Should embryos be researched? In theory, everything should be researched because we won’t know what advancements can come of it until it’s done. But what about embryonic research in regard to treatments in the great stem cell debate? Screw the Embryos, They’re Irrelevant!

So what if embryonic research has been primarily fruitless (in regard to generating treatments) for well-funded and government supported scientists around the world for the last 10 years. Maybe the U.S. scientists can discover amazing new things given enough time and money. Because we will never know what advances and benefits that research may bring us.

So what if Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC - ASC modified to be able to become any cell in the human body) seem to have all of the benefits of ESC with significantly less of a rejection issue, without the political & religious controversy or the tumor and cancer potential that ESC do. http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/embryonic-stem-cell-alternative-has-another-advance-ips-cells-yield-nerve-cells/ http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/cancer-threat-removed-from-stem-cells-scientists-say-los-angeles-times/

So what if Dr James Thomson, father of embryonic research said about embryonic research: "...embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies." and "Ten or 20 years from now...there will be transplantation- based therapies (from ESC) , but even if there was none, and it was a complete failure, this technology is extraordinarily important" -  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8303756/

So what if the induced pluripotent stem cell discovery even prompted Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, to abandon his license to attempt human cloning, saying that the researchers "may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate."

So what if a week ago, Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments "in the first six weeks of Obama’s term, several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, are obsolete." & “In fact, adult stem cells, which occur in small quantities in organs throughout the body for natural growth and repair, have become stars despite great skepticism early on.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031002842.html

So what if Dr James Thomson, father of embryonic research said about iPSC: “Already these reprogrammed cells (iPSC) have eclipsed the value of those harvested from embryos, because of significantly lower cost, ease of production, and genetic identity with the patient. They also bring unique application to medical and pharmaceutical research, because cells cultivated from patients with certain diseases readily become laboratory models for developing and testing therapy. That iPS cells overcome ethical concerns about creating and sacrificing embryos is an added plus.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031002842.html

But personally I am selfish and I have an evil agenda. I am less concerned with promoting broad spectrum research of everything that may educate us. I am interested in research that can help suffering human beings now, human beings who have debilitating, life altering or threatening diseases.

I want to help them now.

And we can…

And we aren’t.

I don’t want to see the tears of one more person who is turned away from their doctor’s door with the statement, “there’s nothing more we can do” while people around the world have been successfully treated for that same disease for 3, 5, 10 years.

I can’t sit at the death bed of the millions dying each year and try to get them excited about the wonderful discoveries we will make in the future, the advancement of the human race, the spirit of the human quest for knowledge.

I refuse to go to death row and tell each inmate about how every prison but theirs has pardoned the death row inmates and the governor is going to pardon everyone on death row here too! But sorry, only after they are executed.

That is what we are talking about for many of these people. A death sentence with no potential of pardon…until after they die. And since few people can afford to travel outside the country for adult stem cell treatments, the U.S., with its focus on “treatment useless” embryonic research and 8 years behind the rest of the world on adult stem cell treatments has become exactly that, a death row prison cell for those suffering from incurable diseases that are being treated outside the U.S.

If you want to do battle about researching embryos then go for it. Knock yourself out. And good luck to both sides in the battle because no one will ever back down and no one will ever win. Ever.

But if you want to talk about using embryos for TREATMENTS, then you are missing the point. Embryonic research won’t produce treatments for 10-20 years. So for the 1.5 million who die every year from the top four diseases and are searching for treatments; Screw the Embryos, They’re Irrelevant!

David Granovsky, http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com