Replies to post #24075 on CBA Florida Inc. (fka CBAI)

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No its down because of the Economy and mostly because Bush killed the Stem Cell Market after his annoucement.Longshot do you have any other stems?
Bush vetoes embryonic stem-cell bill
POSTED: 9:51 a.m. EDT, September 25, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush used his veto power Wednesday for the first time since taking office 5 1/2 years ago, saying that an embryonic stem-cell research bill "crossed a moral boundary."

The bill, which the Senate passed Tuesday, 63-37, would have loosened the restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research.

House Republican leaders tried Wednesday evening to override the veto, but that vote was 235 to 193, short of the necessary two-thirds majority.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said Wednesday afternoon. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it." (Watch as Bush says the bill 'crosses a moral boundary' -- 2:04)

Attending the White House event were a group of families with children who were born from "adopted" frozen embryos that had been left unused at fertility clinics.

"These boys and girls are not spare parts," he said of the children in the audience. "They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells."

The measure, which the House of Representatives passed in May 2005, allows couples who have had embryos frozen for fertility treatments to donate them to researchers rather than let them be destroyed.

Bush said, "If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers would, for the first time in our history, be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos, and I'm not going to allow it."

In August 2001, Bush announced that his administration would allow federal funding only for research on about 60 stem-cell lines that existed at the time. Researchers have since found that many of those lines are contaminated and unusable for research.

Scientists say stem cells could be a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, strokes, burns and more.

The issue has split the Republican Party, with Bush siding with the Catholic Church and social conservatives against the GOP's more moderate voices. (Watch how the issue pits Bush against some Republicans -- 1:30)

The Senate bill's principal sponsor, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, who recently survived a brush with cancer, was joined by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, a physician who argued that Bush's policy is too restrictive.

"I am pro-life, but I disagree with the president's decision to veto the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act," Frist said in a statement. "Given the potential of this research and the limitations of the existing lines eligible for federally funded research, I think additional lines should be made available."

Also in a statement, Lawrence T. Smith, chairman of the American Diabetes Association, called the veto "a devastating setback for the 20.8 million American children and adults with diabetes -- and those who love and care for them."

Opponents argue that other alternatives, such as adult stem cells, are available. Two companion bills -- one to promote alternative means of developing stem-cell lines from sources such as placental blood and another to ban the commercial production of human fetal tissue, also known as "fetal farming" -- passed the Senate in 100-0 votes.

On Tuesday evening, the House approved the "fetal farming" bill 425-0 but didn't pass the measure promoting alternative stem-cell sources when backers failed to achieve the two-thirds majority that House rules required. The vote on the alternative-sources bill was 273-154.

Bush signed the "fetal farming" legislation and urged Congress to fund alternative research.

"I'm disappointed that the House failed to authorize funding for this vital and ethical research," he said. "It makes no sense to say that you're in favor of finding cures for terrible diseases as quickly as possible and then block a bill that would authorize funding for promising and ethical stem-cell research."

A House GOP aide said that the leadership would bring the funding bill back to the floor at another time under a different set of rules that would require a simple majority to pass the measure.

CNN's Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this rep

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Taking Bush Personally
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, Oct. 23, 2003, at 3:16 PM ET
Conservatives wonder why so many liberals don't just disagree with President Bush's policies but seem to dislike him personally. The story of stem-cell research may help to explain. Two years ago, Bush announced an unexpectedly restrictive policy on the use of stem cells from human embryos in federally funded medical research. Because federal funding plays such a large role, the government more or less sets the rules for major medical research in this country.

Bush's policy was that research could continue on stem-cell "lines" that existed at the moment of his speech, in August 2001, but that otherwise, embryo research was banned. Even surplus embryos already in the freezer at fertility clinics—where embryos are routinely created and destroyed by the thousands every year—could not be used for medical research and would have to be thrown out instead.


Bush's professed moral concern was bolstered by two factual assumptions. One was that there were more than 60 stem-cell lines available for research. Stem cells are "wild card" cells. They multiply and evolve into cells for specific purposes in the human body. A "line" is the result of a particular cell that has been "tweaked" and is multiplying in the laboratory. The hope is to develop lines of cells that can be put back into human beings and be counted on to evolve into replacements for missing or defective parts. The likeliest example is dopamine-producing brain cells for people with Parkinson's disease. The dream is replacements for whole organs or even limbs. But each line is a crapshoot. So the more lines, the better. And it turns out that the number of useful lines is more like 10 than 60.

