Rather disappointing but it

highlights the facts regarding stem cell research despite what the press tells us.

Embryonic Stem Cells: 5 Misconceptions
Christopher

Wanjek
Livescience's Bad Medicine Columnist


livescience.com



Last week President Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding for

embryonic stem cell research and asked the National Institutes of Health to come up with a funding game plan within

120 days. Yet while the field of stem cell research holds great promise, hype and misconceptions cloud the picture.

Here are a five such misconceptions.


1. George W. Bush killed research on embryonic stem

cells.




Wrong. Bush actually was the first president to allow federal funding.

Bill Clinton had chickened out. A very brief history follows.




In 1974, Congress

banned federal funding on fetal tissue research and established the Ethics Advisory Board to study the nascent field

of in vitro fertilization. In 1980 Ronald Reagan killed the Board, which was friendly to embryonic research,

resulting in a de facto moratorium on funding. Congress tried to override the moratorium in 1992, but George H.W.

Bush vetoed it. Bill Clinton lifted the moratorium in 1993 but reversed his decision in 1994 after public outcry. In

1995, Congress passed the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, banning federal funding on any research that destroys human

embryos.




In 2001 Bush enabled limited funding on embryonic stem cell lines

already derived from discarded embryos; the life or death decision already had been made, he said. He thought more

than 60 lines existed, but within months scientists realized that only about 20 were viable, not enough to do

substantial research.




2. Bush spurred development of alternative sources of embryonic stem

cells.




Sure, in the same way his disastrous invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq

spurred the development of treatment for massive head trauma, or the way his economic policies have encouraged all

of us to do more with less. One doesn't advance a scientific field by handicapping researchers.






Regardless, the biggest advance in recent years has come from Japan by

a researcher not affected by U.S. research funding rules. U.S. federal funding could have led to even more advances

of alternative sources, because funding stem cell research in general can have a synergetic effect across the

various research specialties.


3. Embryonic stem cells are no longer needed.






Wrong. In 2007, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan announced

a breakthrough in which adult skin cells could be coaxed back into an embryonic state and thus regain the ability to

branch into any kind of human cell, such as heart, pancreas or spinal cord nerve cell. While a major advance, the

work itself is in an embryonic state, years from practical application.


The work

on these so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells complements embryonic stem cell research; it doesn't

replace it. The iPS cells have a greater tendency to become cancerous. Work on "real" embryonic stem cells is

needed, at a minimum, to understand what iPS cells lack. Many view Yamanaka's technique as brilliant yet worry that

his four-gene manipulation of adult cells might be too simplistic.




Research on iPS cells

is particularly exciting because it opens the possibility of using one's own cells - say, from skin - to produce

pancreas cells to cure diabetes, whereas embryonic stem cells would introduce DNA from a stranger.






4. Cures are around the corner.


Wrong.

Stem cell research is dominated by hype. Remember gene therapy, the insertion of genes into human cells to cure all

types of diseases? Nearly two decades after the first gene therapy procedure, the technique remains highly

experimental and problematic. Stem cell research faces a similar future.


5.

Obama's executive order means "all systems go."




Unlikely. The new rule

eliminates red tape, for now researchers can study any established embryonic stem cell line. Previously, stem cell

researchers receiving private and public funding needed to keep detailed records of spending, down to which

microscope is used for which kind of stem cell. That's history.




But the Dickey-Wicker

Amendment (see No. 1 above) is the law of the land, meaning federally funded researchers cannot create new embryonic

stem cells lines. They can work only on those new lines created with private funding, which aren't that plentiful.

Also, some scientists worry that crucial private funding will dry up with the poor economy and false reassurances

that federal funding is in place.


The furor over stem cells focuses on the definition of

human life, which many believe begins when sperm meets eggs. Yet inevitably lines will be blurred in coming years

when babies are born with the DNA of two sperms or ova transplanted into an egg. Just as humans evolved from

non-humans - with no precise generation in which a non-human gave birth to a human - we may come to understand that

all of nature is a continuum.