Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

STEM CELL BREAKTHROUGH: A SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL LEAP FORWARD

The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine this year went to an especially noteworthy recipient, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese pharmacologist and researcher.  Breakpoint's Eric Metaxas offers a good introduction to the man and his work:

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Thirteen years ago, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese pharmacologist and researcher, made a social call to a friend’s fertility clinic. His friend invited him to look at some human embryos through a microscope.

What Yamanaka saw set him on a path that culminated in a Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology. And in the process has won him praise from the pro-life community.

As Yamanaka later told the “New York Times,” “when I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters . . . I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

The search for “another way” took eight years, but eventually Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University discovered a way to turn “adult skin cells into the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells without using an actual embryo.”

Using methods first developed with laboratory mice, Yamanaka and company “reprogrammed” the adult skin cells by adding “genes called master regulators to the skin cells’ chromosomes. These genes can change the cell’s behavior by turning other genes on and off.”

THE LATEST "SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: THE INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PRO-FAMILY NEWS, FEBRUARY 3, 2011

These compilations from a variety of sources by the Family Research Council continue to offer interested people a gold mine.  A new edition appears every two weeks.  Readers will find in each a wealth of information not readily found elsewhere. For previous reviews I've posted, click here.   For a complete list of articles from this latest edition,  click "continue reading" below.

Meanwhile here's a quote from Hadley Arkes' article on Ave Maria University in south Florida:  (my underlining)

But a collision of worlds – and a serious challenge – came out at dinner with a dear friend, an accomplished professor, a graduate of Harvard transplanted from the Northeast. He has two daughters at Ave Maria and he said, when I pressed him, that he wouldn’t send any of his children to Harvard. The new sexual ethic, whether on pornography, promiscuity, abortion, homoeroticism, is so pervasive, touching every aspect of life, that there is little room for those who will not pay homage to that reigning ethic. I do think that it is mainly the schools with a religious character that can offer now real academic freedom and a course of study in the humanities not warped by ideology.

Me: What an extraordinary admission!  For "real academic freedom" and a "course of study in the humanities not warped by ideology,"  it is to religious schools one must go.

THE LATEST "SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE REVIEW: THE INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PRO-FAMILY NEWS" - JANUARY 20, 2011

These compilations of articles from a variety of sources by the Family Research Council continue to offer interested people a gold mine.  A new edition appears every two weeks.  Readers will find in each a wealth of information not readily found elsewhere. For previous reviews I've posted, click here.

ADULT STEM CELLS - AMAZING EYE CURES

  The Family Research Council reports: 

Liberals seem blind to the success of adult stem cells. Maybe if they saw the evidence from a recent Italian study, their eyes would be opened to the potential of ethical research. After cataracts, corneal disease is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. In September, Dr. Jean Peduzzi Nelson testified to the U.S. Senate about the success that Italian doctors have achieved at restoring sight to patients with corneal blindness, using adult stem cells. The details of the successful adult stem cell treatment were given in a June 2010 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Italian doctors treated 112 patients who had corneal blindness from chemical burns. The clinical team isolated adult stem cells from a portion of the patient's eye, grew the cells in the lab to create many new corneal cells, and transplanted the new cells onto the damaged eyes. Over 77% of patients recovered normal vision, and 13% of patients had partial vision restored. One of the successful transplants was a man who had severe damage in both eyes as a result of a chemical burn in 1948. The doctors grafted stem cells from a small section of his left eye to both eyes. His vision is now close to normal. Seeing is believing! Adult stem cells are helping patients now!

FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL (FRC) COLLATES VALUABLE ESSAYS AND ARTICLES

The Family Research Council is launching The Social Conservative Review.  An e-mail states it will constitute

"a unique summary of news of interest to social conservatives. The focus of this comprehensive collation of stories, journal articles, and op-eds is the intersection of moral  concern and public life, the issues that reflect and shape not only events and legislation, but the nation's very soul.

FRC will send the Review out twice monthly.

It will feature important pieces from the country's leading newspapers, magazines, journals and conservative Web sites. FRC's goal is to help keep you informed -- and ready to act -- about the policies and proposals, research and reports that bear directly on life, liberty, family and Christian faith.

Me: I have reproduced the e-mail below, complete with links.  It looks to me like a fabulous service.

