Adult Stem Cells

In the 2004 election John Edwards promised that stem cell research would be able to make the paralyzed walk, and if John Kerry was president this would happen. Many advances have been made in stem cell research but most of them have been made using adult stem cells. These are stem cells that come from adult bone marrow, an adult spleen, or many other sources and do not require the destruction of an embryo to be harvested. Most of the advances made with adult stem cells are largely ignored by funding agencies and even the mainstream media. It seems that embryonic stem cells are thought as the golden tickets to almost any cure. Such a case has once again come to light. A researcher Denise Faustman, at Harvard University has found a possible cure for Type I (juvenile) diabetes. In her research she utilizes adult stem cells harvested from a spleen, when these are transplanted into the pancreas of mice, the defective cells that produce insulin are regenerated. The mice are then capable of living a normal life without any sort of insulin replacement therapy. You would think that a organization like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International (JDRF) would be ready to fund research so promising. That is not the case. JDRF is one of the major lobbyist for embryonic stem cell research. Why would they not want a cure for diabetes regardless of the source? It seems they are focused on a certain agenda. Update: MSNBC has an article in which they describe how people are wasting their money pursuing umbilical stem cells. In the article they say umbilical stem cells do not possess, "the same miraculous characteristic that embryonic stem cells have to become bone or tissue, to transform into the cells that are needed to cure the patient’s disease." [Emphasis added]