This summer, with the help of the Peter J. Eloranta scholarship, I took a fascinating online course in regenerative medicine. I learned about a new biological technology that has the potential to save millions of lives, cure cancer, prevent and undo the harm caused by Parkinson’s, Alzheimer's, and other degenerative diseases, as well as regenerate the heart after it has had an attack. This technology is called stem cells, and they have the potential to cure diseases that were previously deemed incurable. Despite their promising capability, stem cell technology faces ethical challenges from its development and promotion that have curtailed its use in modern medicine.
The reason stem cells have such amazing medicinal potential is that they can produce any other cell in the human body and can do so indefinitely. For example, a stem cell can produce new neurons in the brain, new blood cells in the bone marrow, or even copies of itself!
After learning about how useful stem cells can be, I wondered why they are not more widely used, and why I had never heard about them before. Surely a technology that has the potential to save millions of lives should be something everybody knows about, right? In actuality, two barriers stand in the way of the incorporation of stem cell treatments into standard medicinal practice.
The first barrier is a lack of knowledge. Scientists simply do not yet know enough about stem cells to ensure that when they implant them into a patient, the cells will produce the desired tissue (e.g., heart cells instead of kidney cells). The second, far greater, barrier that stands in the way of stem cell research and treatments is ethics. One specific type of stem cell, the embryonic stem cell, is derived from human embryos. These embryos are secured by researchers from in vitro fertilization clinics, where the extra embryos that would normally be discarded are donated to laboratories. The way that embryonic stem cells are obtained has led many people to protest their use and has politicized stem cell research. These protests led President George Bush to cut all federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in August of 2001, effectively killing the project, and preventing scientists from making many key discoveries. While this ban was later lifted under the Obama administration, many states still maintain tight regulations with respect to stem cell research and treatments, and strict federal laws greatly discourage embryonic stem cell research.
As it turns out, federal and state regulations on stem cell research have had a huge negative impact on the entire field of regenerative medicine. While state and federal laws have very strictly monitored embryonic stem cells, restrictions have been conversely lax on the use of adult stem cells. Adult stem cells are a different type of stem cell, which are derived from adult humans instead of embryos, as the name indicates.
The ban on embryonic stem cell research, lax regulation on adult stem cell treatment, and politicization of stem cell research sparked a dark age of stem cell treatments. A number of profiteering, charlatan clinics took advantage of the public’s lack of medical knowledge, selling false stem cell treatments for exorbitant prices to desperate families. While current stem cell research can only guarantee safety in Leukemia treatments, many pretenders sold unsafe and ineffective stem cell treatments for knee pain, back pain, cancers, vision loss, heart disease, and a plethora of other stem cell treatments. The stem cell treatments that these clinics sold are all presently experimental and deemed too unpredictable for wide use. While some of the unsuspecting victims who bought these treatments only sustained financial losses, a number of others also suffered horrible complications from their dangerous stem cell treatments. Stem cells can just as easily cause cancer as they can prevent it when used improperly, and many who bought these false stem cell treatments developed fatal carcinomas.
While I was shocked and disgusted to learn about the history of false stem cell treatments, I learned that fake stem cell clinics are largely a thing of the past. In recent years, regulations have tightened across the board, preventing dishonest clinics from egregiously capitalizing on the fears and ignorance of the public. Now, for the most part, clinical trials are being performed in a safe and ethical manner, and new research is slowly accumulating as to how stem cells actually can be manipulated to treat previously incurable diseases.
Despite their dark past, stem cells have a bright future, and hopefully, we will soon be able to tap into their full medical potential. To learn more about stem cells, you can watch Ending Disease, a four-part documentary series about various stem cell clinical trials created in 2020, or learn more about them at https://medlineplus.gov/stemcells.html.