I would like to discuss a point that you brought up, something to the effect of "other than a few exceptions (bone marrow & skin grafts), this therapy has been denied to humans." (I'm not really quoting you, Amy, with these quotation marks, by the way.)

Many human trials have actually yielded quite promising results.

I also appreciated the mentioning that adult stem cell therapies have the huge benefit of lack of tissue rejection issues, since the stem cells are derived from the animal/human patient. To my knowledge (as a highly interested lay person), this has been a major problem in embryonic therapies (rejection, as well as tumor formation).

Incidentally, umbilical cord blood is a wonderful source of non-embroyonic stem cells. I'm hoping that the collection of it becomes easier (can we hope for "routine"??); when I checked into it 7-8 years ago, someone had to deliver their baby in Oakland, or something like that (the procedure wasn't available in the Fremont area).

If you, the Quest staff, and the listeners, would like to read more about these therapies, please access the following links.

http://www.calright2life.org/StemCellResearch.pdf

The "Archives" link to subsequent past issues of the newsletter will yield many more individual cases, but I've not the time to wade through them at the moment.

A bit more information is on this link from California Right to Life's website:

http://www.thecbc.org/redesigned/research_display.php?id=132

(Page down a bit for the question: "What about adult stem cells?")

Thanks again!

*I wince every time I, as a pro-lifer, hear that the pro-life community is against stem cell therapy, and not specifying "embroyonic".