thechef71
April 19th, 2009, 03:59 PM
April 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study carried out in Brazil and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, on the use of adult stems cells to treat diabetes, has found that most of the patients in the study group were partially or wholly healed of the disease after receiving injections of stem cells from their own bone marrow.
The procedure, called autologous nonmyeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), was carried out on 15 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM). The report on the study stated that most of the patients no longer needed insulin injections after the treatment and were still "insulin free with normal levels of glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) during a mean 18.8-month follow-up"
"After a mean follow-up of 29.8 months … the majority of patients achieved insulin independence with good glycemic control."
However, the astonishingly positive results of the use of adult stem cells to treat diabetes have received very little mainstream media coverage, a fact that has been strongly criticized by conservative bioethicist Wesley Smith.
"Had this been an embryonic stem cell success, the story would have reaped huge headlines and an angry lead editorial decrying President Bush for his stem cell funding policy," said Smith.
"You see, successful human treatments don't count as news if they are from adult stem cells. That doesn't fit the media narrative that ESCR [embryonic stem cell research] is the future. That is why a prospective Geron ESC human trial that might or might not work, got more coverage than these stories of an actual major success did put together," said Smith
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/apr/09041610.html
The procedure, called autologous nonmyeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), was carried out on 15 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM). The report on the study stated that most of the patients no longer needed insulin injections after the treatment and were still "insulin free with normal levels of glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) during a mean 18.8-month follow-up"
"After a mean follow-up of 29.8 months … the majority of patients achieved insulin independence with good glycemic control."
However, the astonishingly positive results of the use of adult stem cells to treat diabetes have received very little mainstream media coverage, a fact that has been strongly criticized by conservative bioethicist Wesley Smith.
"Had this been an embryonic stem cell success, the story would have reaped huge headlines and an angry lead editorial decrying President Bush for his stem cell funding policy," said Smith.
"You see, successful human treatments don't count as news if they are from adult stem cells. That doesn't fit the media narrative that ESCR [embryonic stem cell research] is the future. That is why a prospective Geron ESC human trial that might or might not work, got more coverage than these stories of an actual major success did put together," said Smith
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/apr/09041610.html