Science Is What Works

For example, this:

A cardiac stem-cell therapeutic procedure is expected to be approved early next month for use at hospitals, the nation’s drug safety agency said Friday. The approval will be the first of its kind in the world to allow the use of this form of treatment.

“There have been dozens of procedures already approved here and in other countries for the treatment of skin and cartilage diseases,” Ahn Gwang-su, a researcher at the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA), said. “But the approval of this cardiac stem-cell therapy will be the first in the world.”

The agency is now taking the final procedures required to permit the use of “Hearticellgram-AMI,” a stem-cell therapy for acute myocardial infarction with completion expected by the end of this month.

The move is also meaningful in that it will facilitate the research and development of more stem-cell specific therapies, Ahn said, expressing hopes that approval for others will follow.

“It is certainly good news for patients who have suffered an acute myocardial infarction, and more new treatments using stem cells will be developed and approved for incurable diseases,” Ahn said.

Developed by FCB-Pharmicell, the therapeutic treatment has passed all three KFDA processes, including safety and validity tests, needed for its approval. Only document-related procedures remain before the final approval, according to the administration.

The first clinical tests were conducted in 2006, and successfully showed an improvement in the health of patients who had suffered an acute myocardial infarction.

The therapy involves extracting somatic stem cells from the patient’s own body, which are then cultured for four weeks before being directly injected back into his or her damaged heart.

It uses stem cells’ biological characteristics of dividing through mitosis and separating into diverse specialized cell types to act as a repair system for the body to replenish adult tissues.

The term "stem-cell research" is persistently used to mean scientifically worthless but morally abhorrent playing about with embryonic stem cells, together with the viciously cruel justification of this by reference to an ever-longer list of medical conditions.

The real stem-cell research involves adult and cord blood stem cells, is ethically unproblematic, and has already yielded real results. But it struggles to secure funding, because it is of no interest to those who cannot forgive the Catholic Church either for having educated them or for having educated the wrong sort.