Blatant Reality

Though Senator McCaskill has been a very strong support of President Obama and the Democratic version of Health Care reform, her conscious wouldn’t allow her to vote against an amendment to ban the practice of using earmarks to buy votes.

What vote-buying, or bribes to us laymen, am I talking about? Surely this Chicago style of politics hasn’t infected the great halls of Congress? Well, sadly, it has and the majority of Democrats voted to continue its practice.

Here is what Senator DeMint has said about this vote.

December 23, 2009 – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, made the following statement after the Senate defeated his amendment to prohibit the practice of trading votes for earmarks in the United States Senate. Senator DeMint’s motion was defeated on a 53-46 vote.

“The American people are disgusted by the earmarks, kickbacks, and backroom deals that have been used to buy votes for this health care takeover,” said Senator DeMint. “We had a chance today to put an end to this practice but Senate Democrats voted for business as usual. 53 Democrats just gave their personal seal of approval to the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback and other earmarks used to bribe senators into supporting this atrocious bill.”

“Democrats have truly hit the bottom on their reckless pursuit of a government takeover of health care. The Democrat majority just voted to retain the culture of corruption in Congress. Just two years ago, Democrats bragged about draining the swamp, but now they’re endorsing political bribery. This is Washington at its worst.”

Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), who secured a special earmark for his state that forces taxpayers in 49 states to fund Medicaid in Nebraska, first voted against the ban on trading earmarks for votes but switched his vote before the final tally. Senator DeMint responded, “Senator Nelson, unfortunately, is trying to have it both ways, he was for trading his vote for earmarks before he was against it.

Because Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had blocked all further amendments to the health care bill, Senator DeMint was forced to seek the suspension of the rules of the Senate – a rare parliamentary maneuver – to get an up-or-down vote on his amendment and put an end to earmark vote-buying.

“The House of Representatives has a rule that bans trading votes for earmarks but the Senate does not,” said Senator DeMint. “The Senate passed a vote-trading ban in 2007 by a unanimous vote of 98 to 0, but it was dropped behind closed doors. If that rule were in place today, the earmarks and kick-backs used to buy votes for the health care bill would not have been possible.”

The DeMint amendment, which only applies to future legislation, would have prohibited the use of earmarks to buy votes for legislation. Specifically, the amendment states:

(a) IN GENERAL.—It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider a congressionally directed spending item, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit, if a Senator, Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner has conditioned the inclusion of language to provide funding for a congressional directed spending item, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit in any amendment, bill, or joint resolution (or an accompanying report) or in any conference report on a bill or joint resolution (including an accompanying joint explanatory statement of managers) on any vote cast by any Senator, Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.

A similar prohibition was offered by Senator DeMint and U.S. Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) in 2007 during the debate on S.1, the lobbying and ethics bill. The Durbin-DeMint amendment, which included a ban on earmark vote-trading, passed the Senate by a vote of 98 to 0. The Senate vote-trading rule was dropped in closed-door negotiations with the House and was not part of the final legislation signed by the President.

“This rule has been passed before, it only applies to future earmarks, and does not threatens the Democrats’ health care bill,” said Senator DeMint. “There’s only one reason Democrats voted against this reform: they want to keep using earmarks to buy votes,” said Senator DeMint.

More good news from the stem cell front. It seems that using adult stem cells in gene therapy doesn’t cause problems such as cancer.

“These data are critical for advancing stem-cell research leading toward therapies,” Nolta said in a statement. “We’ve shown that adult stem cells follow natural cues to reach target locations, they function normally when they get there and do not exhibit the unchecked cell growth that is the hallmark of cancer.”

 

Gene therapy trials using human bone marrow cells in the early 1990s included roughly 1,000 patients worldwide. In 2000, a leukemia-like condition emerged in three participants in a clinical trial in France, halted the trial.

 

“Due to the significantly large number of study animals, our investigation further illuminates the safety of gene therapy using hematopoietic stem cells,” lead author Gerhard Bauer said.

A recent study seems to show that stem cells derived from umbilical cords can help treat Alzheimer’s in mice. Next stem, humans.

Scientists have found that targeted immune suppression using stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood may reduce the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study published in the March issue of Stem Cells and Development.

 

For the study, researchers had administered a series of low-dose infusions of umbilical cord blood cells into mice with abnormalities mimicking Alzheimer’s disease, according to a Mar. 27 news release by Cryo-Cell International, Inc., which funded the study. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive and incurable brain disease that affects more than five million people in the United States alone.

