A Quote by Elizabeth Blackburn
The most dangerous cancer cells are actually the ones that are more like stem cells, which have this ability to produce themselves over and over again. More and more cancer biologists say stem-cell-like cells in cancers are the most dangerous.
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I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.
Both in Britain and America, huge publicity has been given to stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, and the potential they offer. Of course, the study of stem cells is one of the most exciting areas in biology, but I think it is unlikely that embryonic stem cells are likely to be useful in healthcare for a long time.
Well, there are two kinds of stem cells: adult stem cells, which you can get from any part of a grown body, and embryonic stem cells. These are the inner- core of days-old embryos that can develop into any kind of cell.
When we talk about stem cells, we are actually talking about a complicated series of things, including adult stem cells which are largely cells devoted to replacing individual tissues like blood elements or liver or even the brain.
If stem cells divide equally, so both daughter cells look more or less the same, each one becomes another stem cell. If the split is unequal, neurons form prematurely.
The average person doesn't understand what a stem cell is. There's a lack of health literacy in our nation. So the public can't really get into this dialogue because they don't understand the complexity of stem cells, not the faith-based approach, not the ideological or political, but the science behind stem cells.
One of the first papers I wrote at the University of Wisconsin, in 1977, was on stem cells. I realized that if I changed the environment that these cells were in, I could turn the cells into bone, and if I changed the environment a bit more, they would form fat cells.
Scientists have stated that embryonic stem cells provide the best opportunity for devising unique treatments of these serious diseases since, unlike adult stem cells, they may be induced to develop into any type of cell.
The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act would expand research on embryonic stem cells by increasing the number of lines stem cells that would be eligible for federally funded research.
Cancer essentially lives in us and becomes activated at some point, and then cells begin to psychotically divide. Initially, the cancer cell looks like other cells and the body invites it in.
You've got to get away from the idea cancer is a disease to be cured. It's not a disease really. The cancer cell is your own body, your own cells, just misbehaving and going a bit wrong, and you don't have to cure cancer. You don't have to get rid of all those cells. Most people have cancer cells swirling around inside them all the time and mostly they don't do any harm, so what we want to do is prevent the cancer from gaining control. We just want to keep it in check for long enough that people die of something else.
Adult stem cells have shown great potential and have effectively helped patients. Another alternative is cord-blood stem cells. These are a neglected resource that could be used to treat a diverse body of people.
I believe that we are going to have a much deeper appreciation of what kinds of abnormalities in cancer cells and in the surrounding cells that feed and respond to cancers are vulnerabilities that will allow us to make better predictions of which kinds of drugs will work to treat these cancers.
So why in the world would anyone support the unethical, failed use of embryonic stem cells instead of the ethical, successful use of adult stem cells? Because they do not know the difference.
You don't want to inhibit cell division. You want to inhibit cell division in the cancer cells, and even that is not really where you want to do it. You actually want to destroy the cancer cells, which is a different matter altogether. Just stopping them isn't enough - you really want to kill them.
Stem cells are being used for anti-aging, and the University of Miami is doing a study about that to prove that it is true. They are looking at me, and my markers have shown exactly that I have been actually reversing my aging and getting younger. I am taking perhaps more stem-cell treatment than anybody else in the world.
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