Ellen Goodman's Latest Outright Falsehood

In her column this weekend, Goodman damns with faint praise the "genuine, bona fide scientific breakthrough" (her words, not mine) that "turned ordinary skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells...rais[ing] the possibility [of] mak[ing] stem cells without destroying human embryos."

She also amazingly asserts that scientists

don't know how to…take an ordinary cell from the human body and persuade it to become, say, a heart muscle cell or a brain cell or a liver cell.

In fact, all three have already been done successfully on humans, as described in three published, vetted scientific studies each for the latter two and in four patients with heart failure disease! Honestly, what rock are she and her alleged fact-checkers living under? How can anyone take this columnist" seriously?

ADULT-DERIVED STEM CELL SUCCESSES, in published peer-reviewed studies
BRAIN CELLS:
PARKINSON’S DISEASE
USING DIRECT STIMULATION OF PATIENTS’ ENDOGENOUS ADULT NEURAL STEM CELLS:
1. Love S et al., Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor induces neuronal sprouting in human brain, Nature Medicine 11, 703-704, July 2005

2. Slevin JT et al., Improvement of bilateral motor functions in patients with Parkinson disease through the unilateral intraputaminal infusion of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor, Journal of Neurosurgery 102, 216-222, February 2005

3. Gill SS et al.; "Direct brain infusion of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor in Parkinson disease"; Nature Medicine 9, 589-595; May 2003 (published online 31 March 2003)

HEART CELLS: The European Society of Cardiology in 2003 regenerated damaged heart tissue from adult stem cells gleaned from bone marrow. Columbia University's Dr. Michael Rosen said, "This is the first approach where you have an opportunity to actually heal a heart."

LIVER DISEASE: ALL USING ADULT-DERIVED STEM CELLS:

1. HEMOPHAGOCYTIC LYMPHOHISTIOCYTOSIS
Matthes-Martin S et al.; "Successful stem cell transplantation following orthotopic liver transplantation from the same haploidentical family donor in a girl with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis"; Blood 96, 3997-3999; Dec 1, 2000 http://www.bloodjournal.org/cgi/content/full/96/12/3997

2. CHRONIC LIVER DISEASE
Gordon MY et al., Characterisation and clinical application of human CD34+ stem/progenitor cell populations mobilised into the blood by G-CSF, Stem Cells 24, 1822-1830, July 2006; published online March 30, 2006 http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/abstract/2005-0629v2"

3. LIVER CIRRHOSIS
Terai S et al., Improved liver function in liver cirrhosis patients after autologous bone marrow cell fusion therapy, Stem Cells published online 15 June 2006; DOI: 10.1634/stemcells.2005-0542, http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/cgi/reprint/2005-0542v1.pdf


Cross-posted on ProLifeBlogs