Submitted by Scott, Dec 28, 2006 16:28

While Alicia Colon is technically correct in that there is "no bank" on embryonic stem cell research in the U.S., she is selectively disclosing the truth, similar to the methods outlined in Eve Herold's new book "Stem Cell Wars". The truth is that research on embyonic stem cells funded by the National Institutes of Health is limited to a mere 21 stem cell lines created prior to the arbitrary date of August 9, 2001, and that all of those cell lines have been cultured using animal feeder cells, rendering them unapproved by the FDA for any human clinical trials. Also, she leaves out the information that President Bush's decision was a sharp reversal of the policy in place under President Clinton, who concluded that federal funding could be provided for embryonic stem cell research as long as the federal government did not fund the destruction of the embryos that were used to produce those stem cell lines. This meant that as long as government funds did not produce the stem cell lines, federal funds could be used for subsequent research on the cells. In effect, Bush severely restricted the research to placate religious conservatives whose views differ from a vast majoity of Americans who support embryonic stem cell research.

Again, while she is correct that no known cures have yet been attributed to embryonic stem cell research, she conveniently forgets to mention that human stem cell applications have been studied for 20 years longer than embryonic stem cell applications.

As for her claim that physicians in Toronto have recently discovered a cure for diabetes in mice, mice are not humans. In fact, nonobese diabetic mice (the rodent equivalent of human type 1 diabetes) now have a choice of well over a dozen successful "cures", yet not one of these has successfully worked in humans. While the Toronto discovery raises hope that another way may exist to address type 1 diabetes, she places too much weight on a discovery that really means nothing to humans at this time.

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