Embryonic Stem Cells Not Necessary for Medical Progress Report on new research by Dr. Donald Orlic of the National Institutes of Health and others, indicating that bone marrow stem cells adult can help repair and restore function in damaged hearts: "Until now, researchers have thought that embryonic stem cells offered the best hope for rebuilding damaged organs, but this latest research shows that politically controversial embryos may not be "We are now finding that these adult stem cells can work just as well, perhaps even better, than embryonic stem cells," Orlic said." - "Approach may Repair Heart Damage," MSNBC, March 30, 2001 (www.msnbc.com /news/552456.asp )* * *"Umbilical cords discarded after birth may offer a vast new source of repair material to repair brains damaged by stroke and other diseases, without ethical concerns surrounding the use of fetal tissue , researchers said Sunday." - "Umbilical cords could repair the brain," Associated Press, February 20, 2001* * *"PPL Therapeutics, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, has succeeded in "reprogramming" a cell - a move that could lead to the development of treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The Scotland-based group will announce today that they have transformed the cow skin cell into a pulsating heart cell and are close to starting research in humans... PPL's ​​announcement... will be seen as an important step toward producing stem cells without using human embryos." - "PPL follows Dolly with cellular breakthrough," Financial Times, February 23, 2001* * *"[O]rgan-specific adult stem cells appear to show much more plasticity than than initially thought. Stem cells isolated from one tissue can differentiate into a variety of unrelated cell types and tissues... These findings raise the exciting possibility of using bone marrow transplantation to treat a wide variety of disorders, such as muscular dystrophies, of Parkinson's, stroke and liver failure." - E. Kaji and J. Leiden, "Gene and Stem Cell Therapies", Journal of the American Medical Association, February 7, 2001, p. 547* * *"[S]ince the marrow adult bone has recently been discovered to contain stem cells of previously unrecognized “plasticity” that are capable of forming a variety of cell types – muscle, liver, neural, bone, cartilage, endothelial and perhaps others – it may be possible to use marrow stem cells in cytotherapeutic approaches to a broad spectrum of diseases, such as cardiac disorders, muscular dystrophy, liver disease, neurodegenerative conditions, and joint diseases.