2008 Woodie Awards
A wing and a prayer:
student explores benefits of contested stem cell research
Chris Stroud
Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: Forum
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While researchers in the U.S. grow new heart muscles, scientists in China grow optic nerves. Just ask six year old Rylea Barlett of Webb City. When Rylea was born, her optic nerves never developed due to optic-nerve hypoplasia. After weeks of praying, on July 4, the Barletts flew to China for the first of five umbilical cord derived stem cell transplants. Although they were told it might take a while for results to show, within a week Rylea was responding to the movement of a penlight.
Rylea will never develop perfect vision, but she now can see the big "E" on the eye chart. Rylea is not the only one going overseas for medical treatment. Chuck Johnson, vice president of the Braille Institute of Florida, knows four other children who have received treatment in China and can now see.
People go to China because the treatment is unavailable in the U.S.; the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) holds back research according to Rylea's mother Dawn. Indeed, hyoplasia stem cell treatments have not been approved in the U.S., and research in stem cell research (especially SCNT) is under attack by various opposition groups that oppose the use of embryonic stem cells in research.
Last year Missourians passed an amendment protecting stem cell research (including SCNT). Undaunted by defeat opponents are trying to change the amendment to ban SCNT on the grounds that it is human cloning.
This occurs despite the fact that SCNT uses an unfertilized egg, no sperm and most commonly, a human skin cell to 'grow embryos' in a Petri dish with no hope of womb implantation. Yet to groups like Cures Without Cloning this undifferentiated group of cells constitutes a potential human being and research should be banned regardless.
Children such as Rylea Barlett should not have to go to China for treatment; the treatments should be available here in Missouri. People with defective and dying hearts should not be told that a bundle of cells in a lab are more important than their lives.
The "miracles" provided by genetic engineering and gene manipulation, along with adult, umbilical and embryonic stem cell research, treatments and cures are the modern version of last century's vaccines. Stem cell research can usher in an in a new influx of scientific miracles.
Missouri should lead this medical revolution with the potential to improve the quality of life for millions, not praying to turn back time.
Rylea will never develop perfect vision, but she now can see the big "E" on the eye chart. Rylea is not the only one going overseas for medical treatment. Chuck Johnson, vice president of the Braille Institute of Florida, knows four other children who have received treatment in China and can now see.
People go to China because the treatment is unavailable in the U.S.; the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) holds back research according to Rylea's mother Dawn. Indeed, hyoplasia stem cell treatments have not been approved in the U.S., and research in stem cell research (especially SCNT) is under attack by various opposition groups that oppose the use of embryonic stem cells in research.
Last year Missourians passed an amendment protecting stem cell research (including SCNT). Undaunted by defeat opponents are trying to change the amendment to ban SCNT on the grounds that it is human cloning.
This occurs despite the fact that SCNT uses an unfertilized egg, no sperm and most commonly, a human skin cell to 'grow embryos' in a Petri dish with no hope of womb implantation. Yet to groups like Cures Without Cloning this undifferentiated group of cells constitutes a potential human being and research should be banned regardless.
Children such as Rylea Barlett should not have to go to China for treatment; the treatments should be available here in Missouri. People with defective and dying hearts should not be told that a bundle of cells in a lab are more important than their lives.
The "miracles" provided by genetic engineering and gene manipulation, along with adult, umbilical and embryonic stem cell research, treatments and cures are the modern version of last century's vaccines. Stem cell research can usher in an in a new influx of scientific miracles.
Missouri should lead this medical revolution with the potential to improve the quality of life for millions, not praying to turn back time.
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