|
the Stem Cell Page time and ignorance are the enemies |
|
Cash, cures and gift certificates |
|
March 28, 2006
When Missouri State Representative Jim Lembke recently stumped in opposition to the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, he offered a sound bite. “The Initiative,” he said, “is about cash – not cures.” While his intent was to characterize stem cell advocates as greedy corporate interests, a visit to the web site of the Initiative’s sponsor proves otherwise. The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures’ endorsement list reads like a veritable “Who’s Who” of medical researchers, institutions, associations, hospitals, universities, foundations, doctors, nurses and clergy. Then pile on the 46,000 Coalition members. These are people and organizations motivated by medical advancement to heal and cure the injured and sick. They could give a hoot about cash. As one physician explained, “The ultimate goal of medical science is to render me, and those like me, unnecessary and unemployed.”
Indeed if Lembke’s hypothesis were true, all those members and endorsers would have been supplanted by a litany of major pharmaceutical companies. But that’s not the case, which negates the claim by Lembke that profiteering is the driving force behind the Coalition’s initiative.
Still, Lembke’s comment serves to raise an interesting issue, though it was certainly never his intent to do so.
Lembke’s group asserts that adult stem cells are just as effective in differentiation as embryonic stem cells. This is wholly false. Adult stem cells do differentiate, but only within a limited scope. Indeed, this is what defines the basic difference between adult and embryonic stem cells.
Adult stem cells are like the body’s internal repair kit. When you get a cut or a scratch, it is the adult skin stem cells that make the repair. Still, they’re not perfect. If they were, we wouldn’t scar. Adult stem cells also differentiate only within a specific “family” of cells. Embryonic stem cells are “pluripotent,” meaning they can become any type of cell – heart, skin, pancreas, muscle, membrane, blood - anything.
Don Reed, a stem cell advocate in California, provided a succinct analogy when he likened the difference between adult and embryonic stem cells to the difference between gift certificates and cash. Adult stem cells, he explains, are like gift certificates. While they work similarly to cash, they’re limited to one store or group of stores. Embryonic stem cells are like cash itself. Cash that’s good everywhere and can even be exchanged for foreign currency.
In this context, the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative could be construed to be about cash - just not the way that Representative Lembke purports. And above all, the initiative is always about cures.
- Jeff Eisen
—— To be notified by email of new editorials, CLICK HERE
_____
|
|
To contact us: Click Here |