RespiteMatch.com Health Blog

Sunday, August 14, 2005 - It is past time that the truth be made known about stem-cell research and the president’s part in it. Stem-cell research is legal and has been and will be funded in both the private and public sectors. California voters have voted billions for stem-cell research. It is my hope that most of that is spent on adult stem- cell research if possible.

In 2003 under the Bush administration, the NIH spent almost $25 million on embryonic stem- cell research plus $190 million on non-embryonic stem-cell research projects.

Under the Bush administration $18 million will be earmarked to speed up the development of existing lines that qualify for federal funding. There is a public misconception that all stem- cells are only garnered from embryos and the media has done nothing to correct that fallacy. Stem-cells are part and parcel of the human anatomy. As an adult, stem-cells are present to replenish and repair cells that are destroyed, wear out and need repair.

Essentially there are two types of stem-cells; embryonic which has captured most all of the news media and adult stem-cells which most don’t have a clue about.

Embryonic stem-cells of course come from human embryos at a certain stage of their lives. To use the embryo it must be destroyed which is a moral problem for most.

Adult stem-cells come from many sources like body fat, skin cells, bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and other parts of the body. The bonus in harvesting adult stem-cells is that nobody or nothing is destroyed.

Glowing claims of tremendous cures from embryonic stem-cell research have been proclaimed for years but what have the actual results been? So far no clinical trials are being done using human embryonic stem- cells. None.

Embryonic stem-cells have not cured or treated one human patient. None. So far the success of embryonic stem-cells’ curative powers have been zilch.

How about adult stem-cells, is their record any better? You can bet your health and life they are. Here’s something not blazoned in the media; in July 2004 two women appeared before a Senate committee describing how in automobile accidents each woman was relegated to a wheelchair, paralyzed with spinal cord injuries. With implants of their own stem-cells, the two are now walking with braces and regaining muscle control.

The National Institutes of Health has reported over 300 human clinical trials using non- embryonic stem-cell sources. The NIH has identified more than 70 diseases treated using the cells such as breast cancer, leukemia and sickle cell anemia. Researchers have successfully treated those with Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, heart damage and spinal cord injuries with adult stem-cells. The big bonus of the implanting of one’s own adult stem cells in the unlikely possibility that those cells would be rejected.

Robert Lucas

Altadena

Development no panacea

Re “Redevelopment a useful tool (Aug. 1):

Redevelopment is not quite the painless panacea that was depicted. It has evolved into a program pitting city officials, developers and others who stand to profit on one side and the city’s poorest, least educated, and least able to fight back on the other.

Developers are the top contributors to city council members’ election campaigns and our councils expect us to believe that their serving as the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) is no conflict of interest. Developers cultivate relationships with city staff, especially Planning Departments. Developers have access to inside information and know which areas of any city are ripe for redevelopment. Developers and speculators buy up a few properties in the area giving city officials the opportunity to tell us that they “have the support of property owners for the project’ and that they’re “working closely with area property owners on the plan.’

Our elected city council/RDA members have immunity they can’t be held personally responsible for decisions made on the job. There is nothing to prevent them from lying, stretching the truth, or refusing to answer our questions. They can speak to us with vague talking-points “This project will benefit the community’ that sound good but mean nothing. Ask them to explain. Ask them to provide some financial projections, etc. They’ll stay on point and the public learns nothing substantive. Public meetings and hearings are required by law. The RDA members sit quietly, the public talks, and nothing changes. Votes are taken immediately after hearings with no discussion. The meetings are a sham.

One fact that the RDA will never say aloud: post-redevelopment tax increments do not go into the city’s General Fund, even though the city has to provide a higher level of services to the newly redeveloped area. Twenty percent of the increment goes to schools and the rest flows quietly back to the Redevelopment Agency. Our cities remain revenue-starved while our Redevelopment Agencies overflow with cash.

The small businessmen and residents directly effected by redevelopment are the invisible citizens of our communities: the working-class, the poor, senior citizens, immigrants and people of color. What happens to these people? Is the loss of their business relationships and social networks compensated? RDA members avoid bringing “the victims’ into any presentation. They can’t risk giving redevelopment a human face.

The truth of redevelopment is that it is liable to collusion and corruption; it provides next-to- no revenue for our cities while increasing city expenses; and it displaces the poor, the old, immigrants, and people of color. Redevelopment has to be used judiciously. It can replace old, run-down buildings but it cannot payback campaign contributors, cure social ills, or “clean up’ our cities by displacing people who are “not like us’.

Ellen Zunino

Monrovia

Coulter plainly wrong

One day before Philip Pettus’ paean to Ann Coulter and diatribe against Larry Wilson’s comments about her The Star-News provided another example of her mordant wit and wide-ranging expertise (Their View, Aug. 8, “Give us Supreme Court justices that get the law right’).

Allow me to address the Aug. 8 column directly, based upon my passing knowledge of constitutional law: I am a graduate of USC Law School and was a practicing public lawyer for 23 years, during which time I routinely addressed constitutional issues.

To begin with, since the landmark 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, the principle of judicial review, giving to the judiciary, and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court, the final word on constitutional interpretation has been part of our form of government. To put it simply, the Constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says.

This historic reality would seem to belie as pure ignorance Coulter’s fear that if “Supreme Court opinions are law of some kind, all is lost.’ Since Supreme Court interpretations have carried the force of law for more than 200 years, Coulter, apparently unaware of that fact, worries in vain: the republic appears safe from judicial usurpation.

It is also clear that Coulter is not really concerned about judicial power at all. Rather, she wants to be sure that newly appointed justices exhibit “conservative bona fides.’

But it may well be that as times change and change they do good character is more valuable than ideology in a judicial officer appointed for life. As one of our greatest jurists, the conservative Oliver Wendell Holmes, put it, “concrete cases’ are not decided upon “general propositions’ but rather on judgment, experience and intuition.

What sort of character is exhibited by Coulter’s ideal justice who “wakes up every morning…chortling about how much his latest opinion will tick off the left.’

In sum, the nature of constitutional law is one of slow change and stability in light of societal developments. To argue otherwise portends badly not only for Roe v. Wade, but also for civil rights, freedom of expression, fair trials and all the other innovations provided by the high court over at least a century.

Frederick Grab

Pasadena