"Miraculous" Stem Cell Progress Reported In China 429
destinyland writes "In China's Guangdong Province there's been 'almost miraculous' progress in actually using stem cells to treat diseases such as brain injury, cerebral palsy, ataxia and other optic nerve damage, lower limb ischemia, autism, spinal muscular atrophy, and multiple sclerosis. One Chinese biotech company, Beike, is now building a 21,500 square foot stem cell storage facility and hiring professors from American universities such as Stanford. Two California families even flew their children to China for a cerebral palsy treatment that isn't available in the US. The founder of Beike is so enthusiastic, he says his company is exploring the concept of using stem cells to extend longevity beyond 120 years."
Sounds Like Cold Fusion (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll believe it when I see it replicated.
Observe and learn (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:5, Insightful)
"Playing god" is vague & ill-defined. Talking about it that way abstracts the issue away from the actual concern of those who oppose destruction of embryos. Why not be specific?
Namely: It's about legalized organlegging [wikipedia.org]. As treatments emerge, we'll find out whether they're willing to sacrifice other human beings for their own health & longevity.
Or, we'll find out whether or not they really believe embryos are human beings.
Conservatives are always dying (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Observe and learn (Score:0, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. Because of morals and religion the western world is going to be left behind on this.
Slowing down researches because a freaking cell might be a human just doesnt compute for me.
Re:Watch out for chinese stem cells (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what you will about the Chinese, but we could still learn a thing or two from them.
We've already got Fleischmann, Pons, and Taleyarkhan - what more do we need to learn about this kind of thing? Hu gives no numbers for success rates, and identifies FDA standards as a challenge. Anecdotes abound, and stats are lacking.
The U.S. lost ground by not doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Observe and learn (Score:5, Insightful)
"SH: Osiris in the U.S. is our biggest competitor. We are way ahead of most of the Chinese stem cell companies."
Also from reading the article, they don't seem to be doing anything terribly scientific. They are basically injecting stem cells into patients, along with "holistic" treatment like accupuncture. And the head guy seems like more of a business-guy than an actual researcher. So this all smells like a lot of BS to me.
Re:Isn't that exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Observe and learn (Score:5, Insightful)
China just beat us there. Regardless of your personal morals, you can't deny that we jumped on the brake, China didn't, and now we're sending them our professors.
As I stated earlier, this research was from cord blood stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. The federal government under GWBush funded this type of research and only banned funding from embryonic stem cells coming from new lines.
I believe that China's success in this field may be the result of much less oversight and fewer regulations. We don't know how many "patients" died or were mutilated in the process of supposedly perfecting this treatment. That sort of thing wouldn't fly in the US.
Re:Embyonic vs. Adult. (Score:5, Insightful)
120 years? Time to get Malthusian... (Score:2, Insightful)
he says his company is exploring the concept of using stem cells to extend longevity beyond 120 years.
Maybe it's just me, but I believe that longer average lifespans are not a good idea at all.
It's just more mouths to feed, more people farting, shitting, throwing out trash... If we're planning on extending lifespans, we should at least implement better family planning across the globe, otherwise, we'd just be starving hell of a lot more people in the long run.
Miraculous Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
Miraculous and China in the same sentence. Until their results are duplicated I would regard this announcement with great skepticism.
Re:The U.S. lost ground by not doing what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Limiting funding for embryonic stem cells did slow research into adult stem cells. Specifically, it slowed research into just what is and isn't possible to treat with stem cells. Adult stem cells don't function exactly as embryonic stem cells do, generally embryonic stem cells are capable of becoming any tissue in the body where as adult stem cells are limited to a subset of them.
For every tissue, it is probably possible to produce an adult stem cell that will be capable of becoming that tissue but it costs time, money, and equipment to create it. That same time and effort could have gone directly to working on and testing the treatment. So, yes you are correct that adult stem cells can probably be used to cure the same diseases embryonic stem cells can. But you are also wrong if you insist that the lack of embryonic stem cell funding didn't slow that research down, leading to thousands of untimely deaths.
That's not a judgement on the ethics of the situation, I'm just trying to lay out the facts as I see them.
Re:Observe and learn (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that China's success in this field may be the result of much less oversight and fewer regulations.
Or maybe less scrutiny/peer-review on their results? Untying a researcher's hands and letting them do whatever they want could let them advance more quickly (I'd cite a couple of counter-examples, but I don't want to Godwin the thread). But, I suspect that what we're seeing isn't a huge banner showing success due to Chinese freedom, but a big PR campaign. As soon as Chinese doctors start hiring on at the Mayo Clinic to fix people using these techniques, I'll apologize for my skepticism.
Re:Conservatives are always dying (Score:4, Insightful)
All other answers are philosophical in nature.