---

The Social Conservative Review: The Insider's Guide to Pro-Family News

April 29, 2010

Educational Freedom and Reform

• "The ACLU: Unwelcome Schoolyard Bully?"
  Cynthia Hill, Family Research Council
• 2010 April School Reform News (full text pdf)
  Edited by Ben Boychuk, The Heartland Institute
• "Making Men without Chests: The Intellectual Life and Moral Imagination"
  R. J. Snell, First Principles Journal
• "Are There Harms of Home Schooling?"
  Christopher O. Tollefsen, The Witherspoon Institute
• "Expulsion may await campus pro-lifers"
  Bill Bumpas, OneNewsNow
• "Teach Social Justice-Or Else"
  Mark Bauerlein, Students For Academic Freedom
• "Education Spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Stimulating the Status Quo"
  Lindsey Burke, The Heritage Foundation

Environmental Issues

• "How a Climate Change Treaty Threatens You, Your Nation and Your Church"
  Dr. Cal Beisner, FRC Family Policy Lecture
• "My Tribute to Earth Day"
  Jeanne Monahan, Family Research Council
• "Titles You Can't Make Up: Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming"
  Tom McClusky, Family Research Council Action
• "Creation and Man"
  Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship
• "Getting Into Hot Water: Evangelicals and Global Warming"
  Benjamin B. Phillips, Acton Institute, Journal of Markets and Morality
• "Polls on the Environment and Global Warming"
  Karlyn Bowman, Andrew Rugg, American Enterprise Institute
• "Celebrate Earth's Best Friend"
  James M. Taylor, Heartland Institute
• "The Green Shepherd: The White House Wants Churches To Advance It's Climate Change Agenda"
  Meghan Clyne, The Weekly Standard
• "Environmentalism is now a religion, and being overtaken by extremism"
  Robert H. Nelson, The Catholic Thing

Faith and Policy

• "Fiscal Conservatism Is Not Enough: What Social Conservatives Offer the Party of Lincoln"
  Robert W. Patterson, The Family in America Journal
• "Prophet Jim Wallis and the Ecclesia of Economic Ignorance"
  John Couretas, The Acton Institute
• "Living Under God"
  Ken Blackwell, Family Research Council

Health Care

• "States Face Their First ObamaCare Test"
  Grace-Marie Turner, The Wall Street Journal
• "Hospital Visit Horrors? Here's the Rest of the Story"
  Peter Sprigg, Family Research Council
• "Ten Ways Consumer-Driven Health Care Is a Proven Success"
  Greg Scandlen, The Heartland Institute
• "The Separation of Health and State: What happens when all medical decisions are political"
  Opinion, Wall Street Journal
• "Krugman Admits Rationing (Death Panels) From Obamacare"
  Wesley J. Smith, First Things
• "The Tea Party Spirit and Lawless Health Care Reform"
  Charles R. Kesler, Claremont Review of Books
• "Bad Medicine: The Public Square"
  Joseph Bottum, First Things
• "US Is Turning Into Dependency Society"
  Lee Edwards, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation
• "Where's the Administration's Cost Estimate?"
  James C. Capretta, National Review

Homosexuals in the Military

• "FRC's Tony Perkins Condemns Franklin Graham's Rescinded Invitation" to participate in Pentagon prayer event.
  FRC Press Release
• "Sex Matters in the Military"
  Peter Sprigg, The Washington Times
• "Homosexuals in the Military"
  Mackubin Thomas Owens, The Ashbrook Center
• "The Real Anti-Christian Bigotry"
  Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law and Justice

Judiciary

• The Judicial Review
  Family Research Council Action's Constitutional and Legal Commentary
• "The Coming Constitutional Debate"
  Judge Stephen Markham, Imprimis
• "Koh Fails the Democracy Test"
  John Fonte, Hudson Institute
• "Delegitimizing the Roberts Court"
  David Marion, The Ashbrook Institute
• "ADF on striking down the National Day of Prayer Statute"
  Alliance Defense Fund
• "More Prayer than Protests"
  Tobin Grant, Christianity Today

