Let’s face it – most people are looking forward to when stem cells can be used to help people.
While we know a lot more about stem cells than we did 10 years ago, stem cell research is still in its infancy. It is not unlike where heart transplants were 40 years ago. Do you remember when Christiaan Barnard did the first heart transplants? That was way back in 1967. Think about it --
- His first patient didn’t live long after the transplant.
- The relative success of Barnard's second heart transplant was followed by a period of uncontrolled copycat operations in many countries, with predictably poor results.
- In 1967 there were no guidelines for the diagnosis of death of beating heart donors.
So when can we expect to see stem cell research live up to the promises that scientists have made and cure stroke, Parkinson’s, and MS? University of Alberta researcher, Tim Caulfield thinks it will be a long time before stem cells will be a health option, but recently on CBC radio he talked about people going “offshore” – to the Caribbean, India, or China for unproven stem cell treatments.
Going to third world countries for stem cell transplants is not unlike many of the copy-cat heart-transplant operations. Surgeons started to do heart transplants before they were ready for prime time.
People go offshore for stem cell transplants because newspapers, radio and TV tells us about the good things that stem cells might do, but doesn’t do a good job about informing us of the risks. People think that the science of stem cells is further ahead than it is.
In Dr. Caulfield’s research on the media coverage that scientists could produce viable stem cells from skin, 71% of the articles covered the stem cell research in positive terms. For example, the Globe and Mail headlines read: “Stem cells hailed as a massive breakthrough” and the London Times ran a similar headline — “Breakthrough as stem cells are produces from skin, not embryos.”
Only 6 articles included any suspicion about the scientific potential and belief that the new technology is not suitable for medical application.
It is important to remember that all of these stem cells are patented. Many different research teams are developing their own lines of stem cells from various tissues — skin, human bone marrow, umbilical cord, and human teratocarcinoma (A malignant teratoma, most often of the testes).
When these stem cell lines are implanted into the brains of rats that have had a stroke induced by the researchers, some of these stem cell live and grow. Some of these stem cell experiments have produced some recovery in the rats. But there are risks. Scientists worry about:
- growth of tumors or even cancer,
- a host immune response where the body rejects the transplanted cells, or,
- dyskinesia, Parkinson like symptoms , an abnormality in performing voluntary muscle movements.
As well, although the stem cells transplanted into brains may grow, they many not actually connect to anything. Sometimes people recover function and sometimes they don’t. Stem cell transplants may connect better if the person receives intensive physiotherapy after the stem cell transplant (Bonnamain, Neveu, & Naveihan, 2012).
So maybe, it is not time to rush off for one of those stem-cell operations you see on the internet. Better knowledge of mechanisms involved in stem cell transplantation will hopefully lead to successful treatments, but we are not there yet.
You can listen to CBC interview University of Alberta Researcher Tim Caulfield:
Read Tim’s article:
See also an example (of many) e-mail from Stroke Care Giver Support.
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