Research demonstrates that embryonic stem cells are not an effective
resource for treatment and create false hope for a cure, according to a
professor from the University of Milan, in Italy.
“This situation helps to nourish the uncritical mentality that
demonizes any attempt at regulation as anti-scientific and against
progress. Moreover, ‘stem’ has become a sort of magic word that gives
added value to everything from cosmetics to the most absurd therapeutic
ideas,” said professor Augusto Pessina of the University of Milan.
The professor's remarks were published in a June 14 article in the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano.
In May of this year, the German government ordered the closure of the
XClinic, which provided treatment for cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s and
spinal cord conditions, after an 18-month-old baby died in October of
2010 from an injection of embryonic stem cells into the brain.
A few months earlier, a 10-year-old child was left severely disabled after undergoing a similar procedure.
Pessina pointed to these cases in his article titled, “Hope is not nourished by lies.”
“There is a lot of false information and lies in stem cell
biomedicine, whether about biological knowledge or clinical
applications,” he said.
He noted that one can find hundreds of sites on the internet that
make “unrealistic promises” to cure “almost any pathology” with “at best
therapies that have not been approved or that in other cases are
useless or even dangerous to one’s health.”
The Committee for Advanced Therapies in Europe has already warned
that this phenomenon “contributes to the discrediting of proper
scientific research carried out in accord with ethical norms,” such as
research with umbilical cord stem cells, which have been shown to be
effective in various therapies.
Pessina said “correct and honest information” is urgently needed to prevent more unethical cases.
He
went on to denounce the media for uncritically applauding procedures
that have not been verified, thus causing biomedical information to be
poorly received and “generating in patients and family members unfounded
hopes and bitter disappointments.”
“Lies must not be used to raise the hopes of the sick,” he warned.
On the other hand, he pointed to the case of France, where several
days ago research with embryonic stem cells was prohibited despite
protests that called the decision obscurantist and contrary to freedom
of research.
“In biological research today—where the principle that whatever can
be technically done is licit seems to rule—the French law represents a
courageous move that seeks to defend the dignity of the human person,”
Pessina stated.