Bush also touted the possibility of harmlessly harvesting stem cells from adults. He said, "Therapies developed from adult stem cells are already helping suffering people." This apparently referred to decades-old techniques such as removing some of a leukemia patient's bone marrow and then reinjecting it after the patient has undergone radiation.

As for finding adult stem cells that could turn into unrelated body parts, that was just a dream two years ago, and now it is not even that. A new study, reported last week in Nature, concluded that when earlier studies thought they saw new specialized cells derived from adult stem cells, they were really seeing those adult cells bonding with pre-existing specialized cells. There's hope in this bonding process, too—but not the hope researchers had for adult stem cells, and nothing like the hope they still have for embryonic stem cells. Since Bush's speech, scientists have used embryonic stem cells to reverse the course of Parkinson's in rats.

Put it all together, and the stem cells that can squeeze through Bush's loopholes are far less promising than they seemed two years ago while the general promise of embryonic stem cells burns brighter than ever. If you claim to have made an anguished moral decision, and the factual basis for that decision turns out to be faulty, you ought to reconsider, or your claim to moral anguish looks phony. But Bush's moral anguish was suspect from the beginning because the policy it produced makes no sense.

The week-old embryos used for stem-cell research are microscopic clumps of cells, unthinking and unknowing, with fewer physical human qualities than a mosquito. Fetal-tissue research has used brain cells from aborted fetuses, but this is not that. Week-old, lab-created embryos have no brain cells.

Furthermore, not a single embryo dies because of stem-cell research, which simply uses a tiny fraction of the embryos that live and die as a routine part of procedures at fertility clinics. And actual stem-cell therapy for real patients, if it is allowed to develop, will not even need these surplus embryos. Once a usable line is developed from an embryo, the cells for treatment can be developed in a laboratory.

None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem-cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem-cell speech.

It's not a complicated point. If stem-cell research is morally questionable, the procedures used in fertility clinics are worse. You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other. And surely logical coherence is a measure of moral sincerity.

If he's got both his facts and his logic wrong—and he has—Bush's alleged moral anguish on this subject is unimpressive. In fact, it is insulting to the people (including me) whose lives could be saved or redeemed by the medical breakthroughs Bush's stem-cell policy is preventing.

This is not a policy disagreement. Or rather, it is not only a policy disagreement. If the president is not a complete moron—and he probably is not—he is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with, and sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term political advantage.

Is that a good enough reason to dislike him personally?

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Worcester biotech firm not alone: Two other companies competing in stem cell market
By Paul Evans, Associated Press, 07/12/01


MENLO PARK, Calif. - At least three for-profit companies are racing to develop large amounts of embryonic stem cells even as President Bush struggles to decide what the federal government should do.




Advanced Cell has competition
Geron Inc. stands to gain
Worcester firm cloning stem cells
Complicated politics of stem cells
Bush weighs stem cell funds
Fear, politics slow Mass. work
Scientists: Cloning may cause ills
Editorial: Cells for life

What is a stem cell?
A stem cell is a single unspecialized cell that can give rise to a more specialized cell (such as a lymphocyte immune cell) through cell division. They are present in the body in places like the bone marrow.


What is an embryo?
At its widest definition, an embryo is a fertilized egg which can grow into an adult organism like a human. Some say a cluster of cells is an embryo only after it grows to a certain size. At which stage a group of cells is considered an embryo is a matter of debate.

Cloning and embryos
The Worcester biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology is trying to produce an embryo through cloning. Researchers are taking cells from human donors and transfering their DNA into donated, unfertilized human egg cells, which can then grow into embryos.

What is an embryonic stem cell? Cells that are taken from a group of cells in an embryo. Individually, they can be molded into different cell types, or possibly tissues, through stem cell division.


Stem cell debate
Scientists say cells drawn from embryonic stem cells can be used to create a customized replacement for damaged or malfunctioning tissue without the risk that the patient's immune system would reject it. Critics say research on embryos destroys a potential human life.