Marriage and Family

Family Economics

• "The Family GDP: How Marriage and Fertility Drive the Economy"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council
• "The Economics of the Family Household"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council Family Policy Lecture
• "Family Policy Lecture: The Crushing Burden of Student Loans on Family Formation for Generation X+"
  Dr. Allan Carlson, The Howard Center, Family Research Council Family Policy Lecture
• "Obamacare Update: About That Only Tax the Rich Thing . . ."
  Tom McClusky, Family Research Council Action
• "The VAT's in the Fire"
  Ken Blackwell, The Patriot Post

Marriage

• "Facing the Bad News (on out-of-wedlock births)"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., The Catholic Thing
• "Culture Clash: Monogamy vs. Polyandry"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council

Pornography

• "The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community"
  Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Family Research Council
• "Standing for Truth"
  Daniel Weiss, Citizen Magazine
• "Pornography and the Muslim World"
  Carson Holloway, The Public Discourse
• "Public urged to take action to prevent .xxx web domain"
  Erin Roach, Baptist Press

Religious Liberty

• "Wall of Separation Between Church and State: Myth, Reality, Results"
  Dr. Kenyn M. Cureton, FRC Lecture
• "High Court Says Mojave Cross in California Can Stay"
  Robert Barnes, The Washington Post
• "Supreme Court Protects War Memorial Cross"
  Jay Sekulow, American Center for Law and Justice
• "Texas students see religious bias with 'year of Our Lord'"
  Casey Curlin, The Washington Times
• "Homeless in Binghamton"
  Faith J.H. McDonnell, Front Page Magazine
• "Western Civilization on Trial"
  Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, National Review Online Symposium
• "Hastings Case Tests Religious Freedom on Campus"
  By Newt Gingrich, Jim Garlow, The Washington Post

Sanctity of Life

Abortion

• "Post-Abortion Suffering: A Psychiatrist Looks at the Effects of Abortion"
  Dr. Martha Shuping and Chris Gacek, J.D., Ph.D., Family Research Council
• "Virginia Cuts Funding of Abortions"
  Jeanne Monahan, Family Research Council
• "Abortion Isn't Painless"
  Editorial, The Washington Times
• Oklahoma Senate overrides governor's vetoes to pass abortion laws
  Joe Sterling, CNN
• Legal status of induced abortions around the globe
  CBC News

Adoption

• "A Passion to Serve, A Vision for Life"
  Family Research Council Publication
• "Louisiana Senate panel rejects gay adoption expansion"
  Bill Barrow, Times-Picayune
• "Visits to mission result in adoption"
  Rob Hedelt, Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

Cloning

• "UK Scientists Clone 3-Parent Embryos"
  Dr. David Prentice, Family Research Council

Bioethics

• "Obama Administration Eyes a More Active Role in Genomics"
  Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, BNET
• "Panel to take broad view of bioethics: President Obama appoints commission to advise on stem cells, clinical trials and more"
  Brendan Borrell, Nature
• "The First Christian Voices Against Euthanasia"
  David W.T. Brattston, The Weekly Standard
• "Euthanasia Bill turned away, but work goes on"
  Charlie Butts, One News Now

Stem Cell Research

• Family Research Council's major adult stem cell initiative, "Adult Stem Cells Saved My Life" ("Stem Cell Research Facts") features compelling video stories of persons whose lives have been transformed through adult stem cell implantation. The site also contains leading-edge information on this dynamic, transformative and entirely ethical type of stem cell treatment.
• "Vatican Funds Adult Stem Cell Research"
  Dr. David Prentice, Family Research Council

Other Articles of Note for Social Conservatives

• "Apologist in chief"
  Ken Blackwell, World Magazine
• "A Crisis Republicans Should Not Waste"
  Hadley Arkes, Weekly Standard
• "After Virtue: Localism and the Restoration of Character and Community"
  Austin Lipari, First Principles Journal
• "How America became a 'secular-socialist machine'"
  Newt Gingrich, The Washington Post
• "Schumer: Obama's 'counter-productive' Israel policy 'has to stop'"
  Ben Smith, The Politico
• "The Foreign Policy of Self-Abasement"
  Mona Charen, National Review
• "When Free Speech Wins"
  Eric Giunta, Front Page Magazine

ADULT STEM CELLS vs. EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS

From the Family Research Council:

Yesterday, the National Institutes of Health released the first 13 lines of cells under Obama's new policy to destroy life in the name of embryonic stem cell (ESC) "research." "This is the first down payment," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, drawing a perfect picture of the commodification of life under this administration. Obama's decision puts the government in a business which is not only unethical but also medically unnecessary.

