Embryonic stem cell research flawed

Embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) is another pie-in-the-sky idea whose time is over.

I've tried to do research to compare ESCR to ASCR (adult stem cell research); I refuse to be bullied into supporting what is obviously the destruction of human tissue just because I have a loved one with a disorder who needs help.

ESCR is the medical equivalent of beating a dead horse. One researcher has said, "The problems (with ESCR) are so complex that we're not likely to … tackle them with the stem cell gambit in the foreseeable future."

I found that researchers in China injected fetal tissue into a patient's brain, producing some improvement. Within two years, however, the patient developed a brain tumor and died.

In research at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, implanted stem cells grew too well, producing so much of a chemical that controls movement that patients jerked uncontrollably.

And the list continues.

Adult stem cell research, which doesn't involve the destruction of embryos and is in limitless supply, has consistently shown great promise and affected hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cures.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have produced a permanent reversal of Type I diabetes in mice by killing the cells responsible for the disorder. At the University of Texas Cancer Center, a patient with terminally directed skin cancer is now symptom-free after receiving a transplant of his own adult stem cells. Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago extracted adult stem cells from the blood of Crohn's patients to successfully rebuild the patients' damaged immune systems.

These are only three of the documented cures produced by adult stem cells. ESCR, on the other hand, has produced exactly zero cures and shows zero promise.

Pat Fuller

Elk Grove Village