Stem cells from non-embryonic sources — also called ASC for “Adult stem cells”– are saving lives now and offering hope to patients who suffer from injury or more than 70 other diseases.
This past week saw 4 exciting announcements about new ASC successes, and a court decision advancing access to federal funding of such work. First the lawsuit: a federal appeals court today has upheld the right of two scientists specializing in ASC to sue the Obama administration for funding destructive human embryonic research.
The lawsuit claims that Obama’s 2009 executive order harms their ability to be funded and violates the 1995 Dickey-Wicker budget amendment, renewed annually, that bans the use of federal tax money to harm human embryos.
Though the over-hyped and unethical use of human embryos remains unsuccessful in curing or treating any humans, President Obama declared that NIH (National Institute of Health) funding could be spent on it. But consider the past week’s ASC reports:
- Italian scientists have restored sight to patients blinded by chemical burns using the patient’s own adult stem cells.
- California scientists are genetically engineering a patient’s own adult stem cells to fight HIV.
- The Army is funding California research regenerating tissue & bone with stem cells from the patient’s own fat tissue.
- Australian researchers developed lung disease treatments using cells from newborn babies’ placentas.
Such scientific success should be rewarded, not forced to compete with embryonic experimenters, who have been wrongly added to the pool seeking limited tax monies though NIH.
Private-sector funding of embryonic stem cell research has been practically unlimited, and it has failed to produce results.
Embryonic stem cells have never even been tried in humans because of problems in animal experiments with them causing tumors and the immune system rejecting them after injection for treatment.
Despite that, the NIH Working Group on Embryonic Stem Cells recommended last week that six more human embryonic stem cell lines be approved for federal tax funding, bringing the total number of taxpayer-funded lines to 73.
KANSAS IMPACT
According to the Family Research Council’s expert, David Prentice, the Kansas City metropolitan area has become one of the strategic centers in the nation for the life sciences, including Adult stem cell and umbilical cord blood research and treatments. Between St. Luke’s Hospital, Children’s Mercy Hospital, and the University of Kansas Medical Center, these pioneering treatment centers have treated over 1,500 patients with Adult stem cells.
Let’s hope this lawsuit will be able to halt, and then overturn, the Obama order for tax funding of experiments that destroy human embryos.