Or legal in nature, such as when does this life get rights and what rights does it get.
Societal cost (Score:4, Insightful)
How are we going to pay for an increasingly older population? Will they be older and healthy and still working, or older, on expensive medications, and requiring expensive procedures to keep them living?
Ethical nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)
(intellectual weakness: shouting "but the USA is worse" every time someone mentions any negative trait of any entity anywhere)
Re:Embyonic vs. Adult. (Score:1, Insightful)
But the moral issue of potential organlegging is there. In India and China they are known for taking organs from death row inmates after execution and manufacturing the inmates' consent for such. Doctors trying to get more embryonic stem cells may convince or withhold treatments from those with the not-yet-waste fetus in order to turn a potential child into waste.
Re:Sounds Like Cold Fusion (Score:3, Insightful)
By "Chinese" I mean the nation not the people. People who have left China for a better life I'm much more willing to trust.
Wait until (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait until someone actually gets cured. This needs to show more than a placebo effect, and proof of cure from someone outside of the actors. The people who they claim to have cured may not have had anything wrong with them in the first place.
This sounds a lot like other snake-oil salesmen in the medical business. A lot of initial hype, and when results fail to appear they just quietly disappear again, taking their money with them. They do make a LOT of money on such scams, which is why they are so popular. $15,000USD per treatment would bring in a lot of money from desperate people.
Re:Chinese Sputnik? (Score:3, Insightful)
America needs a good shake up to awaken people from this dumb political fuckfest and get their focus back on technology and science.
In short, turn off the damn tv and pick up a book!
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:3, Insightful)
It was fun to watch this little game of telephone unfold:
eldavojohn: "Republican conservatives"
tcopeland: "conservatives" (dropped the 'Republican' part)
JeanPaulBob: "Bush" (converted 'conservatives' to 'Bush'. To be fair, Bush probably qualifies as a genuine conservative on this topic).
Gospodin: "prevented" (stuck with 'Bush', but changed gears from stuff that wasn't liked to stuff that was prevented).
Communication can be tricky sometimes.
But if I understand what you guys are saying, it was US policy for an army of bush elephants [wikipedia.org] to trample anyone who spoke any 2 of the words "embryonic stem cell research" within five minutes of each other.
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a matter of being "conceptually close" to destruction of embryos. One of the mechanisms of emergency contraception (and the Pill) is destruction of embryos--preventing implantation.
I bet you didn't realize that "destroying an embryo" isn't necessarily the same as "abortion", did you? By the technical medical definition, "abortion" is ending a pregnancy, and we mark the beginning of pregnancy at the moment of implantation. (And there are sensible medical reasons for these divisions--but those distinctions are only relevant in some contexts.) So if you prevent implantation, they call it "contraception", not abortion--even though the fertilized blastocyst is being killed.
(Note: By some definitions, "embryo" only applies after implantation. But by that definition, the debate isn't about "embryonic" stem cell research--it would be about "blastocystic" or "zygotic" stem cell research.)
In other words, this website [princeton.edu] is bordering on misinformation. Technically correct misinformation, but misleading information.
To my knowledge, that typically comes from a theological disapproval of birth control, unrelated to destruction of embryos. Most often from Catholics. It's about the question, "Should we be taking control of getting pregnant out of God's hands?" It's not about a "every sperm is sacred" idea.
It may be for some... Hmm, actually, I have no idea what the breakdown is.
Of course. It's the same question as, "Should we use the results of Nazi medical research?" It's a difficult ethical question. Once the harm has been done, can we use the "tainted fruits"?
So...he was a backward fuckwad with limited reach? (Score:1, Insightful)
>The truth is, Bush didn't ban stem cell research. Bush didn't even ban embryonic stem cell research.
>He only banned federal level funding for it. The States and the private sector were free to do as they pleased.
I'm so tired of this Bush apologizing.
The translation is, "He was a backward fuckwad pandering to religious nuts, but hey, at least his reach exceeded his grasp!"
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not even destruction of embryos that was prevented. It's federal funding of same.
This is an oft-used, idiotic talking point.
The insinuation is, that if some lab is doing stem cell research, the feds won't pay for the stem cell experiments. Yes, that is true.
They also won't pay for anything else that lab does. The lab will no longer get a federal grant for anything.
If there are any research institutions affiliated with the lab, the pox infects them too. If anyone in a laboratory affiliated with a teaching hospital or a major university -or any other research institution even partially dependent on federal grant money- goes near an embryonic stem cell, or even writes a paper detailing a meta-analysis of embryonic stem cell experiments done in other countries, the entire institution will have to shut down.
