Northwestern University released breakthrough findings this week of a major study on MS patients whose symptoms have been reversed by adult stem cell therapy. You'd think Chicago media would be lauding their own university's study on a debilitating disease that affects over 400,000 Americans. But this morning, the news is being carried in Boston, Kansas City and elsewhere, but the only Chicago-based news media that covered it was Chicago Public Radio. That was a short, three-paragraph story that was nearly overlooked.
Here's the CPR transcript:
New research from Northwestern University could be a breakthrough for people living with Multiple Sclerosis. A new kind of adult stem cell therapy appears to actually reverse the disease.
In people with MS, the immune system goes haywire, and attacks tissue in the brain. Northwestern’s Dr. Richard Burt took 21 patients, wiped out their immune systems with chemotherapy, and then injected them with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow. Burt says that reboots the immune system.
BURT: The immune system develops like in a newborn baby. And its default is to come back tolerant to self. So it no longer attacks the patient’s brain, and the disease stops.
Burt says the therapy seems not only to slow neurological decline, it actually undoes some of the damage. Patients in the trial improved for about two years after the therapy. Burt says his sample size was small, and much more research is needed to prove the benefits. The study is being published online today in the British journal, Lancet.
Here's The Lancet piece.
It was curious that in the Blagojevich impeachment, there was no mention of the Governor's Executive Order that bypassed the will of the legislature and set up a $25 million program to fund embryonic experimentation. It wasn't curious, it was clear -- the Democrats in the House had no problem with that particular bypass of the legislature, because the Democratic leadership wanted embryos to be experimented upon in Illinois.
The evidence is mounting that the best investment of private funds -- and government funds -- is in the non-controversial studies involving adult stem cells. Now we see the adult stem cell research is not only the most ethical way to move forward in stem cell research, its' the most fiscally-responsible and productive path to take.
Too bad President Obama didn't wait just a few more days before he reversed President Bush's executive protection of human cells lines and lifted the lid on unfettered embryonic experimentation.
