Opinion

Look at success of adult stem cell work

Posted June 22, 2009 11:00 pm

What a great article I just read: An Aurora city employee donates bone marrow, and a youngster's life is saved by it. Fantastic.

Bone marrow transplants have been around for quite a while now, but I can't help wonder how many people know what it is. Going to the Web site, http://www.nlm.nih.gov [ and looking up this procedure informs us that there are other titles for it, and among them is this one: stem cell transplant.

So here we are again, celebrating yet another success story using adult stem cells. Yes, that's exactly what a bone-marrow transplant is (as opposed to embryonic stem cells). I wonder: President Obama authorized federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research (even though any potential therapies are years, perhaps decades, off into the future). Did he also provide any funding for further improvement to the already fantastic success rate of adult stem cell research? If not, why not?

John Babush

Big Rock

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