Calif. Quietly Shifts Fruitless Embryo Research Funds to Adult Stem Cells

Embryonic stem cell research, once hailed as the potential cure for everything from spinal chord injuries to cancer to hemorrhoids has been revealed to be nothing more than another batch of snake oil.

Five years after California set aside $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research, they have been forced to abandon ESCR in favor of adult stem cell research.

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed.

California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells.

Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were being held up only by President Bush's policy of not allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) beyond existing stem cell lines and which involved the destruction of embryos created for that purpose.

Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

To us, this is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase "embryonic stem cells" was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word "embryonic" was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab.

Investors Business Daily

Life Site News commented on the quiet shift from ESCR to ASCR:

Calif. Quietly Shifts Fruitless Embryo Research Funds to Adult Stem Cells
Investors knock waste on useless research

LOS ANGELES, California, January 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine came into being five years ago, fueled by a conviction that the Bush administration's restriction on embryo-destructive research in the National Institutes of Health was stifling the progress of science.

Although scientists and pro-life advocates have denounced the dead-end science of embryo research for years, the political and ethical furor surrounding embryonic research appears to have obscured the undeniable superiority of adult stem cells' track record. Not only have adult cells already produced dozens of treatments, but embryonic stem cells have been found prone to multiply out of control, causing tumors, and are less easily cultivated into specific types of tissue than their adult counterparts.

Meanwhile, due to advances in induced pluripotent stem cells, adult cells are now capable of transforming into various types of cells – an ability once thought to be held only by embryonic cells.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the director of the National Institutes of Health under the Bush administration, wrote in a March 2009 U.S. News & World Report column that "embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, are obsolete." The same month, however, President Obama reversed the Bush administration ban on taxpayer funding of embryo research, saying that "our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values."
Life Site News

Interesting results. Not sure why it would be quietly switched however...if its a dead end road, its a dead end road.

btw, your second source is invalid...it has an agenda therefore its words are naturally bias, but the investors link is fine.

I support stem cell research...I am somewhat glad that it is a dead end road however, not because I have a moral objection to it, but because its swamped in luddies trying to hamper its progress...the faster science can get past a area, the better. Since the research is done and they are now finding better and more promising areas, then brilliant. get on it.

Originally posted by SaturnFX

btw, your second source is invalid...it has an agenda therefore its words are naturally bias, but the investors link is fine.

I know.

Whenever I use that source, I always make sure to find a second non-partisan source to verify their info, hence the IBD source. They may be partisan but they do lead me to some interesting articles.


Edit to add: Then again, I challenge you to show me a source that doesn't show SOME type of bias.



[edit on 30-1-2010 by FortAnthem]

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Interesting results. Not sure why it would be quietly switched however...if its a dead end road, its a dead end road.

I am sure it was switched "quietly" because when Prop 71 was voted on the fine print made it very clear that the money was to go to embryonic stem cell research, and only embryonic stem cell research. That is my opinion. They can also say they have had results with that money without having to acknowledge they were wrong. Again... my opinion.

[quote]I support stem cell research...I am somewhat glad that it is a dead end road however, not because I have a moral objection to it, but because its swamped in luddies trying to hamper its progress...the faster science can get past a area, the better. Since the research is done and they are now finding better and more promising areas, then brilliant. get on it.

I just want to make sure you realize that NOBODY has hampered the progress of "stem cell research" it is "embryonic stem cell research" that the issue is (there has been no progress with that). What you said is like saying "they have a moral objection to dancers," and not clarifying "exotic dancers." Sure there might be some extremist who have objection to both, but the majority of objectors don't have a problem with ballerinas or tap dancers. The far majority support Adult stem cell research (where there has been a vast amount of progress) and actually would be fine with funding the research and would never "hamper its progress." It is wrong to say otherwise no matter how you or I feel about the issue.

Embryonic stem cell research was known to be pure snake oil when it was first popularized — the non-existent technology was used for political leverage in the 2004 presidential campaign, you may recall, when John Kerry and John Edwards were out there claiming that embryonic stem-cells would cure everything, if ONLY John Kerry was elected president.

Remember John Edwards' infamous declaration, When John Kerry is elected president, Christopher Reeves will WALK AGAIN! Christopher Reeves died almost immediately after Edwards made this insulting claim, less than a month before the November election.

There was never any science to back up the claims of embryonic stem cell supporters. It was all hot air to float political balloons.

Interestingly, there was real science that proved transplanting live baby brain tissue into adult patients would heal their brain damage! However, you can't sell that kind of technology to anyone.

— Doc Velocity

Click here for more information.

Originally posted by freedomOspeach
It's legal, so shut the # up.

Yeah, if California votes it into law, it must be good stuff, huh? Thank Christ California doesn't mean anything in America anymore.



— Doc Velocity

[edit on 1/30/2010 by Doc Velocity]

Originally posted by freedomOspeach
It's legal, so shut the # up.

A guy with the handle freedomOspeach just told me to shut the # up.

Irony (from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a situation, literary technique, or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity, discordance, or unintended connection with truth, that goes strikingly beyond the most simple and evident meaning of words or actions.

Wickipedia

I'm laughing WITH you, not at you.






Or am I...




[edit on 30-1-2010 by FortAnthem]

I would think market forces would drive this technology towards creating body parts for replacement versus creating a cure for anything. There is no money in a cure. What they want to do is grow you a new pancreas instead of just injecting you with regenerated pancreatic cells. Let's say you get cancer of the liver. Once your liver is infested with tumors they will have a new one waiting in the wings. How much money will you be willing to pay to live?