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"Researchers in the US say they have been using stem cells to successfully treat genetic deseases in children..."
Source: BBC New
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Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), February 18, 2004
Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cells achieve what Embryonic Stem Cells only vaguely promise. Last week Korean scientists made cautious statements about the potential of stem cells cultivated from one unfortunate cloned human embryo, a costly experiment which involved the exploitation of sixteen women egg donors and the destruction of hundreds of embryos.
This week's news in the world of stem cell technology, demonstrating how umbilical cord blood stem cells have great healing capacity as well as the ability to differentiate, is (unlike the Korean report) about reality rather than potential. It demonstrates something which serious scientists already know - adult stem cell applications are years ahead of the hypothetical promises surrounding the stem cells from the human embryo, and are retrievable without the ethical concerns associated with embryonic stem cells.
The recent Pediatric Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant project at Duke University in America reports the transplant of cord blood stem cells from a baby girl donated to a four year old boy suffering from a rare metabolic disease. The boy sadly died of an unrelated infection but the transplant itself was successful and post-mortem analysis showed that the girl's umbilical stem cells had reached the damaged tissue and differentiated into repair cells.
"We've all acknowledged for a very long time the value of bone marrow transplants but cord blood is proving even more productive," said Josephine Quintavalle, Director of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a group actively involved in promoting the storage of umbilical cord blood. "This latest research from the Duke University Team has moved things further forward, demonstrating the capacity of the cord stem cells to differentiate (into brain, heart, liver and bone cells)."
"The fact that the baby girl donor was unrelated is also of immense significance in terms of the huge numbers of potential donors. Just think how many births take place daily around the world. With modern freight and database technology we could be providing cures in this field on an international basis."
"No stem cell is more readily accessible or cheaper to store than those found in the umbilical cords of newborn babies. When one considers how many times every day priceless umbilical stem cells are thrown away as hospital waste, it is absurd and worrying to contemplate the lengths UK scientists are going to both ethically and economically in their desperate search for stem cells from the human embryo."
"The USA has recently voted through major funding for research and harvesting of cord blood. It is time the UK followed suit."
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