Opinion

Stem cell research gives hope

Thought and reason have returned to the American scientific community after an eight-year absence as the U.S .Food and Drug Administration will start the world’s first clinical trial of stem cell therapy.

This marks a sea change from the Bush Administration’s policy, although the new development has little to do directly with President Obama’s assumption of power. Legally, the FDA operates more or less independently of the White House, but they often toe the administrative line because rocking the boat leads to funding cuts.

A 21,000-page application has been patiently waiting for months to be accepted.’ Obama has already promised to make science and research a national priority again and now he has the opportunity to actually effect a change.

The study will be done on humans and directed at reversing paralysis. By injecting the cells in question into the spinal cords of trial subjects, scientists hope to return some movement to these patients. Even if full movement isn’t restored, the hope is there will be enough progress for physical therapy to take its course and give these subjects full mobility again. Future studies may include the re-growth of whole organs with no risk of rejection, and there is even research for individually tailored gene therapy.

There is no funding provided by the government for the study itself. This is merely a clearing of the path for the study to be legal, but there is hope for new and better developments. Perhaps there will be extended funding for embryonic stem cell research or maybe new stem cell lines will be sanctioned, other than the current limited number.

Americans should rejoice in this moment. We are on our way back to being top innovators in science and medicine. With a new moderate voice at the lead of the discussion, there may yet be significant progress made in the treatment of human ailments.

This is deeply relevant to Houston, a major hub in gene therapy and research, and UH in particular, with the development of our new biomedical department.’ Fear of the unknown has held this country back for eight long years, and we are ready to embrace new knowledge and to explore uncharted territories of the human experiment.

If these trials don’t work out as hoped, there will be an even greater call for extreme caution from all sides, ending in a grinding stop to the research being done. This is an incredibly high-risk venture and the publicity surrounding it will only bring more intense scrutiny to bear, making this the scientific equivalent of building a house of cards during a violent sneezing fit and a panic attack.

In any case, the FDA has approved this measure, meaning there is a good chance that it will work. The top minds in the nation have agreed it is a necessary step forward, and have blessed the effort.

At the very least, this nation’s scientific paralysis seems to be cured for the time being.

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