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Stem cells and diabetes

A woman whose son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes almost 12 years ago has been living with the situation and she and her son have been learning together about the disease and how to care for it and stay as active and healthy as possible. Her son manages the disease quite well, but there isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t think ovr and over about a cure and what that would mean to him and the thousands who suffer from this disease. For this reason, I was the fact that President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week which lifts the restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is an incredible gift that offers great hope.

There is the huge debate continuing throughout the country – and the world- regarding whether stem cell research is a good thing a bad thing, helpful, not helpful, moral, immoral and a million other things. There are many sides to this debate, but if you have a child, loved one or friend with diabetes or an endless array of diseases and disorders that could be helped by research using stem cells, most of them feel it is an essential step to take. And if you talk to most of these individuals they are not looking to take embryos that would ever have a chance of becoming a baby and using it to help their situation. They are trying to keep from wasting the thousands that are literally being tossed into the trash never to be used to help anyone. Instead of throwing these out, why not try to help people instead. It’s like throwing out food that could help thousands of starving people while they watch. Why not use the food to ease their hunger? Why not use what is available to help people with diabetes and other illness rather than throw them out?

The executive order includes a requirement that the National Institutes of Health develop and issue guidelines to ensure that this research is conducted in an ethical manner. Politics has no place in science, and with the NIH’s long history of establishing and enforcing proper guidelines governing medical research, many people are confident that the research on newly accessible stem cell lines will be held to the highest ethical standards.

Hopefully the situation will be sorted out sooner rather than later so that more people can be helped and kept alive – rather than suffer from further delays that could be the cause of many more deaths.