 

According to the organization’s announcement, researchers found that the two main markers of Alzheimer’s progression in the brain were reduced as a result of the infusions – myloid-beta proteins by 62 percent and cerebral amyloid angiopathy by 86 percent.

 

“The scientific community has only skimmed the surface in uncovering the many potential therapeutic uses for cord blood stem cells, and this new research in Alzheimer’s disease may pave the way for discoveries around the use of these cells for a host of neurodegenerative and other chronic conditions,” stated Mercedes Walton, chairman and CEO of Cryo-Cell International.

More good news from the adult stem cell research centers! Resent studies now show that adult stem cells can help improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s.

All of the patients with Parkinson’s disease who were treated by implantation of stem cells into the brain have achieved substantial improvement in terms of beneficial changes that were apparent within 1 week of the implant procedure.

 

“Our 1 patient who has reached 1 year following the implant has achieved an 80% improvement in his Parkinson’s disease-related symptoms,” said Augusto Brazzini Armestar, MD, Director, Instituto Brazzini Radiologos Asociados, Lima, Peru.

 

In his featured poster presentation on March 18 here at the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting, Dr. Armestar said the implants of purified autologous bone-marrow-derived stem cells were attempted in hopes that the cells would implant in areas of the brain depleted of neurotransmitters.

 

“Stem cells from bone marrow have the ability to differentiate into neurons and other tissues,” he said. “Usually stem cells migrate to sites of injury. However, they do so in very small quantities, and so full regeneration is not gained.”

This begs the question: Is there anything that adult stem cells can’t fix? I’ll answer that myself with a resounding yes, but it sure is close.

PrimeGen Biotech announced today that it has successfully created human adult stem cells from normal somatic skin cells using non-viral methods.

PrimeGen Biotech (http://www.primegenbiotech.com) today announced that company researchers have successfully used purified proteins and DNAs in non-viral methods to reprogram adult human cells into stem cells.

 

Participating in this week’s Stem Cell Summit in New York, the company reported that this new class of stem cells — derived from adult human tissues such as skin — has properties of embryonic stem cells (ESC), as well as stem cells referred to as “induced pluripotent stem cells” or iPS cells.

 

Relying on a high efficiency particle delivery system to transport proteins and DNA molecules directly into cells from human skin, retina and kidney, researchers found that after one week, stem cell colonies arose that exhibited the markers of ESC and iPS cells. They also found that PrimeGen’s reprogramming technology is orders of magnitude more efficient and three to four times faster than previous viral methods — requiring just a week or two, rather than a month or more, to display the pluripotent markers.

 

Unlike iPS cells produced by other investigators in the US and Japan, PrimeGen researchers are the first to use methods that do not involve potentially tumor-causing viruses or genetic manipulations. And unlike embryonic stem cells, these methods use adult skin and other tissues from the patient, not embryos. As such, the company continues in its mandate to produce high quality cells that will be suitable for future patient therapies.

Once again, here is a technological and medical advancement that both sides of the stem cell issue can appreciate.

A recent discovery could lead towards scientists being able to reprogram adult stem cells to act like embryonic stem cells.

In a paper released online today by the journal Cell Stem Cell, Konrad Hochedlinger and colleagues report that they have discovered how long adult cells need to be exposed to reprogramming factors before they convert to an embryonic-like state, and have “defined the sequence of events that occur during reprogramming.”

 

This work on adult mouse skin cells should help researchers narrow the field of candidate chemicals and proteins that might be used to safely turn these processes on and off. This is particularly important because at this stage in the study of these induced pluripotent (iPS) cells, researchers are using cancer-causing genes to initiate the process, and are using retroviruses, which can activate cancer genes, to insert the genes into the target cells. As long as the work involves the use of either oncogenes or retroviruses, it would not be possible to use these converted cells in patients.

 

Up to this point, the reprogramming process has been a virtual black box – scientists have been able to turn back the developmental clock on adult skin cells by introducing four genes into the cells, but they have not known what steps were occurring during the process.

 

Harvard Stem Cell Institute Co-Director Doug Melton called the work “an impressive and thoughtful study” that “marks an important first step in finding ways to create pluripotent stem cells from adult cells without the need for viruses or oncogenes.”

Once again, here is some research that both sides of the stem cell issue can appreciate which eliminates any ethical problems.

Adult Stem Cell Research Network recently announced three ways to treat heart problems with adult stem cells.

