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Given that their methodology uses embryonic stem cells, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the US with opponent Tom Price as head of Health & Hum

Given that their methodology uses embryonic stem cells, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the US with opponent Tom Price as head of Health & Human Services. > The stem cell procedure Kris received is part of a Phase 1/2a clinical trial that is evaluating the safety and efficacy of escalating doses of AST-OPC1 cells developed by Fremont, California-based Asterias Biotherapeutics. AST-OPC1 cells are made from embryonic stem cells by carefully converting them into oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs), which are cells found in the brain and spinal cord that support the healthy functioning of nerve cells. In previous laboratory studies, AST-OPC1 was shown to produce neurotrophic factors, stimulate vascularization and induce remyelination of denuded axons. All are critical factors in the survival, regrowth and conduction of nerve impulses through axons at the injury site, according to Edward D. Wirth III, MD, PhD, chief medical director of Asterias and lead investigator of the study, dubbed “SCiStar.”

jpgvm 10y ago
Thankfully there is still Canada/EU/Australia on the cutting edge of stem cell and gene therapies. That said the Trump administration is likely to be a great blow to science overall, to be felt worldwide I would imagine.
- gtaylor 10y ago
  This may be a bleak way to look at things, but the money the rest of the world will start making with this in the future will ensure that we eventually come around. Money wins over morals and ethics much of the time.
  - gtaylor 10y ago
    Not to say that this research isn't ethical or moral. More that we'll eventually benefit from this.
    - komali2 10y ago
      Generally the well-educated believe it is ethical and moral research, but there's a vast swath of America that believe that it is unethical, either from a misunderstanding of how the research is done, or simply from a total moral objection to the research at all. So you're right, but it's still an issue until we can solve the misinformation problem.
      - zhemao 10y ago
        What misunderstanding do you think they have? Producing embryonic stem cells requires destroying an embryo. Yes, the embryos are mostly castoffs from fertility clinics and would likely be destroyed as medical waste anyway. But that doesn't matter one bit to people who believe embryos are human beings and deserve legal protection.
  - jpgvm 10y ago
    Yeah that is potentially true. Many of these types won't let morals or ethics get in the way of making money. They just aren't too keen on spending money on the good of mankind however.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      >They just aren't too keen on spending money on the good of mankind however. What if they cut your taxes? Then you can spend your money on anything you think might benefit mankind instead.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        That doesn't follow. If the government cuts taxes but at the same time prohibits an activity I can't then use the money I've saved by paying less tax on that banned activity. For some things it does work. I could spend the money on recreational drugs, for example, because they are available, however I don't personally know any stem cell therapy practitioners, nor any who are prepared to flout the law. Edit: removed a word because it made a sentence ambiguous
    - gtaylor 10y ago
      Luckily, I think this is one of those cases where investing in this particular field will be good for humanity _and_ profitable. Hopefully not $900 Epi Pen profitable, though...
    - jpgvm 10y ago
      @cmdrfred I don't really know where is the best area to invest in, personally I prefer to just pay my taxes and have a government in place that either consists of or consults with the appropriate experts. In Australia we are fairly lucky in this regard, our government is 'mostly' good, for some value of mostly at least. I'm not saying it couldn't be more efficient but definitely more efficient than research institutions needing to market to the broad public for funding.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Meanwhile death and suffering will happen that could have been averted. Or to put it in a stronger business-context, the money to be made here in the US will have been squandered by politics. Because while there is a moral argument here, it's been thoroughly coopted by politicians using it to gain/keep power.
    - dmix 10y ago
      That's why medical tourism is a big and growing industry. Much like other political policies fruitlessly trying to end legitimate supply/demand as long as people want it there are always ways around it. I'm sure any paralyzed person would easily take a $300 flight to Canada for the surgery. The only risk is that the US has the highest amount of human scientific capital. But much like the EPA thing that turned out to be overblown (according to multiple EPA reps who said the memo was routine and that Obama did much the same, without drawing the subsequent outrage) I'm going to wait until legitimate threats to stem cell research are made before I'm concerned.
      - tummybug 10y ago
        This. On a more local scale (EU) medical tourism is huge. I know of many family members travelling a short distance to avail of much cheaper dental work abroad. In fact I am surprised this isn't advertised more.
