In 1998, researchers at the University of Wisconsin successfully harvested the first stem cell from a living human embryo. Embryonic stem cells come from human embryos and form in the first few days of human development before individual cells receive their “assignment” - for example, before they turn into blood, brain or hair cells. Scientists speculate that these immature (or blank) cells can easily be coaxed into becoming any number of cell types, thereby holding great promise for healing the human body, with possible cures for diabetes and heart disease, to treatments for burns and spinal-cord injuries. However, harvesting these cells comes at a tremendous price: a living human embryo must be destroyed.

However, there is another basic type of stem cells. Adult stem cells come from a variety of sources, including the placenta, umbilical-cord blood, brain tissue, skin, bone marrow and body fat. Harvesting these cells requires no destruction of human life.

The use of adult stem cells in medical treatment is not new and has a proven track record of helping patients in the healing process. For years, leukemia patients have obtained adult stem cells through bone-marrow transplants, and cancer patients often receive their own “cleansed” stem cells after chemotherapy.

Adult stem cells have been transformed into cartilage, muscle, bone, nerve cells, liver, heart cells, blood vessels, and almost certainly will shortly be transformed into kidney, lung, intestine and central nervous system cells.

The New England Journal of Medicine reported that surgeons in Taiwan have restored vision to patients using stem cells from the patients’ own eyes.

The Journal Science reported on two studies showing that adult stem cells from bone marrow transplanted into the brains of mice can develop into nerve cells.

The Journal Nature again reported that adult stem cells from bone marrow injected into damaged mouse hearts became functional heart muscle cells, partly restoring the ability of the heart to pump.

The Neurological Institute affiliated with McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has recently announced that scientists there have isolated stem cells on the skin of adult mice, cells that can grow into brain cells.

Other reports show that bone marrow stem cells are being changed into liver cells, skin cells are being changed into heart cells, and cord blood promising to possibly create neural cells. In August of 2001, several papers reported on four different medical studies showing early success with adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood.¹

A breakthrough from the University of Minnesota reports finding an adult stem cell that can turn into every single tissue of the body. If confirmed, this means that cells from your own body can be turned into perfectly matched replacement tissues and possibly even organs. These cells show no signs of aging and do not form cancerous tumors when injected into adults.

In Ottawa, Canada doctors have used adult stem cells to treat multiple sclerosis. The cells were taken from the bone marrow of four individual patients. The doctors then destroyed the patients’ immune systems with chemotherapy. They injected the stem cells into their bodies, which took hold and regenerated the immune and blood-forming systems of those four patients. Six months later, the first patient was found to have no evidence of multiple sclerosis on MRI scans. The other three cases followed with similar results.

Dr. Catherine Verfaillie at the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute took stem cells from 10 people ages 2 to 55. She cultured the cells in test tubes, along with growth factors and hormones. Within three weeks, the cells began behaving like liver cells. She stated, “The final product had the form of liver cells and all the proteins you would expect in liver cells. We tested seven different functions and they did them all.”

On May 1, 2002, in the journal Nature Technology, scientists from Norway and the U.S. described how they have taken ordinary skin cells and, without the use of cloning techniques or embryonic stem cells, transformed them into T cells—these are key immune system cells. “The message here is that we’re developing an entirely new approach to tissue replacement therapy that avoids the issues related to cloning and embryonic stem cell research...it shows that tissues can be generated from adult cells without the need to destroy embryos.” This could replace the entire effort now being generated through stem cells and cloning.

Overall, hundreds, perhaps thousands of patients have already been treated using their own adult stem cells. A host of treated diseases have included liver, autoimmune diseases, cartilage and bone damage, reversal of diabetes, repair of hearts, cancers, stroke, and the list goes on. Adult stem cell biology is advancing at an incredible rate, as advances are occurring literally every month.

Scientists from Boston’s Children’s Hospital reported at the American College of Surgeons Meeting on October 10, 2001, that they found “early stage embryonic cells” in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. Just two milliliters of amniotic fluid can provide up to 20,000 cells, 80% of which are viable. When “scaffolded” together in a lab culture, the cells quickly grew into connective tissue, which could be used as tissue grafts to repair birth defects such as holes in the abdomen or chest of an unborn child.

So why all the attention on embryonic stem cells research and its funding? Out of the fifteen major companies now engaged in stem cell research, only two are involved in embryonic stem cells. The fact that there is very little private money being invested in embryonic stem cell research speaks rather loudly. Forbes Financial Magazine, in their September 3, 2001 issue, commented that, “Private research money has gone overwhelmingly to non-embryo stem cell research. This is one reason embryo researchers want to get their hands on federal funds.”

Major pharmaceutical and medical companies, with their billions of dollars they risk on research of new products and medicines each year, have not committed any money to this reputedly groundbreaking area of embryonic stem cell research.

To better understand their silence, it is important to understand the tiny, but most vocal, Geron Corporation. According to the Wall Street Journal, “No company stands to gain so much from stem cell research as Geron.”

Geron was founded in 1992 to find ways to reverse the aging process. Their initial research on cells suggested there might be ways to lengthen the life of individual cells and, by extension, potentially human lives. An enormous wave of publicity followed.

In 1997, they cloned the gene for the human telomerase catalytic protein. Revenues, mostly from collaborative agreements, not product sales, were approximately $5,000,000, while losses were nearly twice that. They sold additional shares to fund their work. A couple years later, Geron acquired the cloning technology which produced “Dolly” the sheep. Unfortunately for Geron, because they still had no product, revenues remained flat, but losses ballooned to over $45,000,000 in 1999.

So what is a struggling biotech company to do? They have to raise more capital or perish. So they hit the road and put on what is known in the investment industry as a “dog and pony show,” with their pitch concentrated on stem cells derived from human embryos as a potential cure-all for disease. They were soon joined by the pro-abortion crowd, ever eager to find another chance to dehumanize life and paint pro-lifers as insensitive to human pain and suffering. A sympathetic media took up the “debate” and ailing movie stars like Christopher Reeve, Mary Tyler Moore and Michael W. Fox testified to the need for federal research support. And it was off to Washington where Dr. Thomas Okarma of Geron got what he wanted—federal funding.

When President George W. Bush took office in 2001, he put a moratorium on the research guidelines adopted by the Clinton administration about federally funding embryonic stem cell research so that he could study the problem. That summer, President Bush came to a decision. To quote directly from his speech, he stated that his policy “allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos…” ²

In addition, the President issued a strong call for the medical community to step up its efforts to conduct research involving adult stem cells, placentas and umbilical cord blood.

However, we now find out that, in 1993, Congress passed a law prohibiting the President from banning funding for fetal tissue research. During the Clinton administration, such research was done using federal funds for research involving stem cells obtained from aborted babies. The National Institutes of Health, since 1993, has apparently funded many experiments involving fetal tissue from induced abortions. So apparently, in order to allow the Bush administration to block such fetal tissue research funding, Congress would first have to overturn the 1993 law. It is doubtful whether this could be possible at this time.