Week 13: Tailor-made stem cells for disease

I had a really hard time reading this article because the of the arrogance and pomposity of Mr. Manohar. His interview is like a giant advertisement for funding and support on behalf of the Stempeutics company. As if they have any idea of what they are doing! Stem cells can naturally develop into any kind of other cell…how do they know what genetic cues actually accomplish this?

This reminds me of what the pharmaceutical companies do when they find a particular constituent in a plant or other organism that they then create a chemical version of in the lab -only- so they can patent it and make a profit. Well, guess what? The naturally occurring substance and the laboratory created ones are not the same. And your body knows the difference. Companies make these chemical drugs, release them on the public and then only after years of beta-testing them on the unsuspecting humans, pull them off the market because of the harmful side effects, once the damage has been done (think: birth control pills, Viagra, prozac, etc.). Mr Manohar really has no idea how these new ‘regenerative medicines’ will play out. If the body was supposed to be able to regenerate itself (as in the case of the liver and skin cells), then I think God/dess would have thought about that an included it in our original design.

Don’t get me wrong, if stem cell research is truly helpful to healing and curing previously incurable diseases, I’m all for it -and- the research required to develop such medicines. But, let’s do it in a way that is responsible and ethical. It’s just that the this interviewee is so smug and know-it-all in his tone that it rubs me the wrong way…this field is just at it’s infancy, there is much promise to this new approach -but- truly they have no idea of how this regenerative medicine will play out -or- what the trade-offs and down-side might be.

Not to mention, if someone has Type 2 diabetes or heart disease there may be factors in their current lifestyles and diets that have actually allowed these diseases to develop during their lifetimes. I don’t hear any mention in their protocol of taking that into consideration and addressing it with counseling, etc. when we are handing out quick fixes such as is promised with stem cell medicines. Without addressing other factors such as these that may have contributed to the health challenges, we just are cuing people up to continue with their status quo behavior versus any real healing on a deeper level…at the source of the imbalance.