on Stem Cell Research from over at DailyKos.
God FU#*#NG Damn it, when will we get this right? by 2kate2
It makes me nuts to read posts here in DailyKos about stem cell research. Oh, I don't really understand the issue! I haven't actually read the bill! Isn't this one good for Democrats? Can't we win on this issue?
Here is the fucking issue: the basic biology of human embryonic stem cell research is unbelievably complex. Understanding how these pluripotent cells get their instructions to become nerve cells, blood cells, bone cells, whatever--is going to take 10,000 people working full time for 10,000,000 hours. The goddamned NIH is the place for this to happen. Is it happening? Shit, no. Hell, no. NO.
Do you want to know how intensely interested some people are in the promise of embryonic stem cell research?
Do you want to know why I hope to spit on this president's grave one day?
This is a look at the inside of cut spinal cord. The green squiggly things are axons coming out of nerve cells heading for the black hole that is the site of an injury.
http://s172.photobucket.com/...Do you want to see AFTER? After the researchers have managed, over 5 long years, to figure out exactly which type of precursor cells are needed to bridge that gap?
But wait.
The people who made this happen are working at a lab at the University of Colorado. They have to set up their equpment like a kosher kitchen, because not one red cent of federal funds can be spent on figuring out things like how to get stem cells to become neural precursors, and how to get those neural precursors to become astrocytes. Astrocytes turn out, it seems, to be the kind of cells that know how to grow across the scorched earth of an injured spinal cord.
Consider also the case of Geron. They have managed-- working with a single discarded blastocyst from the original set of lines that George W Bush said federal funds could be spent on--to generate a healthy and productive bank of stem cells. Except Geron is a private company, funded only through investors. To expect Geron to do this heavy lifting all by its lonesome is a bit like demanding that a single paving company create the web of interstate highways all by itself, with no help from the federal government whatsoever. One company to do all the surveying, all the hauling of substrate material, all the design work, all the grunt labor of moving the rock to lay the roadbed . . . one small private firm--the only one that has pulled this off in 6 years . . . imagine what was possible before August of 2001, when Mister Bush called a halt.
Repairs of broken cords--which means life and productivity and families released from misery--is going to happen. Those repairs are going to take probably a DECADE longer than they should, thanks to our moron of a president, and our moronic congress that will NOT override his moronic veto.
Know one thing that will have happened in that decade in my house? We will have spent a hundred thousand bucks of our personal resources keeping my paralyzed husband healthy while our kids grew up, left home, and forgot--forgot!--what it was like when their Dad could chase them around the front yard.
Mister Bush, I spit on you and all your generations for a thousand years.
http://s172.photobucket.com/...Yes, those green axons are crossing the injury site. The lab animals that got this treatment recovered their ability to walk across a tricky little ladder. We've waited about 10 times as long as necessary for this result in lab animals, and we're going to keep waiting, apparently, so that Mister Bush can declare his morality once again before all the world.
Kossacks . . . this is not just a political question. For the love of Christ, it's exactly what it seems to be: an emergency for all of us who are perforce residents in the Land of The Fucked. Stop dithering. If you can't be bothered to find out what's happening, do me a personal favor and shut up.
You can read the full research results here
Money quote:
"Transplantation of astrocytes derived from embryonic glial-restricted precursors (GRPs) promoted robust axon growth and restoration of locomotor function after acute transection injuries of the adult rat spinal cord."
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