As recently as this week, researchers announced that they successfully used adult stem cells to treat lung disease in mice. The week before, scientists produced evidence that they had used patients' own cells to repair heart damage caused by heart attacks. President Obama would like us to believe that, through his policy, the U.S. is on the cutting-edge of science. In reality, the best technology is moving in the opposite direction of ESC research. To see how ethical science is helping patients now, check out FRC's new "Adult Stem Cells Saved My Life" videos on our website.

GHASTLY: "ETHICISTS" ADVOCATE HARVESTING ORGANS FROM ABORTED FETUSES

Chuck Colson reports on the gruesome suggestion. 

Utilitarianism has a hideous strength when it comes to medical ethics. If even a ghastly procedure can “save lives,” well, who’s to say it’s immoral?

 For years, scientists and celebrities supporting embryo-destructive stem cell research have used two arguments. First—blind to the destruction of the embryo itself—they argue embryonic stem cell research will save lives. Second, they maintain that embryos leftover from fertility treatments will otherwise be wasted.

Now, one stem-cell expert is using these same arguments to promote harvesting organs from aborted fetuses.

Speaking at a conference in March, Oxford University stem-cell expert Sir Richard Gardner commented that he was surprised the possibility had not been considered, and that experiments in mice have shown that fetal kidneys grow extremely quickly when transplanted to adult animals

As reported in the UK’s Daily Mail, Sir Richard, an advisor to Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority sees this ghastly practice as a potential solution to the shortage of

MICHAEL FUMENTO: "THE GREAT STEM-CELL-RESEARCH SCAM"

And scam it is.  Michael Fumento contrasts the remarkable advances using adult stem cell research with the lack of any promising results employing embryonic stem cells.  So why the embryonic stem cell funding?  Phony propagandizing by an ignorant and complicit media and $$$$$.  It's a scam.  Read the article and get angry.  (HT: NRO Web briefing.)

NIH STEM CELL GUIDELEINES ETHICALLY IRRESPONSIBLE, SCIENTIFICALLY UNWORTHY, USELESS TO PATIENTS

So claims the Family Research Council in a press release today:

July 7, 2009

Washington D.C. - Today, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins responded to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines implementing President Obama's executive order for federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). President Obama's order and the NIH guidelines remove life-protecting limits on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

"Embryonic stem cell research requires dissecting and commoditizing the youngest, most vulnerable humans, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "The new guidelines demanded by the President promote poor science, reflect bad health care policy, and do nothing to fund treatments with adult stem cells that are providing documented benefits for suffering patients. The guidelines implement a plan that will force taxpayers to foot the bill for research that involves human destruction, not healing.

"The NIH guidelines create an incentive to create and destroy so-called 'excess' embryos, pasting a veneer of 'ethics' on unethical experiments. They remove limits on taxpayer funding

EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS REVISITED -- SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Yuval Levin reports:

Ten members of the President’s Council on Bioethics published a statement today at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum expressing disappointment with President Obama’s remarks and policies on the funding of embryonic stem cell research. They take the president to task for mischaracterizing the nature of his predecessor’s policy, they highlight the emergence of alternative sources of pluripotent stem cells, and they criticize Obama for leaving open the door to human cloning even as he claims to close it. . .

What’s notable about this statement, though, is that rather than just express disagreement with the ethical views underlying Obama’s position on embryonic stem cell research, it criticizes Obama for mischaracterizing the plain facts of the matter, which unfortunately has been his consistent practice on this subject. On that front, too, last night offered a model of persistence.   (more . .)

SCIENCE, ETHICS, AND PUBLIC POLICY - WHO DECIDES?

Update 3/21/09 -  Dr. David Prentice and Clarke Forsythe, Wasting Tax Dollars on the Wrong Research Dr. Prentice is one of the foremost experts on stem cell research. 

- Update - Charles Krauthammer compares the stem cell addresses of President Bush ("Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president") with that of President Obama ("Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men.")

- (Original Post)I am grateful to Yuval Levin for the following post at the National Review Corner:

The surrender of political authority to scientists evident in Barack Obama’s stem cell executive order and remarks last Monday seems to have hit a bit of a nerve. I wrote about the subject in the Washington Post last week, but over this weekend several voices on Obama’s side of the stem cell question have made the same point: that whatever your view, you’ve got to articulate and defend it as a moral, social, and political matter, not defer to scientists on a non-scientific question.

