Fumento’s opinion piece restates the obvious. Use for direct treatment of a disease is the most trivial aspect. Adult stem cell treatments have been around for generations - viz kidneys, heart, liver, marrow, etc. Anyone working with transplants has to assume that longterm acceptance of allogenic cells has to rely on some form of tolerance. Pregnancy is an interesting natural experiment. Chimerism gives some clues. Attempts to create ‘null’ cells have been interesting. But the Holy Grail is to coax an individual’s own cells to run their development ‘movie’ backwards to the point where a ’self’ repair can be made from the individual’s pluripotential cells such as you would find in an embryo. That way you void the complicated issues of antigenicity (self versus non-self). (Question: at what stage in the embryo does the information become fixed? 2-cell? 4-cell? 8-cell? etc. or do you have to go back to the egg and replicate the 3D conditions?) Bigger question: how do you get the information out of the DNA in a coherent fashion? If successful treatment comes from reprogramming cells, the ‘city on the hill’ will be built brick by brick. Isn’t it easier to jump low hurdles than high ones? Shouldn’t the plasticity of embryonic cells make research with them easier than with adult cells?

It has proven very difficult to control the actions of ESCs compared to ASCs, which intuitively makes sense because ASCs are more developed. If you want to know more, read more. Subscribe to the free daily e-mail from LifeNews.com, for starters.

They are both called STEM cells. Embryonic stem cells come from (surprise) embryos. “Adult” stem cells are perhaps too narrowly named — come from organic material of some kind (umbilical cords, bone marrow, etc.

Jean Schmidt knows the difference, and cares about the difference. Vic Wulsin knows the difference, and DOESN’T care about the difference, because she thinks progress that sacrifices human life is fine as long as it’s in the interest of “the greater good.”

Please spare me the scientific journal condescension.

Now to the science of ESCR and ASCR as it stands: Read this column by Michael Fumento, especially since it skewers one of your supposedly reliable sources, and come back if you have anything worthwhile to add, which I doubt:

HERE

They’re both called STEM cells, but isn’t it cartoonish to assume that they are really the same?

Isn’t a statement like just magical thinking? Shouldn’t the word ‘hopefully’ be placed in the front of that sentence? (If you want to quote reference material, please restrict yourself to serious journals like Science, Nature, NEJM, Cell, PNAS.)

You must be aware that Washington University, St. Louis and the University of Cincinnati are competing for limited research funds in Cell Biology. (Which is why Danforth, former Republican Senator from Missouri whose brother was Chancellor of WashU. supports the Missouri proposition.) Cincinnati in particular has stated that its economic future may rest on its ability to compete for biomedical funding.

It helps to have a representative in Congress who knows her stem from her stern.

It’s that simple.

I’ll concede your point on Amendment 2, but Fox has had Parkinson’s for quite a while. I am sure by now that he knows the difference between ESCR and ASCR and knows that saying that someone is “against stem-cell” research SOLELY because they oppose ESCR is fundamentally dishonest. And yes, I’m sure he justifies it in the name of the “greater good.”

I’ll even concede that he may have been fooled into thinking ASCR hasn’t gone anywhere, but he HAS to know the difference.

He openly admitted he hadn’t read the text of the proposed Missouri amendment.