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In the space of less than a week, there has been a quiet revolution the effect of which is to challenge the conventional wisdom about the alleged curative powers of stem cells extracted from human embryos and brain tissue harvested from aborted babies. At the same time, a study released Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers strong evidence that re-engineering ordinary skin cells hold out genuine promise in alleviating and, perhaps, curing Parkinson's.

Let's look at all three.

#1. Over the weekend the newspaper The Scotsman published a revealing interview with Lord Patel of Dunkeld, chairman of the UK National Stem Cell Network and chancellor of Dundee University. While continuing to talk about the "potential" of embryonic stem cells, Lord Patel "has now conceded that [embryonic] stem cell research may never deliver new treatments."

The Scotsman's Lindsay Moss reported that Lord Patel said, "it could be five to ten years before stem cell treatments were widely available, with trials starting shortly in the UK and US." Going further, Lord Patel also admitted, "[W]e have to be cautious," adding, "It may not deliver therapy for anything. We may find that stem therapy is quite a risky business." In fact there have yet to be any human trials using embryonic stem cells.

#2. On Sunday the journal Nature Medicine published a study online that included "the latest result from a controversial trial with surgeries performed at the University of South Florida by Dr. Thomas Freeman, medical director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair," reported Lisa Greene of the St. Petersburg Times. Those "surgeries" transplanted tissue harvested from the brains of aborted babies into the brains of Parkinson's patients.

In the case of the oldest patient, a woman who was 61 when she received the transplant in 1993, an autopsy of the woman who died last year revealed that "The transplanted cells showed unmistakable signs of Parkinson's," Greene reported. "That means the disease is able to spread inside the brain, migrating from the woman's own cells to the transplanted ones."

Greene noted, "Some patients improved after the treatment, but some got worse. Overall, it didn't show a benefit."

[Over the years we have written dozens of stories about researchers who transplanted brain tissue from aborted babies into patients suffering from major diseases. In almost all cases, not only did the patient not improve, there were often dreadful side effects.]

Greene added, "Future research in this area would likely be with stem cells, rather than fetal cells [taken from aborted babies], scientists say."

But whereas most reports would then instantly jump to a glowing estimation of the "potential" of embryonic stem cells, Greene writes, "Although embryonic stem cells get the most attention, stem cells come from many places in the body." Which leads us to

#3. As we've discussed here and in National Right to Life News, there are many ethically unobjectionable and far more promising alternatives to scavenging human embryos for their stem cells. Among the brightest is reprogramming ordinary skin cells into becoming what are called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-author Marius Wernig reported real progress in treating Parkinson's in rodents using iPS cells. According to the MIT Technology Review, "this is the first time scientists have successfully manipulated such cells to integrate into brain tissue and reverse damage caused by a neurodegenerative disease"--in this case, Parkinson's.

Parkinson's is a disorder of the motor system caused by damage to or the death of dopamine neurons. Its most prominent characteristics are tremors, impaired balance and co-ordination, and stiffness of the limbs and trunk.

Wernig and his colleagues at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took skin cells from adult mice and used retroviruses "to activate genes that turned them into stem cells" in a culture.

According to the Catholic News Agency (CNA), the scientists "then transplanted the neurons into the brains of fetal mice. When the mice reached adulthood, the researchers examined the mice's brains and identified the transplanted cells, which they had labeled with a fluorescent marker."

Wernig, a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute, told CNA the cells "migrate nicely" into the brain and mature there. "They adopt functions of mature neurons," he explained. They also transplanted the dopamine neurons made from iPS cells into adult rats that had been given a chemically-induced form of Parkinson's.

The rats were tested weeks after the implant, and "their Parkinson's symptoms were significantly reduced, confirming that these substitutes for embryonic stem cells ... can replace lost or damaged neurons," Forbes magazine reported.

For all the good news, it is important to remember what we have written about numerous times in this space. To date the cells with the real life-saving character are adult/cord blood stem cells--cells from cord blood, bone marrow, amniotic fluid, the placenta, and elsewhere in the human body.

Part Two -- Challenge to Animal-Human Hybrids
Part Three -- Bella" Out Soon on DVD