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''' HEARTS FOR THE HEARTLESS :
SCIENTIST ANTHONY ATALA '''
DR. ANTHONY ATALA..... *THIS MASTER SCIENTIST*......has built skin.
Some men and women with horrible burns will be laid upon a table. A laser will scan their wounds and transmit their location and depth to a nozzle that will spray new skin cells right onto their damaged bodies.
The work is backed by the U.S. Army, which hopes to treat its more gravely burned soldiers.
*He's built livers, which are constructed cellular layer by with a 3-D printer, until they literally come to life.
He's built sphincters and urethras and heart valves. They beat, beat and........beat.
Dr. Atala wants nothing less than to eradicate all chronic disease. Heart disease, kidney disease, short-bowel syndrome, testicular cancer. Done. Fixed. Gone. in Atala's future, we will no longer be burdened by our broken body parts. We'll just replace them with new ones.
BUT after two decades of slogging through the stem-cell war, Atala's learned that science is science, and then it gets released into the world and becomes something else entirely -a political cudgel, ideological ammunition.
When he advocated for embryonic-stem-cell research, he became a villain to the Right. When his ab discovered a source of stem cells that wouldn't necessitate the destruction of embryos, he became a figure of suspicion on the Left. In 2007, his work -his name- was used to argue both for and against embryonic-stem-cell research on Capitol Hill. The same research!
He know that in 2013, every scientific discovery is fuel for or against a point of view. And so he will protect his project, what he calls ''my life's work,'' at all costs.
And what is his life's work? It's a public stem-cell bank he is establishing so that any and every person has the material needed to build nearly any organ.
''I don't worry about politics. It's not my concern.'' he says. His voice is soft, but there is finality to its tone.
No, he won't depend upon ideologues or politicians for permission to pursues his life's work. They're mere distractions.
Deep in his laboratory right now, twenty four pig kidneys are suspended in whirling water mixed with soap and solvents. Over one day, the bright-red-organs turn pink, then white, then nearly translucent as their cells and DNA are washed away.The remaining jellylike infrastructure is then reseeded with human cells from the inside out. Twenty-two different types of cells in all.
Because all these organs are built using adult stem cells from the patients who would receive them, there's no risk of tissue rejection.
He's building all of these things. Some, like the bladders and urethras, are in patents today. Others, the kidneys and hearts, are still perfected in animals.
But there are things he can't build, at least not yet. And You Have To Understand How He Got Here. And.............
You have to understand how we got here.
A tiny room on the sixth floor of the University of Wisconsin hospital, 1998. the equipment is dated and scuffed, scavenged from other labs. The scientist inside can't use federal funding for his work on embryos, so he's relying on a private biotech company called Geron that will hold exclusive rights to his findings.
He's trained in veterinary medicine but has become obsessed with understanding the earliest origins of human biology. He washes away the outer layers from a human blastocyst -a three-to five-day old-embryo left over from a fertility clinic-
And then tends to the cell left behind as if they were infants. Every day he feeds them with nutrients and carefully picks out any rogue cells that have begum maturing. He wants the cells to multiply perpetually but never age.
Here's what he grows : embryonic stem cells that are capable of becoming any cell in the human body. Heart cells and nerve cells and kidney cells and insulin-making pancreatic cells. This scientist took an embryo that a couple seeking fertility treatments no longer wanted, and he destroyed it to get the cells inside.
And then he went before the US Senate and told them that because of what he had found, in five to ten years Parkinson's disease can be cured. That if the government were to begin funding research into embryonic stem cells, many, many diseases could be cured.
Here's what he grows: a rabid pro-life movement that took its fervent opposition to abortion and redirected it toward embryonic-stem-cell research. They will not live in a country that destroys one life -a four- day old blastocyst -to save another. They lost Roe v. Wade; they will not lose this battle.
Here's what he grows: a rabid pro-stem cell movement, backed in full force by the Democratic party, that accuses opponents of embryonic stem cells of putting ideology above public health and science. They will not allow the right wing to stand in the way of modernity itself.
Because of this pitiless trench warfare, for more than a decade there will be no federal funding for finding new embryonic-stem cell lines or even studying new lines made privately or abroad.
Instead private biotech companies and individual states will attempt to fill the vacuum, the results of their work often patented and privately held.
Meanwhile the political parties will fight ad nauseam, staking their political identities on the issues. National addresses will be given, laws passed to fund research, and those laws vetoed.
His second month in office. President Barack Obama rescinded restrictions on using federal funds to study new embryonic-stem- cells lines {although funding restrictions on creating new lines remained), and the NIH was immediately sued by pro-life groups.
The Honour and Serving of the ''Advance Medical Operational Research'' continues. Thank You all for reading and sharing forward. And see Ya all on the following one.
With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the World. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.
''' Never Broken '''
Good Night and God Bless
SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless
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