What are Stem Cells and Why Should You Care?

I have been posting a little bit about stem cells lately because embryonic stem cell therapy is a Frankensteinian quest to develop therapies for treating a variety of diseases. Embryonic stem cells are harvested from unborn babies and in the process destoys (murders) them. These babies are obtained in four different ways:

1)Fertility Clinics
During in-vitro fertilization, clinics routinely fuse more than one egg with sperm. That way, if implanting a fertilized egg doesn't work the first time, they can try again. This practice has left thousands of unwanted babies stored in clinic freezers. James Thomson, the first scientist to establish a human stem-cell line, used such babies.

2)Aborted Babies
John Gearhart, the Johns Hopkins biologist credited, along with Thomson, with first culturing stem cells, extracted his from babies donated by women (how generous of them -- pardon me while I puke) at a nearby abortion clinic.

3)Cloning
Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., acknowledged last week that it is trying to create cloned human babies (euphemistically referred to as "entities") as sources for stem cells. The company has considered selling its stem cells to other researchers.

4)Made to Order
The Jones Institute in Virginia, where the first U.S. test-tube baby was conceived, has mixed sperm and eggs expressly to create babies as sources for stem cells.

Does anyone besides me see any sort of ethical problem with creating babies in order to murder them for their stem cells?

What are Stem Cells?
Some call them magic seeds, for their ability to replicate indefinitely and morph into any kind of tissue. Stem cells are nature's blank slates, capable of developing into any of nearly 220 cell types that make up the human body. Scientists believe they will lead to cures for diseases once thought untreatable.
Certain primitive cells found in the brain, blood and elsewhere in the body remain undeveloped enough even in adults that they can grow into a limited number of cell types.

Now, I think that stem cell therapy is definitely an exciting and viable field of research provided it is done ethically and breaks none of God's Laws! Through the providence of God, it now looks like this can be done.

What follows is a short summary, written by Noni Kaufman, of what Dr. Reg McDaniel is saying about how to activate Stem Cells in your body.

Dr. Reg McDaniel talked about first seeing new stem cells in the peripheral blood of clients using Glyconutrients many years ago and not recognizing these cells as stem cells. They were 10 times the size of white blood cells and they were given the name "Gee" cells for some time as that's what Dr. Reg said when he observed these new cells that no one could identify!

Now we have the tools to identify these cells appropriately as stem cells which can be used as "master keys" to move to places in the body as the body calls for. About a year ago there was an article in JAMA regarding the stem cells implants of male cells into female bodies of women with leukemia who had received a stem cell transplant. When these women died, male marked cells were found as neurons in the brain.

Reg realized that this might offer an explanation in the many children with fetal alcohol syndrome that were doing so well with the Glyconutrients and others who had advanced so far beyond their perceived genetic limitations. He told the story of several adopted aboriginal children in Canada who had fetal alcohol syndrome who have done remarkably well, improving from IQ's estimated to be around 50 to levels around 100. One girl who had difficulties with reading and numbers and was in remedial classes after 3 years with Glyconutrients was able to read a Harry Potter book in a week and discuss what she had read.

When they measure the before and after stem cell counts in the blood, virtually none are detectable prior to Glyconutrients. Within a week of giving Glyconutrients, there are 200-400 stem cells seen in a micro liter of blood with about 5-10 thousand white blood cells. If one extrapolates to the whole body, it is possible that there are 1.7-3 trillion new stem cells throughout our body as we add in Glyconutrients. We're at the beginning of understanding all of what is possible with stem cells.

There is an article in the June Scientific American if you want to read more about stem cells.