-By Boston.com Staff

SOURCES: Oxford Dictionary of Biology, 4th Edition; Chambers Biology Dictionary; The Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th Edition; The Boston Globe, "Worcester firm aims to clone human cells," July, 2000.

Companies doing embryonic stem cell research:

Geron Inc.
Menlo Park, Calif.
www.geron.com


Advanced Cell Technology
Worcester, Mass.
www.advancedcell.com


Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine
Norfolk, Va.
www.jonesinstitute.org

The stem cells hold the potential to cure diseases and ailments from cancer to spinal cord injuries. If this dream can be realized, these companies stand to reap millions -- if not billions -- in profits.

Each company employs different but still controversial techniques to harvest embryonic stem cells. One buys leftover embryos from fertility clinics. Another is working to create embryos by way of a cloning method similar to the one used to make Dolly the sheep. The third pays men and women for their sperm and eggs, then creates embryos in the laboratory.

Each company's research involves plucking the coveted stem cells from 4- or 5-day-old human embryos, which must be destroyed in the process.

Anti-abortion activists and others consider all three techniques unethical, saying they result in the destruction of human life.

Proponents of such research argue that these days-old, undifferentiated cells cannot be viewed as human, and they stress that they have no intention of implanting them in a womb and producing babies.

Since 1996, federal law has banned the use of tax dollars for research that destroys embryos. The Clinton administration decided federal money could pay for research as long as the stem cells were extracted with private money.

Bush appears to be searching for a compromise -- possibly adopting a middle ground that imposes new restrictions but allows the research to move forward.

"The work will go on, one way or another," said Thomas Okarma, chief executive of Menlo Park-based Geron Inc., which funded the two scientists who first isolated human stem cells in 1998 and still dominates the field.

Geron buys leftover frozen embryos from fertility clinics and cracks them open to obtain the stem cells. Geron owns the worldwide rights to this process and has filed about 30 new patent applications for the various techniques and technology it uses.

Chief executive Thomas Okarma said he considers Geron's technique ethically sound.

"These things aren't people," he said. "These are all frozen excess and no longer needed by the couple. And they are either going to be thrown away or stored forever."

Eventually, Geron hopes to get stem cells without having to use embryos at all. It hopes to do this by finding and cloning the proteins in eggs that lead to the creation of stem cells. Then, Okarma said, "living cells will be tomorrow's pharmaceuticals."

Across the country in Worcester, Mass., Advanced Cell Technology is working on another technique that it hopes will enable it to generate stem cells by growing human embryos without the use of sperm.

Advanced Cell's plan is to pay women to take fertility drugs to produce excess eggs. Researchers would then take an egg, remove its nucleus and genetic material and fuse it with a skin cell containing adult genetic material. With a jolt of electricity, the researchers then would coax the egg to replicate as if it had been fertilized with sperm. After a few days, stem cells would be ready for harvesting.

So far, Advanced Cell has yet to obtain a stem cell with this technique. Chief executive Michael West, a Geron co-founder who left for Advanced Cell last year, said the company has not yet created embryos.

Many scientists consider the results of Advanced Cell's technique to be human embryos, since theoretically, they could be implanted into a womb and grown into a fetus. West himself has used the term "embryo." However, his ethical advisers prefer terms such as "ovumsum."

"These are not embryos," said the chairman of Advanced Cell's ethics advisory board, Dartmouth University religion professor Ronald Green. "They are not the result of fertilization and there is no intent to implant these in women and grow them."

A third effort was announced this week by the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, a private fertility clinic in Norfolk, Va., that was responsible for the birth in 1981 of the nation's first test-tube baby.

The society said it believes the researchers there are the first in the United States to have created embryos expressly for stem cell research, using eggs and sperm from paid, consenting adults.

"At one level, it's cleaner" ethically than using leftover embryos, society spokesman Sean Tipton said. "There's no question what you're going to do with these embryos. You're going to the individuals up front."

Only the Geron-generated cells would be eligible for federally funded research dollars under the Clinton administration guidelines, which called for using only surplus embryos from fertility clinics. The Advanced Cell and Jones Institute embryos would not pass this federal test.