Scott AirForce Base, Shiloh, Illinois

Hi all, had a wonderful time this past weekend on the BX Exchange at Scott Air Base in the St. Louis area.  Met a lot of wonderful people, many who were truly interested in this stem cell phenomenon.  Handed out some flyers and sold a few books along the way.  Special thanks to David D. Couture, Services Business Manager and Allen R. Maki,  Office Assistant Vending Services.  Airmen rock!

 

Stem Cells – Back by Popular Demand

              Support   Oppose   No opinion
All adults      59        35         6

Democrats       68        26         6
Republicans     40        55         5
Independents    64        30         6

Liberal Dem.    74        21         5
Mod./Con. Dem.  63        31         6

Lib./Mod. Rep.  57        37         6
Cons. Rep.      26        71         4

By Jon Cohen | March 9, 2009; 11:15 AM ET
Categories: Post Polls

That was March 2009.  We’ve lifted the moratorium and moved forward.  What are your thoughts today?

Remember that song, “How Long has this been going on?” by Ace?  Well a lot of us probably had no idea stem cell research had such an early beginning.  We certainly didn’t hear about it all the time when I was growing up — so it wasn’t considered a household word.  Ah but it was being conducted quite innocuously for more than a century and a half.

The history of stem cell research had a benign, embryonic beginning in the mid 1800′s with the discovery that some cells could generate other cells. Now stem cell research is embroiled in a controversy over the use of human embryonic stem cells for research. In the early 1900′s the first real stem cells were discovered when it was found that some cells generate blood cells.

The history of stem cell research includes work with both animal and human stem cells. Stem cells can be classified into three broad categories, based on their ability to differentiate. Totipotent stem cells are found only in early embryos. Each cell can form a complete organism (e.g., identical twins). Pluripotent stem cells exist in the undifferentiated inner cell mass of the blastocyst and can form any of the over 200 different cell types found in the body. Multipotent stem cells are derived from fetal tissue, cord blood, and adult stem cells. Although their ability to differentiate is more limited than pluripotent stem cells, they already have a track record of success in cell-based therapies.

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The tragedy of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings showed how effectively
radiation could obliterate the rapidly dividing cells of the marrow. Most
radiation victims close to ground zero died within 30 days of exposure.
Follow-up research found the only way to save mice from a dose of lethal
irradiation was to transplant bone marrow from a healthy donor mouse. The
results led others to wonder whether radiation and chemical agents could be used
against a disease of rampant cell division, cancer. Their hunch was right, and
by 1965 the first cure of childhood leukemia by a bone marrow transplant was
announced. The researchers didn’t know it at the time, but the marrow’s rescue
worker was the hematopoietic stem cell or HSC.

Excerpt: Stem Cell Now, Chapter 7, Christopher Thomas Scott

In a recent conversation regarding stem cell, a colleague went on record stating that he believes that much of this research brew-ha-ha has more to do with a quest for scientific supremacy than anything else.  Sure, he did not dispute the fact that billions have already been spent on finding cures for debilitating diseases and other malaise; but the bottom line he maintains, is who gets there first.  And, he went on to elaborate; little do the political and scientific communities want widely publicized their true motivation.  He likened it to the space race of the 1960′s during JFK’s administration and our fascination with space exploration.  Isn’t that where Buckley’s book found its success?  He was sure — no adamant that there was and still is a political agenda to reign supreme in the global scientific community.  I didn’t readily agree with him, but he got me to thinking.  So I asked Dr. Jerry Rosenbloom:

“My approach ladies and gentlemen, maintains that if the federal government stops funding stem cell research then the U.S. will lose its leadership position.  As a superpower we certainly don’t want to find ourselves bringing up the rear.”

Excerpt from So what’s in the Petri dish, Dr. Periwinkle? pp. 346-347

So who the hell is Dr. Jerry Rosenbloom?  Just Periwinkle’s right hand.

What do you think?  Are our collective hearts in the right place or are all of these efforts merely means to some larger more arcane vision?  Give me your thoughts.

