You Don’t Have To Kill Babies To Get Stem Cells

There are actually some people who are reporting original scientific research ideas that can help people, a lot – like this one.

The idea here will be to harvest some sperm stem cells, and change them into insulin producing cells for people who have Type I diabetes (also known as Juvenile diabetes). These are the people who are born without the kind of cells that produce insulin, rather than those who develop diabetes later in life due to lifestyle issues like drinking, obesity and other factors.

This can mean a better life, better quality of life, maybe just life, period, or at least life without a bunch of daily self administered syringes for a lot of people.

There are 23.6 million people in the United States, or 7.8% of the population, who have diabetes. First, we gotta see the context.  Research done in America, reported in U.K. Moderator removed two comments, but it is not too hard to see from some kind of leftover tag-lines that somebody said something about killing embryos.

This is absolutely not necessary to get stem cells. We seem to have them in our adult bodies, forever and ever or at least until our deaths — after which most games are over, anyway.

Alas — Logic and knowledge exist perilously little in these United States. If they were taught in the schools (and I have no reason to believe that they are) they are immediately forgotten in favor some kind of emotional and oversimplified bipartisan issues.  I know this is the case because hundreds if not thousands of patients think in this manner.  You can really stir up the masses by talking about people who kill babies – even to the point of getting them to assassinate doctors.

Another remark seems to be about Type II (adult-onset) diabetes, which is not even mentioned in the article.  The only reason I can imagine is that it is too common and the procedure is still complex and presumably, experimental.

There are tons, and I mean tons, of people out there who could do well with a few extra Islets of Langerhans cells in their pancreas, to make a little more insulin (including the Pope, if I remember correctly).  I mean, a lot of Type II diabetics end up insulin dependent, anyway. The day my father of blessed memory’s doctor joked about this, my father had a panic attack.

Giving injections to one’s self is an angry and aggressive act.  It would be nice to avoid this thing. If anyone enjoys the idea of sticking needles into his/her flesh too much, I would think that person had some problems. But wait, there’s more.

Does anyone know a human male, of either heterosexual or homosexual or intermediate persuasion, who would voluntarily give up anything related to his testicle?  If so, let’s put him under a bell jar and test him to see what he’s got.  Maybe we can reproduce it.

Might be easier for women parting with their ova.  After all, women do not need to worry about castration anxiety in general, because they keep their anatomy deeply hidden and it seems “safe,” but I still can see them going for this sort of procedure before men.

There are LOTS of stem cell lines.  Research may be hindered by lack of funding due to the Religious Right thinking that embryos would be killed, but that is a classic example of a half-truth becoming an emotional absolute and hindering scientific progress.

As for stem cell research, there are certainly people actively dishing out grants.

One of my surprises, is that even the people on the religious side of the “Religion VS Science” debates are realizing this is not an embryo issue, and saying things that might sometimes make sense.  If you had a life-threatening illness and stem cells might help, wouldn’t you want to see if they could help?

I have a vivid memory of being in a lab of a courageous research physician who kept a bunch of stem cell lines incubating, in temperature controlled environments, in a suite that was part of a strip mall.  He gave me his presentation with slides and let me look at some of his cells in the microscope.

This was someone with a lot of University credentials, who knew exactly what he was doing.  He harvested placentas — a sort of by-product of the birth process, which people throw in the garbage.  He told me he literally stood there and caught them when they were thrown out.  He asked the hospital just to tell him when to come, something they thankfully did. He told me a little about his cases.

The one that interested me the most was someone who had been rendered quadriplegic by a motorcycle accident and who would receive injections of spinal cord stem cells into the membranes surrounding the patient’s damaged spinal cord. Of course, spinal cord regeneration was considered impossible in mainstream medicine.

This distinguished American scientist would cultivate the stem cells and then transport them to a clinic in Mexico — since nobody seemed to care what you drove into Mexico.

The patient was doing all right, certainly none the worse.  I wanted to see him.  I told them I was building an unusual practice as “The Doctor Of Last Resort” and thought I could refer patients if they showed results. I never made the connection at that level and I have no idea if this treatment restored any movement to the victim.  Still, if the procedure is done under sterile conditions, it fits into the “First do no harm” directive of the Hippocratic Oath.

I think I know why I wasn’t invited to observe the patient or tour the clinic. A couple of times I have visited clinics south of the border who use primarily European methods – and are usually run by European immigrants rather than native Mexican doctors. In some cases I found them scared of me.  I’ve even heard one comment that I seem to know too much for a “regular doctor” and must be an undercover government agent wanting to crack down on them and close their clinic.

Yes, Mexico has a reputation for shams and charlatans and quacks who prey on the desperate and miserable.  I’ve toured some of those clinics and been aghast at what I found.

Yet I’ve talked to some people who have innovative and non-traditional ways of treating things like diabetes and other chronic illnesses and been amazed at their documented results.

I’ve used some of these things on myself, and the results are recounted in my new book, “This Is Not A Diet Book.”  I’ll have a link to my book on this blog very soon.

This I do know: All real and original advancements in science known to me — that can be of assistance in medicine — seem to be wrapped in illogical and emotional and political defenses at too many layers.

The scientist who transported the stem cells across the border in his own little car deserves honor, which I believe would only get him into trouble.  I will not even write his name.

I believe in the sovereignty of human life, and in maximizing its quality. I believe that all problems are soluble.  Let us devote the emotionality surrounding life-threatening diseases to finding ways to solve the problems they create and to live, long and happily and well.

And we don’t need to sacrifice any lives to do it – especially babies.