<$BlogRSDUrl$>

My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-11-18

Media Lies and Mis- or non- Representations

In case you missed these two bits of news from Thursday:

Scientists for the first time have grown human heart valves using stem cells from the fluid that cushions babies in the womb - offering a revolutionary approach that may be used to repair defective hearts in the future. . . .

The Swiss experiment follows recent successes at growing bladders and blood vessels and suggests that people may one day be able to grow their own replacement heart parts - in some cases, even before they're even born.

And . . .

In promising new research, stem cells worked remarkably well at easing symptoms of muscular dystrophy in dogs, an experiment that experts call a significant step toward treating people.

Two dogs that were severely disabled by the disease were able to walk faster and even jump after the treatments.

The study was published online Wednesday by the journal Nature. It used stem cells taken from the affected dogs or other dogs, rather than from embryos.

As near as I can tell, these two stories pretty much trump anything put out by the embryonic stem cell research community so far. And not by just a little bit.

I wonder if the media, who has been startlingly silent in covering the successes of non-embryonic stem cell research, will continue to stonewall during the almost inevitable national and statewide battles over embryonic stem cell funding. Because, of course, . . .

For human use, the idea of using such "adult" stem cells from humans would avoid the controversial method of destroying human embryos to obtain stem cells.

And, by the way, THEY ACTUALLY WORK!!!
Posted by: Michael / 11/18/2006 11:27:00 PM

Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?