#104 Tuesday, March 14, 2006  -  OF SEALS, AND ADULT STEM CELLS

By Don Reed, www.stemcellbattles.com

There is a wonderful movie called 8 BELOW, about sled dogs left behind in
the snow.

An enormous leopard seal figures in the story. I won't say how it appears,
because I want you have the pleasure of jumping. (My grandson exaggerates
when he says I "squeaked like a girl" when the animal appeared; I may
perhaps have made some small dignified vocalization, but that was only an
expression of concern for those around me, you see.)

But I will admit I am not fond of the family of seals.

At a safe distance, fine: I respect and admire their grace and power.

But up close?

Working as a diver for Marine World fifteen years, I have been chased,
nipped, harassed and humiliated by these ill-mannered disrespectful brutes.

They do not seem to understand that Man is the dominant species of planet
Earth.

Or maybe it was just me, I don't know.

But every time I had to do some chore in the water at the park, and there
were seals or sea lions involved, trouble would follow.

I have known (on an all-too-personal basis) elephant seals, harbor seals,
California sea lions and (my favorite) a giant golden Steller sea lion named
George, which Marine World released back to the sea. I was not altogether
sad to see him go.

Most people think seals and sea lions are so adorable and cute, even cuddly.

They were definitely interesting-half-ton pound George liked to go through
gates by breaking them with his chest-but they were also trouble, trouble,
trouble.

Like adult stem cells.


Adult stem cells give political cover to folks wanting to shut the real
research down.

"Oh, I support stem cell research!", they say, "the ethical kind, adult stem
cells."

Let me give you the precise scientific terminology for their potential
therapeutic value.

Adult stem cells suck.

Study them, sure. Where they can help, fine. But there is no comparison in
power.

Embryonic stem cells are like money, that can be changed (differentiated)
into whatever kind of currency (cells) you want.

Adult stem cells are more like gift certificates, redeemable only at certain
stores.

Another way to look at it is the difference between the delicate unlined
perfection of a baby's skin, and the wrinkly scarred-up hide that covers me.

Consider: an infant has no scars. Before the baby is born, the embryonic
stem cells bring all the skin and flesh and internal organs together
seamlessly, like invisible construction crews of amazing efficiency, leaving
no trace of their work.

As we age, however, things change. The adult stem cells we have now are not
so efficient. They are more like maintenance crews, which leave a mess.

Scars: like the ones from when a harbor seal disagreed about my right to
clean its pen. We were underwater, and the three hundred pound animal had
nipped the back of my wetsuited leg twice. I put my hand on its chest to
shove it back-and it popped its claws into the back of my hand.

Scars are valuable, zippers for a wound. Adult stem cells are useful, in a
limited way, and we can learn from studying them. But they are no substitute
for the astonishing power of embryonic and SCNT stem cells.

Here are three examples of adult stem cell weakness:

1. One of the Roman Reed Act funded researchers attempted to replicate an
adult stem cell "success".
I will not print the scientist's name here, because she has not yet
published her findings.
But the adult stem cell experiment  (which she was attempting to repeat, or
replicate) claimed to have changed fat cells into nerve cells-so that it
could reduce paralysis.
If true, this could be very important.

When our scientist tried to replicate the experiment, for the first five
days, it seemed to work, at first. The rats' movement increased.

But then the cells changed back.

The rats became paralyzed again, and worse than before. They went into
extreme pain, so much they bit themselves, and had to be put to sleep. The
scientist told me she will not work with adult stem cells any more.

2.  Remember the paralyzed Korean woman who walked with a walker after
receiving adult stem cells? (note: the scientist who did the experiment was
honest: I heard him speak in San Diego, and he was careful to point out that
she could walk with a walker before the experiment; he just felt she walked
better afterwards.) The woman was reportedly angry about the experiment
being called a success, as she is still paralyzed.

3. Did you read about the big heart damage "repair" attempt, written up in
the New York Times?  The heavily hyped experiment did not succeed.
Unfortunately, it was labeled a stem cell failure. Nowhere in the article
was it made plain (at least to my reading) that this was a failure for ADULT
stem cells.

The opposition wants to claim adult stem cells are so promising-that we do
not need embryonic or SCNT stem cells.

And in case you are wondering how I can bring this all back to leopard
seals.


At a recent award dinner for Bob Klein, I was lucky enough to end up at his
table.

Everyone was being quiet, waiting for somebody else to talk first, (or maybe
just enjoying the silence) and I thought, well, maybe I should start the
conversation.

Now small talk is not my strong point. When public comment time comes, no
problem, I will fight my way to the microphone. But at parties I tend to
hide behind Gloria.

I do know, however, know a couple hundred animal stories, and most people
seem willing to stay awake for them, at least the first five or six times.
(My kids are especially fond of these stories, and reward me for telling
them; whenever I say, "In the old days, when I worked at Marine World", they
immediately suggest I have something to eat.)

Anyway, the Academy-Award-winning documentary MARCH OF THE PENGUINS movie
was just out in theaters, and naturally I had seen it.

So, I talked about the leopard seal in the movie, which ate one of the
penguins. All you saw was the leopard seal-swoosh-- the bird was gone. No
details, all very neat and tidy.

But in one of the Jacques Cousteau books, the leopard-seal penguin
interaction is more fully documented.

On the ice floe, hundreds of penguins, standing there like little black and
white suited butlers-and nobody wanting to be the first one in the water.
You go first, no, that's okay, you go first! They shoulder each other toward
the edge.

The reason for the delay is right there in plain sight, waiting:  the
leopard seal: twelve feet of flexibility, speed, teeth, and appetite.

I got to this part, and Bob turned his head, and I thought, oh, good, he is
liking the story!

So I piled on the detail.

The penguins all need to go fishing, of course, and underwater they move
like bullets. But when they first crash through the surface, there is an
instant of confusion, vision blurred by roaring bubbles-and in that instant
the leopard seal strikes.

It grasps the penguin, shakes it right out of its feathers, and eats it
alive.

It was the dramatic climax of the story; I was warmed up, ready to go, if
they liked that one, I could tell another about practically any animal they
could name--

Like a referee making a timeout signal, Bob put the stiffened fingers of his
right hand to the palm of his left.

"Too much information," he said.

Bob, I learned later, loves animals, and hates violence.

Sigh.

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