Embryonic Stem Cell Research Not Economically Rational
Embryonic stem cell research has suffered a catastrophic blow with a major Singaporean-Australian company abandoning work on therapies due to lack of success and soaring costs. ES Cell International (ESI), which raised $24 million in investment, has pulled out of the pursuit of cures for diabetes and heart damage.
The leading international journal Science reported that ESI is “halting work on human embryonic stem cell therapies” as investors had lost interest because the “the likelihood of having products in the clinic in the short term was vanishingly small”, according to stem cell pioneer Professor Alan Colman, who until last month was ESI’s chief executive.
But making well-functioning, insulin-producing cells “proved really difficult”, Professor Colman said, as both therapies would have needed at least a billion cells for each dose and producing them at such numbers was prohibitively expensive.
In contrast to the difficulties confronted by embryonic stem-cell researchers, Professor Mackay-Sim’s team from Griffith University are able to produce 20 million adult stem cells in four weeks using olfactory stem cells taken from the adult nose.
In the United States, Carron Morrow, aged 59, survived her fourth heart attack due to stem cell therapy where 30 million stem cells were injected into the right side of her heart. Morrow is living proof that adult stem cells work far better than embryonic.
“The potential for further research using adult stem cells is clear. Investors are diverting their resources away from dead end technology. Now we can say for certain that harvesting fertilised human eggs is not the way forward for curing people with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and spinal damage”, Dr Moyes said.
This major blow vindicates the stance taken by Rev Dr Gordon Moyes, Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop Peter Jensen, and host of prominent scientists and politicians, who lobbied both the Federal and State governments when controversial stem cell research legislation entered the chamber.
“This move clearly confirm the use of embryonic stem cell is economically prohibitive and highly impractical”, Dr Moyes said. “There is no need to compromised one life for another. Not one achievement in human therapy has come from embryos, while adult stem cells are rapidly being applied to a range of incurable afflictions”.