Anyway, so that's all over. In the meantime, we've been far surpassed on this front by countries with no government restrictions, and say, hundreds of millions of couples constantly conceiving their second, forbidden children.
Basically the "federal funding" thing was just an essentially meaningless qualifier to make it more lawfully palatable in order to aid it through the legislature. Think "medical" in "medical marijuana". :)
Re:Watch out for chinese stem cells (Score:1, Insightful)
Because right now anecdotes are what we have. Stats are lacking due to significant long term results do not exist yet.
I actually have an uncle currently residing in China while undergoing Parkinson's treatment using adult stem cells. They made it clear to him that it was all theoretical, and no long term treatments had been observed. FDA standards are what forced him to go to China, though it is difficult to determine if they are helping or hurting the situation. While not allowing potentially dangerous treatments is indeed a noble thing, whether or not is helping is another matter. I believe for people with serious diseases (eg life threatening, or ones that pose severe functional considerations) having the option for such treatment is a good thing. After all if the disease is gonna kill you, what really is the harm from a treatment that is either gonna make it worse, or cure the disease.
Complete bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I will go out on a limb and say that this story sounds to me like complete bullshit.
First tipoff: TFA doesn't list any citations to peer-reviewed articles. (I couldn't find any on PubMed.)
Second tipoff: Hu claims to have treated >5,087 patients for ataxia, autism, ALS, brain trauma, cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral palsy, diabetics, Guillain-Barre, encephalatropy, and spinal cord injury.
If he could have treated any one of those diseases successfully, any major medical journal would have been happy to publish his report, doctors from all over the world would be flying over to learn his techniques, and pharmaceutical companies would be offering him wheelbarrows full of money for the rights to use his techniques. And it would have been on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Third tipoff: The reporter who wrote this sounds like she doesn't understand the story at all. She doesn't ask one substantive question (like, "what peer reviewed journals have you published your work in?"). She sounds like she's asking generic questions from a list of standard interview questions her business editor gave her.
Fourth tipoff: The word "miraculous."
I'm not taking it seriously enough to look up the citations, but Science magazine had an article a while back investigating a Chinese doctor who claimed to be treating spinal cord injured patients, and it turned out that his patients weren't getting better and he hadn't published anything significant.
The WSJ had an article about a Chinese brain surgeon who was cutting a part of the brain to supposedly cure schizophrenia, depression, and a whole list of unrelated conditions, but he wasn't curing them, a lot of his patients were left with severe brain damage, families were paying him their life savings, he was making a fortune, American brain surgeons were shocked at his irresponsibility, and he performed several times more of these procedures than the rest of the world combined.
A friend of mine taught a course in science journalism in China a while back, and he was appalled to find out that Chinese journalists would just make stories up. They didn't understand the difference between telling a good story and telling the truth.
This is from the country whose pharmaceutical industry brought us contaminated heparin, contaminated milk, cough syrup that killed babies, and pet food that killed dogs.
To quote Thomas Paine, which is more likely: that a miracle could happen or that a man could lie?
It's not anti-Chinese to say this. In the U.S., the Chinese are some of the best scientists and science journalists.
China, for all its many virtues and accomplishments, is suffering from the results of Communism, the Great Cultural Revolution, and now unregulated free-market capitalism.
China is the same zoo of quack doctors and drug companies that the U.S. was in the days of Upton Sinclair, which led to the FDA. And we still have quacks here.
Re:Conservatives are always dying (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm curious about this--do you have references I can look into?
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:1, Insightful)
If only someone told that to your parents (your age + 1) years ago.
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it's based on the idea that all human beings should be protected the same way, regardless of size or level of development?
Why is "possessing neurons" the criterion? The capacity to feel pain? (So if we kill someone after applying anaesthesia or while they're asleep, is that OK?) You think that while we're still developing the capacity to think, our rights are still "developing"?
You want to classify human beings into "human beings that are persons" and "human beings that aren't". You want to say, "Unless you've finished developing this or that function in your body, you're not a human person yet."
I don't see why disagreement is "superstition".
Re:A Dying Breed (Score:3, Insightful)
You're assuming that an egg or sperm is "a human being".
I'm assuming there's no difference between "human being" and "human organism". And an egg or sperm is not a distinct organism. They are parts of an organism. When they combine, they form a new organism--and that organism only requires nourishment and a friendly environment, in order to develop into an adult.
See my earlier comment [slashdot.org].
There has to be a point where we come into existence, yes. And we know that point, as I said above. You-the-human-organism came into existence at fertilization.
You want to add on a criterion for personhood, more than just being a human being. A level of development that qualifies human beings for this notion of "personhood". You think that you were once a human organism that wasn't a human person yet.
In that light, I think it's weird that pro-lifers are called "superstitious".