Far East's more liberal view of stem-cell research. Check out the disgusting hypocrisy of Van Golden and his wife, who are "Christians", and TOTALLY "against" abortion, but have no problem taking advantage of it's research use when it can help them personally.
Also note that the stem cells that are used here are not from early abortions or miscarriages but pretty late term, at least 16 weeks it says in the article. HYPOCRITES!!!!
Wednesday December 1, 2004
The Guardian
<snip>
For they come in search of one of the most pioneering - and controversial - medical procedures on the planet: the injection of cells from aborted foetuses into the brains and spines of the sick. And the object of their faith is a Chinese surgeon who spent many of his university years labouring as a peasant and is now conducting trial-and-error experiments on live subjects despite his research being rejected by the western medical establishment.
Dr Huang Hongyun promises nothing. He claims no miracle cure. He admits he cannot fully explain his results. All he knows, and all he tells his patients, is that his method often works, that the results speak for themselves. "Our results change thousands of years of traditional concepts," he says.
The conventional wisdoms that he claims to have turned on their heads are that chronic spinal injuries - injuries that can cause paraplegia or tetraplegia - can never be treated; and that it is almost impossible to stabilise the condition of patients with the wasting disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
<snip>
Among them is Van Golden, a Christian, anti-abortion Texan who has sold his house so that he can travel to communist, atheist China and have Huang inject a million cells from the nasal area of a foetus into his spine. According to Golden's doctors, his spine was damaged beyond repair in a car crash last Christmas. The damage to his nervous system was so bad that he has been in a wheelchair and racked by spasms ever since. But Golden refused to give up, even if it meant having to compromise his values. "This is the only place that offered us any hope," he says. "Everyone else offered only to help make me sufficient in that chair. But the chair is not my destiny. It is not ordained."
<snip>
In the past month, something unusual has been happening here: this clinic has become the base for Huang's treatment of foreign patients. The first sign is the giant red banner strung across the entrance, which bears the English greeting, "Welcome to the new home." The next is up on the third floor, where a guard restricts access to a newly painted ward full of pink-uniformed nurses and patients, including Van Golden.
It cannot be easy for a man of his beliefs to be in China, where the government's one-child policy is partly responsible for millions of abortions each year. But instead of shunning the system, Golden believes his only hope is to embrace it. There is nowhere else he could get foetal cells. "I wish there was another way they could do it. There are 4,000 abortions a day in the US. Partial-birth ones are murder on a most terrible level. What they are doing here is a whole lot more humane.
"Four thousand a day. That's a waste. Something good should come out of something bad. The people who don't believe that aren't in a wheelchair." The day after we meet him, Golden takes his turn in the operating room, where Laura Fairrie, a film-maker with Guardianfilms, has been given a rare chance to film the controversial procedure.
<snip>
Once the desired area adjacent to the damaged segment is located, Huang, looking through the keyhole incision with a microscope, inserts the cells using an ultra-fine needle to minimise the risk of damaging nerve fibres. The cells, harvested from the olfactory bulbs inside the noses of foetuses, seem to have unusual properties, which may include the ability to stimulate change in the nervous system. Ideally, says Huang, the foetuses should be 16 weeks old to achieve the best results. He says the mothers all give their consent for the embryos to be used in this way and do not receive payment. The Guardian asked to be shown where they come from, but was told this information was too sensitive.
Once harvested, these olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) are cultivated for 10-14 days using a medium that the doctor says he has developed himself. He is reluctant to go into the contents of this liquid, but says it plays an important role. In the process of culturing, the number of cells multiplies ten- or twentyfold, meaning that a single foetus is enough to produce the 1m cells used in Golden's operation - half a million above and below the damaged area.
<snip>
Although Huang is one of the first in the world to use foetal OECs on humans, research on cell implants goes back more than two decades. In western animal laboratories, researchers are testing the possible benefits of stem cells on neurological disorders, but Huang dismisses such studies. He says Chinese doctors have already attempted stem-cell transplants on humans with poor results. "In clinical trials in China, stem cells have failed to meet expectations. I believe that in two or three years' time, US doctors will realise this."
The boast that China leads the world in this area of medical science would have been unbelievable a few years ago, but lower ethical barriers have allowed doctors here to conduct experiments not permitted elsewhere. "Chinese doctors have mixed many kinds of cells," says Huang. "Some things are legal in China that are not legal in the US."
<snip>
Two days after his operation, Golden too has noticed a change. "I can feel more muscles firing again. The feeling is back in my finger. My feet aren't nearly as sensitive as before, my spasms have slackened up and there is a little more movement in my feet ... It is these little things that build up to big things. It's the hope."
<snip>
"We need 100 more Dr Huangs," says Laura Jackson's father Daryl. "And we need more cells. It's a different government over here. They have to trim the population. There are 15 to 20 million abortions in China a year. If everyone who was aborted could save a life, there would be no sick people left in the world." Golden's Christian wife, Debbie, also sees Huang as an idealist - particularly in comparison to the US doctors who charged her husband almost $1m, but were able only to make him more comfortable in his wheelchair.
"In the US it's totally about money, but China is more ethical," she says. "They work harder. I'm American, so that is very hard to say.
"I don't agree with abortion, but it will happen anyway. In the US, we do abortions but don't use the cells. In China, they don't just take life and destroy it - they give something back. It's like lemonade out of lemons. You take something bad and you make it good." Such reasoning requires a moral somersault, but it is one that can be done easily in China. That is enough to generate hope.
In the west, the debate about using cells from foetuses looks set to continue for decades. In China, it is a non-issue. As a result, people who are maimed or dying no longer have to wait for the politicians and the scientists to scrutinise the ethnical and medical risks. There is a choice. It is an uncertain one.
<snip>
Four days after his operation, Golden and a couple of other patients visit the Great Wall of China, conveyed there by bus and then wheelchair. The sight of the world's biggest and oldest barrier appears to inspire rather than daunt the Texan, who now believes in the miracles of a Chinese doctor. "I want to come back here next year and walk the wall for myself," he says.
more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1363339,00.html
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