Brownback: embryonic stem cells ‘form tumors’

July 17, 2006

I can appreciate the fact that the science behind stem-cell research is extremely complicated for those of us without a scientific background. But I feel pretty confident in saying that one need not be a medical researcher to know the difference between a legitimate argument and a blatant scare tactic.

During the Senate debate today on pending stem-cell legislation, Sen. [tag]Sam Brownback[/tag] (R-Kan.), who is the chamber’s leading opponent of [tag]stem-cell[/tag] [tag]research[/tag], told his colleagues that stem-cells cause “[tag]tumors[/tag].”

Citing unnamed journal articles, which he may have received from his friend David Prentice, Brownback told his colleagues, “[W]e’ve talked about this being a problem. This has been a problem on fetal tissue research, about 15 years ago. This stack — the front pages of peer-reviewed articles citing embryonic stem cells creating tumors when implanted in other animals.” (There’s no link available yet; the comments come from a Hill source who emailed me the unofficial transcript from the Sente floor.)

“I’ve got — one, two, three more articles. These are just a summation, peer-reviewed articles. They form tumors. That’s the problem with embryonic stem cells. So while the senator from California, the senator from Michigan, from Iowa, from Pennsylvania, other places saying we want cures, I want cures.

“The research is saying, embryonic stem cells form tu tumors. You put them into individuals, they form tumors. And while we may, we hope, at some point in time something positive happens, the problem is they form tumors.”

Now, I’m not a scientist and Brownback isn’t a scientist. And if Brownback wants to argue that an embryo is a full-fledged human with the same rights as you and I, and that in-vitro fertilization is a moral wrong that should be banned, he’s free to make that case. There’s a certain logical consistency to it, even if I believe it’s completely wrong.

But to believe Brownback is to believe that the world’s finest scientists and medical researchers want to give people tumors. If this is the best Brownback can come up with, it’s no wonder the far-right is losing this debate.

Let’s just make our boy Brownback come up with his evidence and have it looked at by some REAL scientists.

Lord, the crap these guys spew out of their mouths makes you think their plumbling is put in backwards.

But you know, I would not be surprised if the earliest animal studies show that the developed cells made from stemcells do start to grow uncontrolably in their hosts. And that is what a tumor is. Of course, boy Brownback is implying that HUMANS have been given tumors, which I much doubt.

  • Well the modern version of the GOP is hostile to science so I guess him believing scientists and doctors want to give people tumors isn’t such a stretch.

  • I’ll predict right now, Brownback is running for President in ’08, and has a very good chance at winning the nomination.

    The GOP is reaching a situation with its candidates that junkies reach with their shit. They need stronger and stronger candidates/shit to get high/out to the polls. At some time the dose needed to do the job, and the dose that kills them, are the same strenght.

    The GOP can’t have the Talibornagain wing not vote. That positively killed Dole.

    But what that wing of the party wants in a candidiate will make it impossible for the GOP to win any fair election.

    Brownback’s a Catholic — so he appears to the casual observer to be different from the snake-handlers. Romney’s got that going for him, too, being a Mormon. But the theocrats will swallow a Catholic before they swallow a Mormon, and Mitt is based suspiciously near large bodies of salt water and major universities.

  • The party that believes (1) stem cells cause tumors also believes (2) the internet consists of tubes, (3) global warming isn’t happening, (4) HIV/AIDS can be transmitted by kissing, (5) you can diagnose a brain-dead person’s viability from old videotape. God, I’d love to administer an elementary science test to these clowns. Their ignorance is truly awesome. I believe we’d all be much better off if they downed copious quantities of Atomic Number 33.

  • Brownback is a converted Catholic, not a cradle Catholic. He converted in 2002, I believe it was, under the tutoring of that sanctimonious shepherd of the Senate flock – Rick Santorum. Brownback was reportedly a Methodist before that. I’m continually horrified and embarrassed by my senators – Brownback and the ever accommodating doormat for the empire – Pat Roberts.

  • Brownback is a nut. He is probably referring to this week’s Scientific American which talks about how certain cancer patients suffer relapses because some of THEIR OWN stem cells went bad and can form cancers. It does not say that the treatments gleaned from stem cell research causes cancers. Talk about taking things out of context. Go out to their web site and take a look.

  • I heard washing the feet of other people can give you hepatitis C and a really bad cold

  • What an idiot. Don is right; there was a Scientific American article a month or two ago suggesting that tumors may be caused by genetic damage to adult stem cells within an organism, which is likely what Brownback was referring to. But that article suggests that stem cell research could be valuable to preventing cancer; it hardly makes a case for cutting the research.