The Washington Post has an editorial making that case today, and yesterday the Post ran an op-ed from former Harvard stem cell scientist David Shaywitz reminding us of the limits and weaknesses (as well as the great strengths) of the academic scientific enterprise.

Meanwhile, Scott Gottlieb’s Wall Street Journal op-ed highlights a different irony of the stem cell policy: the way in which many of the most forthright champions of embryo research simultaneously favor putting up serious obstacles to private sector medical innovation.

And if you want more on science and politics, there’s this book I could mention too.  [Me: Levin is referring, of course, to his Oct. 2008 book, Imagining the Future: Science and Americanm Democracy].

UNBELIEVABLE: BILL CLINTON DOESN'T KNOW WHAT AN EMBRYO IS!

Bill Clinton doesn't realize that an embryo is an egg that has already been fertilized!  You don't believe me?  Check out this site providing the video and transcript of Dr. Gupta's CNN interview with Clinton (March 11, 2009). This is truly unbelievable!  What do the so-called bright and powerful people in Washington actually know?   These are people to whom we entrust decision-making powers?  Really, really scary.

(Aside: What if Sarah Palin had given such an answer?  Imagine.... just imagine...!)

THE POOR QUALITY OF STEM-CELL POLLING

Update  3/11/09:  - Yuval Levin offers more insight

(Original Post) - Ramesh Ponnuru - [bolding mine]

It would be hard enough to get an accurate read of public opinion on policy questions involving stem cells if the only difficulty were that most people don't know much about the subject.  But the fact that pollsters have almost invariably worded the questions badly has not made it any easier. Over at Polling Report, the latest numbers cited are from a Gallup poll taken in February. The question is whether the current "very limited funding" should be kept or expanded "to allow more stem-cell research." Your typical respondent is going to think that the question concerns whether to spend less or more money.

Next up is a Time poll. It stacks the deck in three ways. It highlights the potential benefits of the research in a misleading way — for example, it claims that stem cells could be used to "treat or cure" Alzheimer's disease, something actual researchers, even those supportive of the research, have long considered a fairy tale. It says that the human embryos used in the research have been "discarded from fertility clinics." And it doesn't mention that the research destroys the embryos.

And on and on it goes down the page. I'm sure I wouldn't be happy about the news contained in an accurate, well-worded poll, but I'd still like to see one.

Adam Keiper adds significant information:

Before signing his executive order overturning President Bush’s stem-cell policy, President Obama today delivered a speech explaining his decision. The implications of the policy will be widely debated here and

BIOETHICAL QUESTIONS ADDRESSED BY THE VATICAN'S "DIGNITAS PERSONAE"

Twenty-three pages in length, the document comes bundled with a Vatican-issued summary and accompanying Q&A.

National Review's Yuval Levin writes:

One of the great ironies of the stem cell debates of the last few years has been that some of the most serious attention to scientific detail and reality has come from Catholic circles, while some of the most wide-eyed messianic faith-healing talk has come from liberal political (and sometimes even scientific) circles. There is another example of the former today, with a new Vatican document about reproductive technologies and bioethics. I’m not a Catholic and am in no position to speak to the theological components of the document, and I don’t agree with all of its conclusions (on IVF, for instance) but its treatment of the latest scientific developments and of the related ethical questions is exceptionally good, and its attitude—very pro-science and very clear about ethical boundaries and the reasons for them, with arguments that reach well beyond Catholic theology—is very impressive.

The view of many of us who have argued against the destruction of embryos for research is that we ought not understand ourselves to be faced with a choice between science and ethics, but with the challenge of championing both, which is a challenge both to scientific ingenuity and to ethical reflection and argument (a case I take up, among other issues, in my recent book on science and democracy). The Bush administration’s approach to the stem cell debate has been one example of how to think in these terms. This document, wherever you stand on its Catholic-specific elements, is another very worthy one.  [Emphases mine]

ADULT STEM CELL ADVANCES

The Family Research Council suggests more causes for Thanksgiving:

 As we count our blessings this week, consider what one field - adult stem cell research and therapy - is accomplishing for human healing:

Liver Repair. Doctors at Imperial College, London, have shown treatment benefits from using adult stem cells collected from the patients' own blood to treat cirrhosis of the liver. Three of the nine patients treated showed almost complete repair after 12 weeks.

