Stem Cell Labs — Topics — Politics & Ethics

Stem Cells — Topics

Politics and Ethics of Stem Cell Therapy and Research

“But, I thought Stem Cells were bad!” or,
“If they are that good, why doesn’t everyone use them?”

Why all the hype about Embryonic Stem Cell Research?

Embryonic Stem Cells have a high potential for giving answers and understanding to basic science questions—because they are controlled from day one, they give a cleaner, less complex, more reproducible model for experiments.

Research institute controlled Embryonic Stem Cells have a high potential of providing specific treatments for specific disease states. Specific treatments for specific diseases is right in line with the Disease Management paradigm of our medical system.

Embryonic Stem Cells require difficult, specific PATENTABLE science to bring them to the medical marketplace, giving biotech firms great potential for return on investments.

Embryonic Stem Cells can be isolated from any requirements for donors, since they use established, stable cell lines, or use “left-over” embryos from In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).

Downside of Embryonic Stem Cell Research?

Embryonic Stem Cell production requires the destruction of human embryos. Research using US Federal Funds are restricted to a few established cell lines, and does not allow for new embryo destruction with their money.

This means that the embryonic stem cell lines used in many research programs have been grown out for many years, and have acquired several genetic abnormalities. Embryonic stem cells are also known to cause tumors in the recipients.

Ethics of Fetal Stem Cell Research and Use

Fetal Stem Cell use requires the destruction of living human fetuses. The donors are usually young university students recruited at abortion clinics in Eastern Europe. Donors have already decided to undergo an abortion, but are asked if they would donate the aborted fetal tissue to science.

Recently, several reports have emerged of “missing babies” from Ukrainian hospitals. Conjecture is that these newborns may have been used for lucrative fetal stem cell market.

Ethics of Adult Stem Cell Use

Adult stem cell use causes much less controversy, as donors are usually able to give consent. However, since infant siblings’ cells are considered adult stem cells, the practice of birthing one child to save an older sibling has occurred.

Adult stem cells are more likely to cause immune reactions when given to other recipients.

Why are Umbilical Cord Stem Cells generally ignored?

Umbilical cord stem cells are readily available, but ignored in favor of embryonic cells. Why? Biotech companies want us to believe that stem cells are difficult, rare, and expensive so that they can control the market.

Umbilical cords are readily available everywhere. They are too hard for Biotech to control. Separating cord blood stem cells from cord blood could be too easy, so that the corporations could not control them!

Cord blood stem cells rejuvenate the WHOLE BODY--they don’t just fight a disease! This holistic approach goes against the Disease Management paradigm of our supposed “health care” system.

Who controls medical education and research?

Big Pharma controls most postgraduate medical education. Just take a medical journal, cut out the drug ads, and see how few pages are left! Go to a medical conference, and see all the advertisers who paid for access to the doctors! “Detail men” from drug companies visit doctors offices every day, supposedly to educate them about new science, but really to sell them on new drugs.

Big Pharma controls most undergraduate medical education. Research grants to medical schools provide salaries for professors, as well as for research. Drugs pay for research chairs, trips and gifts for the administration. Drugs and drug money are given to university hospitals to use in physician training programs.

Pharmaceutical companies have threatened to withdraw all funding if a medical school tries to do research on a natural therapy which avoids the need for drugs.

For example, Tulane University and University of Washington closed down research on EDTA Chelation Therapy under duress from the drug companies, who threatened to withdraw ALL funding to the universities if the research program continued. The leading researcher for these studies was Robert Carter, MD, MPH, Prof. Tulane Univ.

What does Big Pharma want?

They want a treatment, NOT a Cure! A cure would cut off their cash, while a treatment would keep the money rolling into their coffers. Physicians are discouraged from even using the word “cure”. They are told to not even consider the concept of a cure.

Treatments, instead of cures, insures an ever-growing source of money for doctors, hospitals, and Big Pharma. Drug companies want to provide daily, but convenient, use of their product (drug), for the rest of your life. Much of their research is on finding new and more convenient ways of taking their drugs. One-a- day pills, instead of three a day, promotes continued use—at a higher cost! They want their drugs to have a high cost, but to have that cost paid by insurance companies

Of course, pharmaceutical companies are heavily invested in insurance companies. This insures that the “right” treatments (their drugs), rather than the less expensive, natural or non-patentable ones, are the only ones paid for by insurance. Even if your doctor told you to take a multivitamin every day, have you ever tried to get your insurance company to pay for it?

Drug companies want patentable treatments, using synthetic imitations or modifications of natural substances, instead of using natural source, bio-identical products that they cannot patent, so cannot control the price.

What about “Natural” health treatments?

Natural treatments are unpatentable, so they do not bring the drug company much money. Doctors are trained to ignore them, drug companies refuse to provide them, and the regulators refuse to allow a producer of natural treatments to make any claims about his product, even if those claims are supported by the scientific literature.

Furthermore, drug companies, and the Federal Regulators, allow dangerous drugs to be sold without constraint, even if they are known to be dangerous.

For example, FDA-approved horse urine pills and synthetic modified progesterone were used by millions of women for menopause, when safe, natural hormones, identical to human hormones, were readily and cheaply available.

• Natural hormones could not be patented.

• Premarin (Pregnant mare urine) was the #1 pill in US for years.

• Horse urine pills (Premarin) were known for 70 years to cause cancer.

• ProVera, a synthetic progestin was known for 30 years to increase
bad cholesterol, and to cause heart disease and stroke.

• These harmful drugs were approved by the FDA, while the natural
forms, which reduce risk, were not.

• Stem Cells are a natural treatment. They cannot be patented.

The process of making artificial or artificially raised stem cells CAN be patented. This is why so much research is going into making a patented version, a modified, unnatural version, before the FDA accepts it into general use.

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