  • I am mathematician not a biologist, but I’d did a Google search to learn what I could. In the past few minutes, I learned that it appear that tumors do have a type of adult stem cell associated with them. For example,

    Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) inHeidelberg and the Institute of Biomedical Research of the ParcCientífic de Barcelona (IRB-PCB) have now added key evidence to claimsthat some types of cancer originate with defects in stem cells. Thestudy, reported this week in the on-line edition of Nature Genetics(September 4) shows that if key molecules aren’t placed in the rightlocations within stem cells before they divide, the result can bedeadly tumors.

    Also, there is was a discovery concerning breast cancer.

    A profound discovery has just been announced regarding breast cancer tumor cells which will impact the techniques that researchers have traditionally used to target cancer cells. A study conducted by doctors Michael F. Clarke and Max S. Wicha at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor refutes the initial notion that cancer grows exponentially as a collection of cells. Instead, Clarke and Wicha discovered that only a small population of cells within a tumor were able to create tumors by developing into different types of cells present in a tumor. According to Dr. Clarke, this small population of cells resemble the adult stem cell because they are able to “make copies of themselves – a process called self-renewal – and produce all the other kinds of cells in the original tumor. Similar cells have been identified in leukemia in humans, but these are the first to be found in solid tumors.”

    Note that these stem cells are similar to adult stem cells the type which Brownback wants to base therapy on.

    On the other hand, stem cells may prove useful in treating brain tumors.

    Here is a web site which contains claims similar to Brownback’s. If you follow the links to the research sited there, you will find no such claims. Contrary to the situation described above this site also claims that adult stem cells aren’t associated with tumors. You can also find similar claims of association of stem cell and tumors the in NRO.

    Now I have some other things to do. Why don’t some the other commenters stop reflexively bitching about Brownback and pick up where I left off. See if you can document the lie rather than assume it to be so.

  • The characteristics that define a stem cell are “pluripotency” (ie can become all kinds of cells) and “self renewal” (ie can divide).
    It is thought that some cancers result from loss of control of the regulatory mechanisms that govern these two processes in normal stem cells. This has been best demonstrated for some kinds of leukemia. Therefore, in the human and mouse, cancers arise from genetic defects that develop in the endogenous (own) stem cells of the organism. Which has nothing at all to do with the use of stem cells for various therapeutics. Properly regulated stem cells would not cause cancer. The “stemness” of the tumors that are being discussed in some of the references above reflect this capacity for self renewal. That is not a normal characteristic of a mature kidney cell or pancreas cell or breast cell, for example. When these cells become cancerous, the become “stem cell like” in that they develop the ability to replicate (self renew) which is abnormal.

  • I might not be a scientist, but I do know research methodologies. Brownback and his sloth-kin really need to go back to school.

    First off, when you “cite a source,” you’re required to identify that source by name. We’re talking about the same Brownback who thinks journalists should be prosecuted for “protecting their sources,” yes?

    Second, writing protocols for research—even a high-school-level paper—requires that the source be cited within its context. This “cherry-picking” of a phrase here and a sentence there is childish, unprofessional, and—if done in the academic arena—it’ll get you “a ringside seat on the outside,” so you can spend “the rest of your feeble days looking in.”

    The really disgusting part of Brownback’s regurgitation is that, were he a Democrat making such insidious remarks against an issue that was—in the eyes of both the scientific community and the GOP—of real medical value, people would be calling for his prosecution, imprisonment, and probably even his assasination/execution.

    So, I find myself asking—just what was/is/should be the difference between a “liberal” (allegedly) being a threat to the health and well-being of the American People—and a Republican who is (factually) dishonest to the point of being just as much a threat to the health and well-being of the American People? I’ve yet to see how reporting on an illegal act by the White House can be worse than Herr Brownback using his lies and distortions to prevent medical research that holds so much promise regarding the saving of countless lives…..

  • Let’s not forget that in Texas, at least, “Abortion causes breast cancer.”

    BTW, my attendant had to type this for me, as I’ve gone blind from (you guessed it!).

  • I sense that the next high school textbook the Rethugs will insist be revised is not a science book, but rather the debate class text. The new Rethug rules of debate:

    1. Lie with as much conviction as you can muster. The bigger and more often repeated the lie, the better.

    2. Argue that some unnamed person(s) don’t believe your lie, i.e. “Now, there are some people who just wont believe that lie I just told you. . . but they don’t even have the guts to name themselves and stand up against me!”

    3. Make up some more really crazy shit.

    4. Make up some really crazy sources to allegedly support the really crazy shit. Claim it is peer reviewed (you dont have to mention that the peers were all members of the 700 Club or that the sources were bought and paid for – and dont give the cites, that way no one can call you on the methodology)

    5. Call your opponent names. Some that work particularly well are “liberal,” “unpatriotic,” “soft on crime,” and “a pre-9/11 thinker.”

