End to AIDS?

According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors were able to perform a stem cell transplant on a 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia. The results are stunning – the man seems to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after the transplant. Doctors used a donor carrying a gene mutation that has natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS.

While exciting, Dr. Jay Levy, a professor at UCSF, says that the treatment is unlikely to help the vast majority of people infected with HIV because a stem cell transplant is too extreme and too dangerous to be routinized. However, it is an absolute breakthrough, and demonstrates the promising future of stem cells in the medicinal field. It is also important to note that this revolutionary procedure took place in Germany. The United States, having endured eight years of restrictions on stem cell research, is no longer a player in the advancing stem cell field. Unless the United States can release itself from traditional restrictions in regards to stem cell research, innovations like this one will continue to come from places such as South Korea, France, Germany and others.

Oops, forgot to kill the

Submitted by on Thu, 02/19/2009 - 11:34am.

Oops, forgot to kill the block quote. Last two paragraphs are mine.

Bit of context. Source is

Submitted by on Thu, 02/19/2009 - 11:33am.

Bit of context. Source is wikipedia, so take it for what it's worth.

In 1995, the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel advised the Clinton administration to permit federal funding for research on embryos left over from in vitro fertility treatments and also recommended federal funding of research on embryos specifically created for experimentation. In response to the panel's recommendations, the Clinton administration, citing moral and ethical concerns, declined to fund research on embryos created solely for research purposes,[34] but did agree to fund research on left-over embryos created by in vitro fertility treatments. At this point, the Congress intervened and passed the Dickey Amendment in 1995 (the final bill, which included the Dickey Amendment, was signed into law by Bill Clinton) which prohibited any federal funding for the Department of Health and Human Services be used for research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo regardless of the source of that embryo.

In 1998, privately funded research led to the breakthrough discovery of Human Embryonic Stem Cells (hESC). This prompted the Clinton Administration to re-examine guidelines for federal funding of embryonic research. In 1999, the president's National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommended that hESC harvested from embryos discarded after in vitro fertility treatments, but not from embryos created expressly for experimentation, be eligible for federal funding. Even though embryos are always destroyed in the process of harvesting hESC, the Clinton Administration decided that it would be permissible under the Dickey Amendment to fund hESC research as long as such research did not itself directly cause the destruction of an embryo. Therefore, HHS issued its proposed regulation concerning hESC funding in 2001. Enactment of the new guidelines was delayed by the incoming Bush administration which decided to reconsider the issue.

So, Clinton tried to lift the regs, Congress intervened although Clinton didn't veto the bill, Clinton started the process for allowing use of all embryos that would be otherwise discard but by the time the regs were ready Bush was in power and restricted it to existing lines.

So strictly Clinton was the first American president to lift regs. That said, the whole process was more complex than I realized.

If facts matter, your

Submitted by on Sat, 02/14/2009 - 4:29pm.

If facts matter, your passive reference to the Bush administration ("having endured eight years of restrictions") is a bit unfair. Bush didn't impose restrictions--he was the first American president to LIFT restrictions on the use of federal funds for stem cell research. Clinton didn't do that, Bush did. He opened the door (albeit with certain conditions) for federally funded stem cell research.

You did know that, didn't you?