adult stem cell research

Adult stem cell technology is amazing in what it can accomplish. The video below shows how sight is being restored using contact lenses coated with the person’s own stem cells. WARNING: There is eye surgery shown in parts that may be hard to watch for the squeamish.

That is great news. Josh Brahm comments on that and points out that you should be careful when reading stories about these breakthroughs. As a headline writer myself, I can say that biases aren’t always there when headlines are written. But I also know that subtleties can be lost when readers look at headlines and don’t read stories all the way through. Also, while headlines can be innocently vague, it does irritate me when stories are vaguely written or edited. That is shoddy journalism. Saying stem cell research when it is actually adult (or ISP) stem cell research is either laziness or brazen misrepresentation. Either way it’s wrong.

On a recent Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Mehmet Oz explained how adult stem cells are proving to be a much more promising hope for finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease to Oprah and Michael J. Fox, who has been suffering from the disease since the early 1990s.

For Fox, I’m sure it must be good to hear Dr. Oz say that a cure could be found within the single digits (less than 10 years) and definitely within our lifetime. But it must have also been strange for him to sit there and hear Oz say that adult stem cells are a much better and safer method than embryonic stem cells since Fox has been a vocal proponent of that method. Dr. Oz doesn’t pull any punches, so there’s no room for “Yes, but…” kind of thinking concerning ESCR (embryonic stem cell research). Oz flat out says that the stem cell debate is dead (except for President Obama). He says that research in the past year (with adult stem cells) has proceeded dramatically to the point where there is much hope for not only Parkinson’s sufferers like Fox but those who have heart disease and other ailments.

Hopefully, since Obama is such good friends with Oprah he’ll pay attention.

HT: Josh Brahm