- yarou 10y ago
  I suspect the anti-science bit has more to do with approving Keystone/DAPL than some hard line policy. If Balaji Srinivasan is confirmed for the FDA, I'd expect gene therapies and stem cell treatments to become more commonplace. After all, Balaji's first startup dealt with genetic testing. What is more concerning is that the US might face a brain drain in the coming years, due to the visa ban from so-called "terrorist" states (funny how Saudi Arabia is conspicuously absent from that list...)
  - komali2 10y ago
    Step into any university Chemistry or Engineering building and it becomes very clear that the only reason the USA is still at the forefront of scientific advancement is because it has still convinced the highly educated of other nations that this is the place to be. Remove the desire for the Chinese, Indian, and Russian engineers to try to study and work here, and you remove the USA's competitive advantage, and you give back all that talent straight to the USA's biggest competitors.
    - zhemao 10y ago
      > you give back all that talent straight to the USA's biggest competitors Or to Canada. The US isn't the only western country highly skilled workers emigrate to.
      - komali2 10y ago
        I consider Canada a US competitor.
- toyg 10y ago
  EU is not consistent. I know Italy for example banned most of that type of research (because you don't want to make the Holy Father cry), whereas in UK it's still pretty liberal. I'm pretty sure other "holy" countries like Poland and Ireland also have very strict laws. My cyberpunk education would point to the Far East as "the" place for this sort of thing to spring up unregulated.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  As an American, one thing that really annoys me about the rest of the world is that, even though we only have 5% of the world's population, everyone (esp. in the rest of the industrialized nations) seems to expect us to be the leaders on everything, and then they get mad when we fail. If Canada/EU/Australia think stem cell and gene therapies are important, along with things like climate science and any other kind of science, and we in the US are failing on these things thanks to our crappy voting, then why can't you guys pick up the slack? Personally, I'm not at all happy about the prospect of what's going to happen to science funding here real soon. But that doesn't excuse all these other advanced economies from doing their part too. The rest of you should be trying to take the lead on these things, if not many more things, esp. when we so obviously screw up.
downandout 10y ago
It's interesting that this article is months old (from September 2016) and is only now on the front page of HN. I suspect that it has something to do with our desire to argue the benefits of stem cell research to the new administration. I certainly hope they listen, but I fear they won't. People opposed to embryonic stem cell research based upon religious beliefs aren't going to suddenly ignore what they believe to be instructions from their particular God, even if it has enormous benefits for society. I hope that Trump is more reasonable than that, but the hard-line pro-life stance he recently took through executive order doesn't make me optimistic that this kind of research will continue in the US during the next four years.
- husgfdsr3y 10y ago
  As you noted, this story was posted months ago. According to STAT in a report published just a week ago, funding for stem cell research in California has essentially been squandered.[1] The issue isn't whether stem cell research can be done (it can)[2]. It's whether we should fund the research through taxes. [1] https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/19/california-stem-cell-agency-cirm/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/19/california-stem-cell-age... [2] http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/07/justice/stem-cell-appeal/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/07/justice/stem-cell-appeal/
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    If basic research is needed, better to push that forward than to squander the money shooting for the moon. They are shifting to clinical trials now, so we'll see how that works out.
- grzm 10y ago
  It's interesting that this article is months old (from September 2016) and is only now on the front page of HN. I suspect that it has something to do with our desire to argue the benefits of stem cell research to the new administration. I continually find it depressing, distracting, and unuseful how quick some are to immediately attribute everything to overt politics. Why some submissions catch on when has so many variables. We're quick to see patterns, amplified by our own biases. Other than skywriting, I'm pretty confident that clouds aren't shaped to be animals or faces. The data for submissions is available via a couple APIs. If you want to ascribe politics as playing a role in this post making the top page now, you can try to back it up with some actual evidence and make your claim substantial.
Synaesthesia 10y ago
The one moral problem I might have with procuring stem cells from newborn infants (and it's not religious), is they get it from the placental cord - and new research shows that leaving the placental cord on the baby until it falls off is the best practice. You can lose valuable blood by cutting it off.

