A researcher at Stanford has come up with a way to do kidney transplants from non-related donors, an without the lifetime anti-rejection drug regimen. It uses adult stem cells.

Is Orrin Judd opposed to this research, too? After all, it promises to extend life for millions. We just can't afford to have so many people alive...

[Via Geek Press, as usual]

They did not mention an important issue that normally affects this kind of transplantation (i.e. bone marrow transplant like therapies) which is Graft v. Host disease (GVH). This is an outcome in which the grafted tissue (the immune stem cells, in this case), mature into cells that recognize the transplant patient's body itself as foreign, and start to attack it. They must have found a way to avoid this very big issue in immune system transplant therapies, but it wasn't mentioned, to my reading, in the article. Very interesting stuff. Mr. Judd can feel free no to get this type of treatment, if it offends! I suspect, since no blastocysts were harmed in the making of this therapy, his objections will be muted.

Actually, Mr. Judd will probably applaud this. One of his main contentions is that there is no need to use embryonic stem cells. If in this case adult stem cells were used, that bolsters his case.

It bolsters that part of his case. But his "ten" (really nine) questions related to doing any sort of research that would extend life, on the basis that society couldn't afford it.

Rand :

This doesn't seem like it expands the human life span at all, though it may help some people to live a little longer.

And, as AOG points out, the fact they could do it with adult stem cells suggests that we needn't be in such a hurry to harvest fetal cells after all. See what a little patience brings?

I'm having trouble with the logic that things that make people live a little longer don't extend lifespans. Maybe it's the new math...

And I don't see why we have to wait for adult stem cells, when I don't agree that the use of fetal stem cells is immoral, at least not as immoral as allowing living, breathing, thinking people to die for the lack of the (as opposed to "potential people," which could as validly describe the ten gazillion sperm in my body at this moment, as the repository of fetal stem cells).