Cerebral Palsy. Duke University scientists have treated a young girl for cerebral palsy using her umbilical cord blood, which the parents had saved. Two months after receiving her own stem cells, the girl is reported to have made a 50 percent recovery.

Windpipe Reconstruction. A Colombian woman whose windpipe was destroyed by tuberculosis received a transplant using donated tissue and her own adult stem cells to form the replacement organ. The international team that conducted the work included scientists in Italy and the United Kingdom and surgeons in Spain. The surgery occurred in June, there is still no rejection of the new tissue, and she can now walk flights of stairs and go dancing.

STUNNING NEW PROGRESS ON STEM CELL RESEARCH

Reporter Rob Stein writes in the Washington Post:

Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires associated with embryonic stem cell research. [more . . .]

The Family Research Council summarizes:

Adult stem cells and other ethical stem cell research continue to rack up success after success, while embryonic stem cells continue to fail. Stanford researchers have verified that embryonic stem cells transplanted into mice are resoundingly rejected by the immune system and destroyed. In contrast, adult stem cells from menstrual blood showed the potential to treat peripheral artery disease and prevent limb amputation. An international research group led by Dr. Michael Murphy, Indiana University School of Medicine, restored blood circulation and limb function in mice treated with these cells, which could potentially be used as an off-the-shelf treatment for damaged or diseased limbs. Japanese researchers report that they can produce flexible stem cells from wisdom teeth, even after the teeth have been in a freezer for three years. Today, Harvard researchers report that they can produce insulin-secreting cells directly from other pancreatic cells in mice, improving diabetes symptoms. And in case you missed it, Maarten van der Weijden won the open-water race Olympic gold medal. His life was saved years ago by an adult stem cell transplant for leukemia, one of thousands of lives saved by adult stem cells.

Update - Adult Stem Cell Success Stories 2008 Update:  January - June

ADULT STEM CELL SUCCESS STORIES--2007 UPDATE

The Family Resource Council issued the report.

Stem Cell Research Breakthrough

The New York Times reports a new stem cell method eases ethical concerns.  The Family Research Council summarizes:

Two prominent embryonic stem cell scientists today published results showing that they can produce cells with the qualities of embryonic stem cells directly from human skin cells, without the need for creating or destroying embryos, without cloning, and without the need for eggs used in cloning. The groundbreaking news by Dr. James Thomson, first to grow human embryonic stem cells, and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, Japan, was that

Adult Stem Cells Rebuild a 58-year-old Woman's Heart

I found this story of the way adult stem cells healed Carron Morrow's serious heart condition thrilling and worth posting.   Chuck Colson tells the story  this way:

An event planner named Carron Morrow says she had two choices when it came to treating a serious heart condition: Sign liability papers for an unusual new treatment—or drop dead.

Not surprisingly, she chose to sign the papers—and became another stem-cell miracle. An adult stem-cell miracle, that is.

Carron, a 58-year-old Alabama mother, was in bad shape last year after suffering four heart attacks. The right side of her heart was functioning at less than 50 percent. Carron needed a new heart—but

David Freddoso: "If Embryonic Research Is So Promising, Why Do Its Backers Need to Lie?

Good question.  Freddoso answers the question here.

Update: British Researchers Grow Heart Tissue From Stem Cells   (HT: Kathryn Jean Lopez)

Incredible Stem Cell Research Breakthrough - Of The Non-Embroyo-Destroying Kind

Kathryn Jean Lopez draws attention to an amazing achievement in stem cell research of the non-embryo-destroying kind:

British scientists have grown the world's first artificial liver from stem cells in a breakthrough that will one day provide entire organs for transplant.

The technique that created the 'mini-liver', currently the size of a one pence piece, will be developed to create a full-size functioning liver.

Described as a 'Eureka moment' by the Newcastle University researchers, the tissue was created from blood taken from babies' umbilical cords just a few minutes after birth.

As Lopez writes:

Someone get this news to Missouri voters. You don't need to be pro-embryonic-stem-cell research to be pro-stem-cell-research, science, and hope.