How promising is adult stem cell research?
The good news is that there is an ethical alternative to embryonic stem cell research that has gotten only token recognition in the media and has been downplayed by prominent scientists. Adult stem cell research holds as much, if not more, promise as embryonic stem cell research, and we are likely get to our therapeutic goals more quickly if the federal government puts its funding into this area. There have been no successful therapies utilizing embryonic stem cells in humans. Embryonic stem cells show signs of being genetically unstable and they are difficult to culture. It is hard to control their differentiation and it is difficult to get a pure cell culture of one cell type. The great advantage of embryonic stem cells is that they can differentiate into 210 different types of tissue. This is also their greatest weakness. How does a scientist direct development down just one path? Geron researchers at the December 2000 meeting of the Society of Neuroscience reported that they had at