jpgvm 10y ago

Thankfully there is still Canada/EU/Australia on the cutting edge of stem cell and gene therapies. That said the Trump administration is likely to be a great blow to science overall, to be felt worldwide I would imagine.

gtaylor 10y ago
This may be a bleak way to look at things, but the money the rest of the world will start making with this in the future will ensure that we eventually come around. Money wins over morals and ethics much of the time.
- gtaylor 10y ago
  Not to say that this research isn't ethical or moral. More that we'll eventually benefit from this.
  - komali2 10y ago
    Generally the well-educated believe it is ethical and moral research, but there's a vast swath of America that believe that it is unethical, either from a misunderstanding of how the research is done, or simply from a total moral objection to the research at all. So you're right, but it's still an issue until we can solve the misinformation problem.
    - zhemao 10y ago
      What misunderstanding do you think they have? Producing embryonic stem cells requires destroying an embryo. Yes, the embryos are mostly castoffs from fertility clinics and would likely be destroyed as medical waste anyway. But that doesn't matter one bit to people who believe embryos are human beings and deserve legal protection.
- jpgvm 10y ago
  Yeah that is potentially true. Many of these types won't let morals or ethics get in the way of making money. They just aren't too keen on spending money on the good of mankind however.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    >They just aren't too keen on spending money on the good of mankind however. What if they cut your taxes? Then you can spend your money on anything you think might benefit mankind instead.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      That doesn't follow. If the government cuts taxes but at the same time prohibits an activity I can't then use the money I've saved by paying less tax on that banned activity. For some things it does work. I could spend the money on recreational drugs, for example, because they are available, however I don't personally know any stem cell therapy practitioners, nor any who are prepared to flout the law. Edit: removed a word because it made a sentence ambiguous
  - gtaylor 10y ago
    Luckily, I think this is one of those cases where investing in this particular field will be good for humanity _and_ profitable. Hopefully not $900 Epi Pen profitable, though...
  - jpgvm 10y ago
    @cmdrfred I don't really know where is the best area to invest in, personally I prefer to just pay my taxes and have a government in place that either consists of or consults with the appropriate experts. In Australia we are fairly lucky in this regard, our government is 'mostly' good, for some value of mostly at least. I'm not saying it couldn't be more efficient but definitely more efficient than research institutions needing to market to the broad public for funding.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
- r00fus 10y ago
  Meanwhile death and suffering will happen that could have been averted. Or to put it in a stronger business-context, the money to be made here in the US will have been squandered by politics. Because while there is a moral argument here, it's been thoroughly coopted by politicians using it to gain/keep power.
  - dmix 10y ago
    That's why medical tourism is a big and growing industry. Much like other political policies fruitlessly trying to end legitimate supply/demand as long as people want it there are always ways around it. I'm sure any paralyzed person would easily take a $300 flight to Canada for the surgery. The only risk is that the US has the highest amount of human scientific capital. But much like the EPA thing that turned out to be overblown (according to multiple EPA reps who said the memo was routine and that Obama did much the same, without drawing the subsequent outrage) I'm going to wait until legitimate threats to stem cell research are made before I'm concerned.
    - tummybug 10y ago
      This. On a more local scale (EU) medical tourism is huge. I know of many family members travelling a short distance to avail of much cheaper dental work abroad. In fact I am surprised this isn't advertised more.
yarou 10y ago
I suspect the anti-science bit has more to do with approving Keystone/DAPL than some hard line policy. If Balaji Srinivasan is confirmed for the FDA, I'd expect gene therapies and stem cell treatments to become more commonplace. After all, Balaji's first startup dealt with genetic testing. What is more concerning is that the US might face a brain drain in the coming years, due to the visa ban from so-called "terrorist" states (funny how Saudi Arabia is conspicuously absent from that list...)
- komali2 10y ago
  Step into any university Chemistry or Engineering building and it becomes very clear that the only reason the USA is still at the forefront of scientific advancement is because it has still convinced the highly educated of other nations that this is the place to be. Remove the desire for the Chinese, Indian, and Russian engineers to try to study and work here, and you remove the USA's competitive advantage, and you give back all that talent straight to the USA's biggest competitors.
  - zhemao 10y ago
    > you give back all that talent straight to the USA's biggest competitors Or to Canada. The US isn't the only western country highly skilled workers emigrate to.
    - komali2 10y ago
      I consider Canada a US competitor.
toyg 10y ago
EU is not consistent. I know Italy for example banned most of that type of research (because you don't want to make the Holy Father cry), whereas in UK it's still pretty liberal. I'm pretty sure other "holy" countries like Poland and Ireland also have very strict laws. My cyberpunk education would point to the Far East as "the" place for this sort of thing to spring up unregulated.
Arizhel 10y ago
As an American, one thing that really annoys me about the rest of the world is that, even though we only have 5% of the world's population, everyone (esp. in the rest of the industrialized nations) seems to expect us to be the leaders on everything, and then they get mad when we fail. If Canada/EU/Australia think stem cell and gene therapies are important, along with things like climate science and any other kind of science, and we in the US are failing on these things thanks to our crappy voting, then why can't you guys pick up the slack? Personally, I'm not at all happy about the prospect of what's going to happen to science funding here real soon. But that doesn't excuse all these other advanced economies from doing their part too. The rest of you should be trying to take the lead on these things, if not many more things, esp. when we so obviously screw up.

