Stem cell technology (2006)

viWTa provides an overview of the most recent scientific and technological discoveries in the field of stem cell technology. In the recent past, stem cells have indeed been receiving a lot of attention. Over the last twenty years, stem cells from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood have saved the life of thousands of patients, many of them children suffering from leukaemia or congenital defects. In most cases, stem cell therapy was their only hope for survival.

We shouldn’t be surprised therefore that the media too discovered stem cells and that they like to present them as the ultimate and universal remedy against all kinds of geriatric diseases or as a magic potion that promises eternal youth! According to stem cell researchers, however, this is not quite realistic. Stem cells are certainly promising as a new medicine or as a model system, helping forward the quest for new medicines. Nonetheless, they are not the Holy Grail. Besides stem cell technology still needs an enormous amount of basic research.
 
At the same time, the dossier makes clear that the debate about stem cells exceeds the merely scientific and medical field. Stem cells give rise to social, ethical, philosophical and political discussions. Some for instance dislike the idea of harvesting stem cells from embryos. Investors on the other hand hope to make money by introducing innovative stem cell therapies, but fear to be inhibited by the current or future legislation. Others have ethical concerns over top football players having frozen the umbilical cord blood of their new-born children, in the hope that it will enable them to cure their own sports injuries. And the authorities try to act against doubtful stem cell treatments that have not proven to be effective yet.