Adipose Derived Stem Cells

 

Dr. Keith March of the Indiana University Medical Center, Indiana Center for Vascular Biology and Medicine, Professor Patrick Serruys of the ThoraxCentre, Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Francisco Fernandez-Avils of Madrid, Spain all presented data related to the use of stem cells derived from a patients own adipose (fat) tissue. Pre-clinical studies have demonstrated improved blood flow and a reduction of scar size when adipose derived stem cells are provided within a short time period following the heart attack by coronary infusion. Dr. March presented data that two cell types, adipose stem cells and endothelial progenitor cells, work in partnership to provide much more blood flow than either cell type can alone. Clinical studies of cells from adipose tissue have begun at a number of centers worldwide. We are very interested to see that cells from adipose tissue are being tested in these early trials, said Dr. March, noting that the use of one’s own cells from fat tissue is potentially a very practical approach. Various studies are being sponsored separately by Cytori Therapeutics, Inc., Tissue Genesis, Inc. and Bioheart, Inc.

 

Bone Marrow Derived Stem Cells

 

Dr. Andreas M. Zeiher, MD, of the University of Frankfurt (Frankfurt, Germany), and a number of other researchers provided both pre-clinical and clinical data from the use of bone marrow derived cells. These cells seem to function primarily by promoting growth of new blood vessels, which can help preserve tissue following a heart attack. Data from clinical studies of hundreds of patients has demonstrated a noticeable improvement in heart function, especially in patients whose hearts start with low pumping ability. More clinical studies are in progress. Sponsors of bone marrow cell studies include Osiris Therapeutics and Boston Scientific Guidant.

 

Modified Adult Stem Cells

 

Dr. Marc Penn from Cleveland Clinic presented pre-clinical data demonstrating that adult muscle stem cells (myoblasts) modified to overexpress SDF-1 (stromalderived factor-1) are able to achieve significant improvements in the pumping ability of the heart. Myoblasts alone in his study provided a 27 percent improvement of the pumping ability of the damaged animal hearts he treated, while SDF-1 modified myoblasts provided a 54 percent improvement. Dr. Penn is very optimistic about the future of such heart therapies. Clearly this is a multi-year process, he says. We are only in Phase I, but the excitement over this treatment is a direct result of past successes. [Through stem cell research, we’re getting to where we can not only help victims live after an attack, but can improve heart functioning and help them live more meaningful lives. We desperately need this research. Many years of lab and animal research have now led to an application with the FDA for human clinical studies of this modified stem cell composition derived from a patient’s own thigh muscle. Bioheart, Inc. is sponsoring the pre-clinical development of this composition for treating advanced heart failure.

In Melbourne, Australia, adult stem cells will be used in a clinical study to see how effective they are at treating spinal injuries.

SPINAL cord injury sufferers have been given fresh hope of improved movement with the first Australian trial of a new adult stem cell treatment.

 

The trial will be conducted at a new dedicated spinal cord laboratory at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, the first of its kind in Australia to co-ordinate national and international research and apply it to patients.

Michigan is not only going to be the next battle ground in the presidential primaries, it is also going to be the battle ground for the controversial embryonic stem cell research issue.

With the worldwide ground-breaking news this past November that adult skin cells had been reprogrammed to act like embryonic cells, the end of embryo destructive research and human cloning immediately began. “It’s going to completely change the field,” said Dr. James Thompson, the scientist who first isolated embryonic stem cells in 1998 and a lead researcher who discovered the skin cell advancement.

 

Despite this promising turn toward stem cell research that does not clone or kill human embryos, a small number of elected officials in Lansing continue to salivate over research that would encourage just such.

 

Measures soon to be voted on by the House Judiciary Committee would close the book on Michigan’s 30-year policy of protecting human embryos from being destroyed, and would allow for human embryos that were cloned in other states to be trafficked here for destructive purposes.

 

Rather than moving forward with now seemingly antiquated and highly controversial legislation, legislators would be well served to regroup and vigorously support and encourage stem cell research that is both ethical and proven. Two years ago, legislation was enacted with bipartisan support that created a statewide network of umbilical cord blood banks. Yet too few people are aware that bone marrow and umbilical cord blood are rich sources of adult stem cells that treat, even cure, dozens of different diseases, including sickle cell anemia.

Come now people, this sure seems like a well worth compromise. Everyone is always talking about how they hate partisanship and this seems to be a chance to reconcile the two sides in one of the most heated controversies of our time. Everyone would be a winner.