With all the debate over Embryonic Stem Cell research, Adult stem cells seem to get lost in the noise. Let's see if we can't settle the dust a bit.

Imagine a drawing of a family tree, one drawn to look like an actual tree. You start with a single trunk at the bottom, and it forks off to each side for the first generation of children. Then each of those branches forks and so on. The same thing happens in our bodies with our cells. When the egg and sperm combine, a single cell is created. If you will remember high school biology, when a cell divides the two new daughter cells are identical. This is true of the final cells produced, the ones you can see and touch right now, but this first cell, and the next few generations are special. After a few generations they begin to change; as they divide they become different cells.

It is the beginning of the tree effect. Every cell in our bodies has an entire compliment of our DNA. As these first cells begin to divide, they begin turning on some of the genes in the DNA and turning others off. After enough generations you are left with a cell that can only divide to create another just like it. In other words you are left with what we think of as “normal” from our biology classes. But these first transitional cells, the ones called stem cells, hold remarkable potential for in the medical field.

So what is the difference between an embryonic stem cell and an adult stem cell? Really it is just their position on the tree. There are four stages of stem cells, each becoming more specific. The first two stages are only found (at least in abundance) while a person is an embryo. Hence these are called embryonic stem cells. The “adult” stem cells are the other two stages, but the name is only to distinguish them; “adult” stem cells can be gathered from an infant. In fact they are regularly collected from blood in the umbilical cord.

There are pros and cons to each of these. Because the earlier stages (the embryonic stem cells) are less specialized, it has been thought they would be more useful. Also you do not have to hunt around for them as much, the entire embryo is made of them. However, to gather embryonic stem cells, you must destroy the embryo. This obviously raises ethical questions.

Adult stem cells avoid the ethical questions because no lasting harm is done in harvesting them. Also, since it is usually the case that the stem cells are collected from the patient they will be used on, there are no associated problems with immune system rejection. However, adult stem cells have the problem of needing to be filtered and purified once they are collected. Also, since they are more specialized, you have to collect adult stem cells from the area of the body you are wanting to treat.

Adult stem cells are regularly showing more potential, however. Researching this topic leads to paper after paper where someone has found a way to make an adult stem cell change farther than previously thought possible. There are many scientists now working on stem cell research that believe we will eventually be able to make adult stem cells differentiate into any cell in the body. So far our successes with embryonic stem cells have been very limited; it has been difficult to make those first differentiations take place.

As for real world results, adults stem cells take the cake. So far not one single cure or treatment has been accomplished with embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells have been used for years to treat a variety of ailments, some of which are: Gunther's disease, Hunter syndrome, Hurler syndrome, Acute lymphocytic leukemia, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis and spinal cord injuries.

The debate, as always when concerning the government, is money. Currently federal tax dollars can only be spent on embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created when the current rules were put in place. The push is to open up more dollars to create new stem cell lines. My question is why? The bio-tech companies are putting their money into adult stem cells. The proven successes have been in adult stem cells. By all reckoning, it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to get embryonic stem cell research off the ground. Creating more embryonic stem cells means destroying thousands (millions from some estimates) of more embryos. It is a great deal of money into something that has not shown near as much promise as adult stem cells, and is laden with ethical delimnas.

Personally I want my money in on the side that is going to produce the most results for the least expenditure. But this is the government; that might be asking too much.