    6. If it is not enough to make up the substance and make up the sources, make up new rules. Change the debate time, or how long each side gets to talk, or who can participate.

    7. If your opponent wont back down, threaten to do something nuclear (note, while this works better with Senate Democrats than other nations, it is still worth a try in any situation. Besides, just talking about those big phallic missles feels good.)

    8. Make up even more crazy lying shit.

    9. If your opponent still wont see things your way, tell him to go fuck himself.

    10. Most important, have Diebold score the debate and hire someone named Harris or Blackwell to moderate.

  • That’s not all. Stem cell manipulation also exacerbates global warming and Islamic Jihadism. The butterfly effect proves it.

  • “Now I have some other things to do. Why don’t some the other commenters stop reflexively bitching about Brownback and pick up where I left off. See if you can document the lie rather than assume it to be so.”

    Rege… that makes good sense in a culture that honors truth telling.

    But what does it mean to a culture where documenting lies changes absolutely nothing?

    Indeed–what does exposition mean to a culture that peterado (at #2) captures perfectly:

    “The well-worn Reublican debate tactic — make shit up.”

    You can show them the lies…
    But it doesn’t matter.
    They just lie louder.
    They just make things up on top of the things they made up.

    What was it Adolph said?

    Oh yeah:

    “The greater the lie, the greater the chance that it will be believed.” – Adolph Hitler

    Which leads me to ask this:

    What is the greatest club to use against a Republican’s forehead?

    Because it appears to me that the truth club only makes them strive to protect their ids and egos with greater lies….

    Just wondering…
    Because the planet is being lost…
    Lie by lie…. moment by moment…
    To liars who care not a whit about documentation.

  • These tumor-causing embryos are clearly terrorists and must all be destroyed immediately!

  • I am a scientist and I took (ok, audited) a course on stem cells with one of the world’s leading stem cell researchers (Doug Melton at Harvard). While it’s not my area of research now, I believe what Brownback is referring to are teratomas. Stem cell researchers found early on that if you take mouse embryonic stem cells and inject them back into mice, they can form tumors in various places in the body. These things can be pretty freaky- because they’re pluripotent, they can form a range of tissues depending on their environment. You can end up with a mouse that has a tumor under its skin, and when you look at the tumor it has bits of hair or teeth or even eye tissue. These things can also occur naturally in humans, arising from reproductive cells (though I thikn they’re not exactly the same thing as transplanting ES cells.)
    Part of stem cell research is figuring out how to prevent stem cells from going out of control like this- there are certain chemical signals required for normal vs. abnormal growth. That’s part of the research that is up for funding in this vote- no one is suggesting that if the bill passes Wednesday that we begin injecting stem cells into people on Thursday. First we need to do basic research like this, which is currently blocked by Bush’s funding policy.
    Someone should send Melton an email (dmelton@mcb.harvard.edu) for clarification, he’s been fairly visible in the press in the stem cell debate- he’s part of Harvard’s effort to establish a stem cell institute.

  • So, I am an embryonic stem cell researcher, and actually work on this specific problem.

    The short of it: Brownback is grossly misrepresenting those papers.

    A bit longer explaination:

    Embryonic stem cells have the potential to turn into any cell type in the body. One way to test if an embryonic stem cell is healthy is to inject it into an immunocomprimised mouse and have it form a benign tumor called a teratoma that has cell types from all over the body in it.

    Any treatment using stem cells would *not* work this way. One would never directly inject embryonic stem cells into a person. Instead, in a plastic dish one turns the embryonic stem cell into the desired cell (a heart cell for example) by changing the culture conditions. This is followed by a purification step where any lingering undesired cell types are removed. Only this differentiated and purified cell, which can no longer form a tumor, would be injected into a patient.

    Learning how to do these two tasks (differentiating and purifying) are exactly what the restrictive bush policies impede.

    Brownback is basically saying: “Car tires can go flat. Therefore they are evil and should not be used on cars.”

  • Maybe the intent of the undocumented lie tactic is to get us to waste our time talking about it and trying to document it when we should be taking political action instead.

  • Your argument, based on politics, is flawed. Embryonic stem cells DO in fact cause TUMORS and that is why you will NOT find real human stories today that show that embryonic stem cells have clinically helped one inidvidual. On the other hand, there are thousands of clinical cases using adult stem cells that have shown safety and efficacy.
    If all of you who are focused on the democrat vs. republican issue – instead did some basic research (have you heard of google?, how about the library and look at journals such as ‘Stem Cells’ and ‘Nature’) you would find that embryonic stem cells have demonstrated in research time after time – that they are quite problematic and are unstable and have caused tumors and other problems.
    This is not politics – it is fact.

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