“I want things to happen quickly. I certainly want to benefit within my
lifetime. I don’t want to get out of this wheelchair at the age of 75. I am 51,
and am now very healthy, and would like to be out of the chair very soon. I’m
not willing to resign myself to being an advocate for research that will benefit
people only after I’m gone. I’m not that noble.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004), in a 2003 interview

Much of the promise of stem cells rests on a scheme for replacing parts worn
out by age, injury, or infirmity. Unfortunately, the reality of stem cell
biology is overshadowed by the hype. For example, the future is imagined to hold
an inexhaustible source of stem cells with a perfect genetic match banked at a
local hospital, available for your every medical whim. Need a new pancreas?
Place your order, and three weeks later a new one lies ready and waiting in the
surgical suite. Heart failure? No worries — a few injections with multipotent
stem cells will grow new cardiac tissue. And thus may 21st century patients
extend their lives — through a kind of patchwork medicine, held together by a
fabulous, potent cell. This future sounds incredibly exciting. But it will take
time — and vision — to us get there.

The truth of the matter is, we’ve got a goodly distance to go before
regenerative medicine — a catchall term for stem cell therapy — will help large
numbers of patients. It is very possible that many diseases will have to wait
for cures from other quarters of medicine. Before any medical treatment
(including cell and tissue transplants) is made available through hospitals or
clinics, it must first be tested in humans through tightly regulated phases of
clinical trials. The first phase determines safety and side effects in a few
dozen subjects; the second phase tests efficacy in hundreds of patients; the
third and subsequent phases try to prove statistical significance and confirm
its effects in many hundreds or thousands of patients. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) evaluates the data, and if the results pass muster, the
product is approved for sale and moves to the market. Developing a new therapy
goes slowly and is terribly expensive — discovering, testing, and manufacturing
one new drug can take between 10 and 15 years and cost nearly a billion dollars.

Excerpt: ‘Stem Cell Now’, Christopher Thomas Scott

And what are Periwinkle’s thoughts on the subject?  Let’s ask him.

“I’m developing therapies derived from our own genetic composition–not cloning. You and Pryor are getting way ahead of yourselves–too much Science Fiction Theatre, I trust.  Humans are much more complicated.  Relax, we don’t have the technology.”

Exerpt from page 151  ‘So what’s in the Petri dish, Dr. Periwinkle?’

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More than 40 personal friends and family attended Michael Fontaine’s booking signing featuring his new novel, “So what’s in the Petri Dish, Dr. Periwinkle?   A number of stimulating conversations surrounded Fontaine’s  work in relationship to ‘What is the extent of man’s reach when it comes to the moral, ethical, and medical issues of stem cell exploration.

What’s it like to know that your future and a decision that could possibly change your future in a huge way is going to be decided not as much by scientists, but by politicians?

That’s exactly what Dr. Oliver Periwinkle learns only after a few months as Chair of the Albert Einstein Department of Science and Technology at Belvedere Crossing University.  Excited by the prospect of joining the faculty of one of the nation’s pre-eminent research institutions in the fall of 2000; he brings with him the promise of a significant federal grant to continue a highly controversial Stem Cell initiative.  Obviously life is good. But as quickly as fortunes can blossom, they can turn, and turn they do as a bizarre series of events start to unfold.

So begins the often amusing and delightful romp through the ‘Halls of Letters’ that chronicle a litany of asinine behavior, a gluttony of academic has-beens, political crackpots, government double-talk and of course–coruption and greed. “So what’s in the Petri dish, is set in a university environment fractured by cynicism and an insanity that has run-a-muck.  Periwinkle encounters a host of good guys and bad guys, G-men and ‘Wise-guys’ in a brush with Nobel Prize fortune and fame; corporate espionage and grogressional hearings where “I have no recollection of that Senator”, more often than not is bellowed by just about anyone with something to hide.  It is an exaggeration of the absurd–a microcosm that peeks behind its own closed doors, secret files, and clandestine meeting only to discover time and time again, ‘the enemy is us’.

‘So what’s in the Petri dish’ is the coming of age of a naive latter day scholar who is indoctrinated to a culture of perpetual chaos as a university transforms itself in the midst of perhaps one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our time.  Here we get a glimpse of idealism as it comes face to face with reality while society struggles with a phenomenon that will ultimately shape and define its values.   Alas, ‘So what’s in the Petri dish, is a venture into higher educations inner sanctum, yet never once promising the reader to emerge any smarter, but perhaps wiser for making the journey. 

Purchase @ http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/AdvancedSearch/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=Michael%20Fontaine

It is not clear what rights the embryo has. Do you define a human to be an
embryo? There are definitions on a fetus and what rights it has, but not those
of embryos. Many ask the question of whether we should be experimenting with a
potential human at all. There are many debates in the scientific community as to
the procedures that are acceptable. Obviously research should not cease, but
questions on the ethics must be examined carefully.  View Video @:

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