Posted: 03/11/08

Adult Stem Cell Success

Kerby Anderson

Can adult stem cells result in 100,000 fewer amputations each year in the United States? That is a question some scientists are asking after the recent success at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

The new procedure offers hope to patients with critical limb ischemia which occurs when a patient has severely blocked leg arteries. After ten years of clinical trials on mice and rats, doctors are moving on to human patients. The doctors transplant a purified form of the patient's own stem cells into their leg muscles to grow new, small blood vessels and restore circulation in their legs.

Without this treatment, these patients would have diminished blood flow. This causes wounds that don't heal. It can also lead to gangrene, which leads to loss of toes, feet or legs. This results in more than 100,000 amputations each year.

This latest success will certainly be helpful to patients with blocked arteries and possibly paves the way to other important medical applications. It also illustrates something I have talked about in the past. Adult stem cells are providing numerous medical advances without raising the ethical concerns surrounding embryonic stem cells.

Dr. David Prentice with the Family Research Council estimates that there are over 1100 FDA approved clinical trials going on in the United States using adult stem cells. He and Bill Saunders have produced a booklet entitled, Adult Stem Cell Treatments: Nine Faces of Success. They tell the story a representative sample of the many people who have been helped by adult stem cell research.

The latest successes of adult stem cell research demonstrate that we don't need to abandon the president's pro-life policy concerning adult stem cell research. Nor do we need to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. I'm Kerby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

By Kerby Anderson Click here for bio and archived articles