly noteworthy topics were discussed in impressive manner. First is her chronicle of the Woo Suk Hwang debacle in South Korea. This is not merely a regurgitation of press clippings and media reports. To the contrary, having personal experience with the events as they unfolded, she provides first-hand accounts which organize an otherwise confusingly complex matrix of information, misinformation, tales and issues, and renders them eminently understandable.
Second, while Herold also addresses where all this is likely to lead, which alone is not a novel projection, she completes the package by detailing the processes being developed (primarily in the U.K.) to track and catalogue the results as this field of endeavor forges ahead - a critically important dissertation almost universally overlooked by other authors.
It would not surprise me one bit if, sometime in the very near future, patients diagnosed with a diversity of diseases and injuries would commonly receive recommendations from their medical practitioners to read Stem Cell Wars. While it certainly won’t provide specific details related to a particular illness or condition (that’s not its intent), it bequeaths the reader a clear and realistic sense of what may well prove to be the very source of their hope.
In Stem Cell Wars, Eve Herold ducks nothing and discusses all - the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is simply the best and most complete single-source overview available today for patients and their families to understand this field of endeavor - its past, its present and its likely future.
- Jeff Eisen
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