downandout 10y ago

It's interesting that this article is months old (from September 2016) and is only now on the front page of HN. I suspect that it has something to do with our desire to argue the benefits of stem cell research to the new administration. I certainly hope they listen, but I fear they won't. People opposed to embryonic stem cell research based upon religious beliefs aren't going to suddenly ignore what they believe to be instructions from their particular God, even if it has enormous benefits for society. I hope that Trump is more reasonable than that, but the hard-line pro-life stance he recently took through executive order doesn't make me optimistic that this kind of research will continue in the US during the next four years.

husgfdsr3y 10y ago
As you noted, this story was posted months ago. According to STAT in a report published just a week ago, funding for stem cell research in California has essentially been squandered.[1] The issue isn't whether stem cell research can be done (it can)[2]. It's whether we should fund the research through taxes. [1] https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/19/california-stem-cell-agency-cirm/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/19/california-stem-cell-age... [2] http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/07/justice/stem-cell-appeal/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/07/justice/stem-cell-appeal/
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  If basic research is needed, better to push that forward than to squander the money shooting for the moon. They are shifting to clinical trials now, so we'll see how that works out.
grzm 10y ago
It's interesting that this article is months old (from September 2016) and is only now on the front page of HN. I suspect that it has something to do with our desire to argue the benefits of stem cell research to the new administration. I continually find it depressing, distracting, and unuseful how quick some are to immediately attribute everything to overt politics. Why some submissions catch on when has so many variables. We're quick to see patterns, amplified by our own biases. Other than skywriting, I'm pretty confident that clouds aren't shaped to be animals or faces. The data for submissions is available via a couple APIs. If you want to ascribe politics as playing a role in this post making the top page now, you can try to back it up with some actual evidence and make your claim substantial.

Synaesthesia 10y ago

The one moral problem I might have with procuring stem cells from newborn infants (and it's not religious), is they get it from the placental cord - and new research shows that leaving the placental cord on the baby until it falls off is the best practice. You can lose valuable blood by cutting it off.