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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (12018)	10/13/2003 6:25:00 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

So "where are the feminists" this time around? It all depends on whose Ox is being gored, doesn't it? First article from a PBS contributor that I recall. You have found a new source! Welcome aboard, khot!

To: Lane3 who wrote (12018)	10/13/2003 6:51:22 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793914

Bone Marrow Research Is Questioned Potential for Regeneration Overstated, Study Says By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 13, 2003; Page A06 Recent studies suggesting that cells from adult bone marrow have the same therapeutic potential as cells from human embryos probably were interpreted incorrectly, new research suggests. The new findings, while falling short of proving the earlier reports wrong, strongly suggest that scientists mistakenly overstated the older results, and that only embryo cells have the potential to regenerate ailing hearts, livers and brains. The new results are significant, scientists said, because the earlier research had been used by opponents of human embryo research to argue that embryo studies were unnecessary. If the new results are confirmed in other experiments, proponents of human embryo research could gain ground in their efforts to stave off state and federal restrictions on their work. The new study, led by Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, a neurobiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, is the most thorough attempt yet to understand a phenomenon that many in science had found to be incredible: the apparent ability of adult human bone marrow cells to convert themselves into different kinds of cells, including heart, liver and brain cells. Until those findings began to show up, scientists had presumed that only embryo cells had the potential to turn into such an array of adult cells. Many researchers had wanted to exploit the potential of embryonic cells to develop regenerative therapies for ailing adult organs, but the approach is controversial because to get those embryo cells, human embryos have to be destroyed. The surprising discovery that easily obtained adult marrow cells might have the same capacity to become healthy heart, liver or brain tissue suggested that research on embryo cells might not be so necessary after all. Alvarez-Buylla and his colleagues used a sensitive assay to track the marrow cells as they circulated in the blood of mice and, on occasion, arrived in other organs. Their work, in this week's advance online edition of the journal Nature, shows that marrow cells often fuse with existing heart, liver or brain cells. Those hybrid cells retain molecular hallmarks of their bone marrow origins -- hallmarks that apparently misled researchers into believing they were looking at heart, liver or brain cells that had started out as marrow cells. In fact, the California team could find no evidence that marrow cells can, by themselves, become heart, liver or brain cells. "This suggests that those previous papers were over-interpreted," Alvarez-Buylla said. James F. Battey Jr. , director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and chairman of the Stem Cell Task Force at the National Institutes of Health, lauded the study for helping to clear up confusion in the field, calling it "as carefully done a piece of work as I've seen." It is still possible that a few marrow cells may manage to change their identities, Battey and Alvarez-Buylla said, noting that it is impossible to prove that something could never happen. But lacking evidence for it, they said, it makes sense to maintain momentum in the embryonic stem cell field. This does not, however, respond to the argument that no amount of therapeutic benefit can justify the destruction of a human embryo. Currently, federally funded researchers cannot do research that harms human embryos and can study only a limited number of laboratory-grown colonies of cells that were retrieved from human embryos years ago. Congress has been considering additional restrictions for privately funded researchers. © 2003 The Washington Post Company