The American Spectator

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Backers of more funding for ESC research are also quick to point out that Atala himself, after his article was published, wrote in a letter: "It is essential that National Institute[s] of Health-funded researchers are able to fully pursue embryonic stem cell research." But as I observed two years ago, ASC researchers almost always say something like that after making a breakthrough. NIH is the hand that feeds them and NIH likes handing checks to ESC researchers. There's also nothing to be gained by angering colleagues whose livelihoods are based on tinkering with ESCs, if not actually accomplishing anything.

ESCs certainly had a head start in the race to develop all types of cells from a single one. But that gap has either been rapidly narrowed or even erased. Meanwhile the ASC advantage in therapies grows by the month.

WHICH LEAVES US WITH a final but very important question. When will the ESC promise pay off? When can we expect something more from them than arcane articles in medical journals (though repeatedly portrayed as miracle breakthroughs in the New York Times)? You know, like, well, actually making sick people better?

The standard answer is in about a decade, which must be true because it's been "in about a decade" for years now. Yes, widen, lengthen, and deepen that federal trough enough and toss in lots of state funding from places like California (3 billion bucks over ten years), and we just might be able to do with an ESC in 2017 what we can with an ASC today. But one leading ESC scientist says even that may be far too optimistic. That scientist is none other than the University of Wisconsin's James Thomson himself.

In addressing a convention in February, Thomson pointed out that obstacles to therapeutic ESC research are daunting. Among them is that ES cells require the recipient to permanently use dangerous immunosuppressive drugs and that they have a nasty tendency to form into teratomas -- which means "monster tumor." Said Thomson, "I don't want to sound too pessimistic because this is all doable, but it's going to be very hard." Further, "It's likely to take a long time." How long? The Associated Press writer present characterized it as "likely decades away." That's a minimum of 20 years, with no maximum.

As to what we can expect from those therapies, as the AP writer quoting Thomson put it: "One day, some believe the [embryonic stem] cells will become sources of brain tissue, muscle and bone marrow to replace diseased or injured body parts." In other words, they'll be able to do what ASCs do right now. Muscle? In the last few years, doctors have used ASCs to rebuild hearts and livers not in Petri dishes but in live humans. Marrow? As noted, marrow stem cells have been curing people for half a century.

Finally, neuronal stem cells have treated brain diseases like Parkinsonism in animal models and assuredly will soon enter human testing. Not soon enough, to be sure, but certainly a lot earlier than "decades." Autopsies on bone marrow recipients have found that some of the cells made their way to the brain and became nerve cells. Whether this was actually therapeutic remains unknown.

So let's just give the ESC researchers all the money they want for their decades away promise, mindful that those funds could have gone to ASC research projects treating and curing humans today. Then perhaps they'll announce that, given enough money and perhaps decades, they'll also build a computer with the processing power of a dime-store calculator.