The Possibilities Are Endless.....

I am sure you are all aware that yesterday I wrote about a subject where I am definitely not going to fall into the conservative column. I wrote about legalizing Cannabis Sativa for medicinal purposes and recreational purposes. So like I said I am more of a center-left thinker on that subject. Well I regret to inform all of my conservative readers that I am once again going to fall on the opposite side of them in today’s topic as well, and that is Stem Cell Research.

Stem Cell Research is of course another hot topic of contention and debate between pro and anti Stem Cell Research activists and I firmly believe that they both have some pretty good reasons for where their support falls on one side of the debate or the other. However I do not think that the possibilities of what can be achieved through Stem Cell Research can be ignored. I also believe that while research in this field is important we should be careful of playing god with it, because there can be only one god and none of us is he.

For me the subject hits very close to home, because diabetes runs in my family. I also am a father of a teenage Downs Syndrome boy. My grandfather also died from Alzheimer’s disease, although luckily I was not around to witness the mess it made out of his mind and his life. As a result Stem Cell Research for me is something I see as potentially finding the cure for all of these things in one form or another.

Recently Obama who I freely admit is not one of my favorite people in the world lifted the Bush era restraints that were imposed on Stem Cell Research, which I thought was possibly a bad thing if not handled correctly. He then signed a law just two days later banning federal funding of any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos. I personally think that he actually did something right with regard to Stem Cell Research.

I can name you one instance of where stem cell research has improved lives. At Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami Florida they have been conducting human trials on Beta Stem Cell transplantation into people with Type I diabetes. The only risk with this study was that since the body receiving them didn’t create them they might be rejected so there was rejection drugs involved in the treatments. Since that part of the study more than 90% of the Type I diabetes patients are now off of insulin and control their diabetes with diet and exercise.

Now they are in stage two of their research, which involves stimulating your own stem cells to increase insulin production in the Pancreas not only producing more insulin but making the Pancreas use it more productively. The individual who invented both processes is an Israeli doctor and scientist by the name of Rodolpho Alejandro. I know what you’re thinking but he is Jewish as well as Latin.

His only problem with getting his treatments approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is that his company holds all the patents on the pharmaceuticals and American drug companies can’t get their hands on them, so they lobby the FDA to keep the treatments from gaining approval. I guess the business of finding cures through this type of research is the cost of your health if you are not an American drug company.

In closing I would just like to add one more thing. I would like to add that while I think Obama potentially did the right thing with Stem Cell Research I still think that what ever we do had best be done with a great deal of caution and forethought. We are already beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with some of this research and as long as there is no abuse of humans or human material we may just break on through to the other side and see some real progress soon.

Have a wonderful Wednesday and I will see you all again tomorrow, CIAO4NOW!!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell
http://www.diabetesresearch.org/AbouttheDRI/DRIFaculty/alejandrobio.htm
http://stemcells.nih.gov/