Headline Feb 12, 2016/ ''' *STEM-CELL BANK* : LET THE SCIENCE SPEAK FOR YOU '''

''' *STEM-CELL BANK* : LET THE

 SCIENCE SPEAK FOR YOU '''

LET THE SCIENCE speak for you. You've been through this before, papers and projects rejected or pushed aside for various reasons you can't control. Don't worry about politics, you will tell your team.

 Let the science speak for you. Because you know that science does work. You know that the stem cells you learned to retrieve and sort from amniotic fluid that cushions a baby during pregnancy have many of the properties of embryonic stem cells.

They can form all three major germ layers, which is the test for stem cells. they can become blood or muscle or liver cells. They can't be used to create nerve cells, but they can be used to build organs, for babies still in the womb and for grown men alike. And here's something else they don't do: They don't form tumors.

If embryonic stem cells are infants, these new amniotic stem cells are kindergartners. They've had a few months to develop in the womb before being sloughed off by the fetus, so their personalities are starting to come out, whether they want to be pancreas cells or liver cells.

While it might only take a week to coax embryonic stem cells into becoming liver cells, the process takes amniotic cells a month. But that's because they're stable. rather than trying to force a stem cell to become a specific tissue type, you can now find one that is already leaning in that direction.

And so can you imagine the feeling of satisfaction when the acceptance from the prestigious journal finally comes, and your team wakes up on January 8, 2007, to see the work on the front pages of newspapers across America? There's a vindication and pride and joy.

But vindication and pride don't fund science. In fact, they might actually kill it.

In Washington, D.C., where a bill to overturn President Bush's six-year old ban on funding  embryonic-stem-cell research is set for a vote in three days, there are heated and hurried meetings, because Democrats in the house and senate finally have the votes to pass this law, but now this.........the Republicans see see a way to kill it. And Atala has unwittingly provided it.

Here's Representative Joe Pitts, at a Republican press conference: ''All of you from Newsweek, The Washington Post, all across the board made it very clear that  [Atala's findings] could change the entire debate because amniotic stem cells are pluripotent.........'''

Here's John Boehner, then the Republican House minority leader : ''The breakthrough.......appears to confirm that the full potential of stem-cell research can be realized without the destruction of living human embryos.''

A letter must be drafted, Atala was told by the Juvenile Diabetes research Foundation,which for years had funded the various projects at his lab. 

The embryonic-stem-cell community had come too far in the fight to have it all derailed now. And so they wanted a letter from Atala stating that he still saw the need for embryonic-stem-cell research.

And because he is a scientist, he believed this to be the true. So he drafted the letter.

But you can imagine what it feels like when your letter is read before the cameras and reporters, when the democrat senators and congressmen wield your words just like the Republicans?

''Even Dr, Atala, the author of the study, says it is essential that the National Institutes of Health-funded researchers are able to fully pursue embryonic-stem-cell research......''

''I do want to reiterate the importance of a letter from Dr. Atala......''

''As Dr.Atala himself has said, this is no substitute for embryonic stem-cell-research........'''

Nobody told him the letter would be made public. Nobody said it would be purposefully leaked, drawing his work from the comfortable sidelines to the eye of the political storm.

''I was shocked,'' he says now. Then he corrects himself:  I was surprised. ''I was disappointed that this work was growing to be embroiled in a political debate. This was a scientific piece of work. Not a political piece of work.

''I realized at that moment, it was unfortunate that the political climate was such that science couldn't just go forward for what it  was.''

Three months later  -three months after the Democratic-led Congress passed a bill overturning the federal restrictions on embryonic-stem-cell-research, which President Bush will once again veto -another bill began working through both houses of congress. And it was a law based upon his work.

*Since publishing his paper, Atala has been telling scientists and reporters and congressmen alike about his dream of a public-amniotic-stem-cell bank*. 

If the bank had just a hundred thousand distinct specimens, it would have all the material needed to build organs that were perfect genetic matches for 90 percent of the population. 

 Atala did not believe that an amniotic-stem-cell bank would eliminate the need for embryonic-stem-cells, or a future embryonic-stem-cell bank. But the technology was ready and safe, and he believed it was time to start treating patients.

The bill, which was sponsored by an alliance of pro-life Democrats and Republicans, would lay the groundwork for an amniotic-stem-cell bank.

That year, April, it passed the Senate in seventy-votes.

But a house version of the bill, the National Amniotic and Placental StemCell Bank of 2007, stalled and stalled and stalled and would never come up for a vote.

Months later Atala was called to the Hill to testify on some other, unrelated issue. He's asked to do this from time to time. He ran into the chief of staff for one of the bill's cosponsors, which told him what had happened.

Nancy Pelosi wouldn't let it come to the floor for a vote because it would get in the way of the Democrats own push for embryonic-stem-cell funding. The democratic leadership's view of stem cells was zero sum: Until embryonic-stem-cells are funded, no other stem cells would be funded.

*The bill, the public bank, was dead*.

The Honour and Serving of the  ''Advance Medical And Technology Research''  continues. Thank You for reading and sharing.

With respectful dedication to all patients of the  World awaiting............. *The Organs Donation*.  See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Never Broken '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless