Hormone use linked to cancer risks
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:06:07 GMT
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO - The first follow-up of a landmark study of hormone use after menopause shows heart problems linked with the pills seem to fade after women stop taking them, while surprising new cancer risks appear.
That heart trouble associated with hormones may not be permanent is good news for millions of women who quit taking them after the government study was halted six years ago because of heart risks and breast cancer.
But the new risks for other cancers, particularly lung tumors, in women who'd taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years puzzled the researchers and outside experts.
Those risks "were completely unanticipated," said Dr. Gerardo Heiss of the
University of North Carolina in
Chapel Hill, lead author of the follow-up analysis.
The analysis focused on participants' health in the first two to three years after the study's end. During that time, those who'd taken hormones but stopped were 24 percent more likely to develop any kind of cancer than women who'd taken dummy pills during the study.
"There's still a lot of uncertainty about the cause of the increased cancer risk," said analysis co-author Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at
Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.
The cancers included breast tumors, which also occurred more frequently in hormone users during the study.
The researchers noted that the increased risks for all cancers amounted to only three extra cases per year for every 1,000 women on hormone pills, compared with nonusers.
Still, Heiss said the results suggest that former hormone users need to be vigilant about getting cancer screening including mammograms.
"Vigilance is justified," he said. "No alarm, but vigilance."
The initial study of 16,608 postmenopausal women was designed to examine pros and cons of taking pills long thought to benefit women's health. It was halted in 2002 when more breast cancers, heart attacks and related problems were found in hormone users versus nonusers.
There were some health benefits — decreased risks for hip fractures and colorectal cancer — but the follow-up found those also faded after women stopped the pills.
Some data suggest that U.S.
breast cancer rates have declined since the study's end. But that likely reflects fewer women starting on the pills rather than any decline in breast cancer risk among past users, said Dr. Michael Lauer of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the
National Institutes of Health, which conducted and funded the landmark research.
The authors said the new results send the same message they've been advocating ever since the study ended: Health risks from estrogen-progestin pills outweigh their benefits, and they should only be used to relieve hot flashes and other menopause symptoms, in the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible duration.
The new analysis appears in Wednesday's
Journal of the American Medical Association.
A spokesman for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, maker of the Prempro estrogen-protestin pills used in the study, voiced a criticism frequently cited by scientists, too — that participants were in their 60s on average, at least 10 years older than typical hormone users. The latest results thus may not apply to typical users because older women have different health risks than younger ones, including more cancers in general, said
Wyeth's Dr. Joseph Camardo.
Prempro's packaging information already recommends routine breast exams and mammograms for users, and Camardo said the follow-up results are "not anything that's particularly new that should change guidance."
Manson, the co-author, said it's possible the
initial study results prompted hormone-using participants to see their doctors more often than nonusers after the study ended, which could have resulted in more cancers detected.
It's also possible hormones either triggered new tumors or fueled the growth of existing ones, the researchers said.
"Once a tumor gets started, you might think of it as a train is out of the station and it might be more difficult to stop it," Lauer said.
The follow-up involved 15,730 participants tracked through March 2005.
The authors said the decline in heart problems was not surprising, since harmful effects of hormones on blood vessels could be expected to fade after women stopped taking the pills. Also, heart risks during the study were highest soon after women started taking hormones.
Dr. Sherry
Nordstrom, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the lung cancers were a surprising finding but called hormones "still very appropriate therapy" for women with bad symptoms.
Study participant Geraldine Boggs, a Washington, D.C. nurse with three daughters and four granddaughters, said women should pay attention to the new findings.
"I initially joined the study to make sure that my daughters and granddaughters had informed choices about taking them when they got to be my age," said Boggs, 64.
Boggs, in her early 50s when she enrolled, was assigned to take hormones. Still, she said she developed no health problems during the study or afterward, other than hot flashes for about a year after quitting the pills.
Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a New York University women's heart specialist, said the study underscores that in addition to cancer screening, women who stop taking hormones need to find other ways to keep their bones strong, including getting more calcium and exercise.
____
On the Net:
JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org
Hormone study: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/whi/estro_pro.htm
Snow eating now endangered kid pleasure
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:13:03 GMT
By MELISSA RAYWORTH, For The Associated Press
PITTSBURGH - To the list of simple childhood pleasures whose safety has been questioned, add this: eating snow. A recent study found that snow — even in relatively pristine spots like
Montana and the Yukon — contains large amounts of bacteria.
Parents who warn their kids not to eat dirty snow are left wondering whether to stop them from tasting the new-fallen stuff, too, because of Pseudomonas syringae, bacteria that can cause diseases in bean and tomato plants.
But experts say there's no need to banish snow-eating along with dodgeball, unchaperoned trick-or-treating and riding a bike without a helmet.
"It's a very ubiquitous bacteria that's everywhere," says Dr. Penelope Dennehy, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on infectious diseases. "Basically, none of the food we eat is sterile. We eat bacteria all the time."
Children practically bathe in bacteria when they go to the playground, and Dennehy says they won't get anything from snow that they wouldn't get from dirt.
"We eat stuff that's covered with bacteria all the time, and for the most part it's killed in the stomach," says Dr. Joel Forman, a member of the pediatric academy's committee on environmental health. "Your stomach is a fantastic barrier against invasive bacteria because it's a very acidic environment."
There are exceptions. "Tiny kids on formula a lot of times don't have the acid in their stomachs," making them more vulnerable to bacteria in general, says Dr. Lynnette Mazur, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical School. Also, Forman and Mazur say that Pseudomonas can be a threat to people with cystic fibrosis.
The study, published last week in the journal Science, didn't examine the effects on people. And experts say without further information, it is impossible to say what the bacteria could do to a child who eats extraordinary amounts.
"I can say that I'm not aware of any clinical reports of children becoming ill from eating snow. And I looked," Forman says.
In any case, because of ordinary air pollution in snow, it's probably wise not to eat a lot of the stuff, pediatricians say. For parents in search of guidance, Mazur offers this: Licking a little snow off a glove is probably OK. "A meal of snow" is not.
Some parents say they are not going to worry about their kids eating snow that looks clean.
"My snow-eating concerns are generally more of the dirt-urine variety," says Kristin Lang, 37, of Maplewood, N.J., whose 2-year-old son Charlie has swallowed his share of snow.
"When I heard bacteria, at first I went 'eew,'" says Tricia Sweeney, a mother of three in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. But as long as the kids eat snow as it's falling, "I think it's OK. I tell them not to eat it if it's on the ground."
Flat growths may be worse than polyps
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:19:26 GMT
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO - Flat growths on the colon wall are more common in Americans than previously thought and more likely to be cancerous than the more familiar knobby masses known as polyps, a new study finds.
New techniques can locate and remove the flat growths, but many doctors aren't aware of their cancer risk and may not know how to look for them. The findings are likely to change the practice of colonoscopy, experts said, and may explain some colon cancers that arise between colonoscopies.
"I think it is very important. It's going to intensify the need for quality screening," said Dr. Stephen Hanauer, gastroenterology chief at the
University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "You're not going to be able to do seven-minute colonoscopies."
The growths tend to be smaller when they are cancerous — the size of a nickel instead of a quarter — and are level with the colon wall or depressed like a pothole. They blend in with the surrounding tissue and are difficult to spot.
"They look like a pancake just lying on the floor," said the study's lead author, Dr. Roy Soetikno of the Veterans Affairs
Palo Alto Health Care System in
California.
Doctors have known about flat growths but haven't recognized their danger, experts said.
While knobby polyps were found in four times as many participants, more than half the colon cancers found — 15 of 28 — were in flat and depressed growths. Thirteen were in polyps.
Researchers found the flat growths were nearly 10 times more likely to be cancerous than the polyps. They believe the growths represent a separate colon cancer pathway, rather than being precursors to knobby polyps, Soetikno said. The study appears in Wednesday's
Journal of the American Medical Association.
Since the 1980s, Japanese doctors have reported more flat colon growths than were seen in the United States, but Western scientists doubted their importance, said Dr. David Lieberman of the Oregon Health and Science University in
Portland, who wrote an editorial in the journal.
"This paper will have a big impact on gastroenterology," Lieberman said. "It will heighten people's awareness that, yes, these are found in United States."
The findings came from colonoscopies of more than 1,800 mostly male veterans who were seen at one VA center from July 2003 to June 2004. Doctors involved had been trained by Japanese specialists to use a dye during colonoscopies to spot flat growths. One-third of the patients were coming in for routine screening. The rest either had symptoms such as bleeding or pain, or were being screened because they had previous polyps or a family history of colon cancer.
Flat and depressed growths were detected in 170 patients, nearly 10 percent. Meanwhile, knobby polyps were found in 675 patients, about 37 percent.
Colorectal cancer is the nation's second leading cancer killer. The
American Cancer Society estimates 49,960 people will die from it this year. Screening can save lives by finding growths before they turn cancerous.
Colonoscopies, considered the gold standard test, are recommended every 10 years, starting at age 50. A doctor snakes a long, thin tube equipped with a small video camera through the large intestine to view the lining. Colorectal cancer is considered slow-growing so 10 years between screenings is usually enough to catch early growths.
Undetected flat growths could explain some mysterious "interval cancers" that show up between screenings in people who have regular colonoscopies, experts said.
"They get an exam and they're clean, and at the next exam they have cancer," Hanauer said.
The findings, along with prior research showing that doctors who take more time during a colonoscopy find more growths, underline the importance of high-quality screening, Hanauer said.
The high rate of cancer in the flat growths warrants further research, said Dr.
Asad Umar of the
National Cancer Institute.
"Techniques that can better identify and address these lesions are needed," Umar said.
The study was funded by the
Palo Alto Institute for Research and Education, a nonprofit group associated with the
Palo Alto VA.
___
On the Net:
JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org
Group Better access to pain meds needed
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:03:15 GMT
By VERONIKA OLEKSYN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - Many people, especially those in developing countries, needlessly suffer during childbirth or cancer because of insufficient painkiller use, a global watchdog said Wednesday.
Governments should take steps to improve the availability of opioid analgesics — narcotic drugs used for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, the U.N.-affiliated
International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report for 2007.
"The low levels of consumption of opioid analgesics for the treatment of pain in many countries, in particular in developing countries, continues to be a matter of serious concern for the board," the Vienna-based board said in its annual report.
While global consumption of opioid analgesics has increased by more than 2 1/2 times over the past decade, the jump occurred mostly in
Europe and North America, the report said.
In 2006, countries in those two regions combined accounted for almost 96 percent of the global consumption of fentanyl, 89 percent of the global consumption of morphine and 97 percent of the global consumption of oxycodone.
"The board again urges all governments concerned to identify the impediments in their countries to adequate use of opioid analgesics for the treatment of pain and to take steps to improve the availability of those narcotic drugs for medical purposes," the report said.
The strong painkillers are not available in some parts of the world because of cost or may be prohibited by regulatory systems, said INCB President Philip O. Emafo.
"We have continued to be in dialogue with governments to ensure that patients who need these drugs need not be denied these drugs because they are important for the treatment of pain," Emafo said.
A lack of health personnel trained to prescribe the substances is also an obstacle, he said. And cultural barriers, particularly in Asia and Africa, keep some, especially men, from acknowledging they are in pain because they don't want to be seen as "weaklings," Emafo added.
The board calls on countries to support a
World Health Organization program that aims to improve medical access to such pain relieving medicine.
____
On the Net:
http://www.incb.org
Some experts doubt obesity epidemic
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:15:02 GMT
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
LONDON - Go on, have another doughnut. According to some experts whose views are public health heresy, the jury is still out on how dangerous it is to be fat. "The obesity epidemic has absolutely been exaggerated," said Dr. Vincent Marks, emeritus professor of clinical biochemistry at the
University of Surrey.
Marks is among a minority of skeptics who doubt the severity of the obesity problem. They claim that the data about the dangers of obesity are mixed and there is little proof that being fat causes problems including high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer.
Such views contradict nearly everything doctors have been saying for years.
Being fat has long been blamed for conditions like diabetes, which can lead to heart, kidney and nerve diseases. There is also increasing evidence that certain cancers may be linked to weight gain.
"The evidence linking obesity to diabetes and cardiovascular disease is very strong," said Dr. James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the
University of Colorado. "Type two diabetes rarely happens in people who aren't obese."
But obesity contrarians say that there's no data proving why being fat — in itself — would be dangerous. "There's no good causal connection," said Eric Oliver, author of Fat Politics and a political science professor at the
University of Chicago.
Blaming obesity for diabetes and heart attacks, Oliver says, is like blaming lung cancer on bad breath rather than on smoking. Excess weight may actually be a red herring, Oliver says, since other factors like exercise, diet or genetic predispositions towards diseases are harder to measure than weight.
In addition to questioning the dangers of being fat, researchers like Marks also criticize oft-repeated alarmist projections about the rise in obesity — like the British government's warning that nearly half of
Britain will be obese by 2050.
Those simply aren't based on good evidence, they say.
According to national health statistics released last month, from 1993 to 2006, "relatively little change" was noted in weight gain, with men and women gaining an average of about 4 kilograms . In children, no significant gains were recorded.
The main problem, obesity skeptics say, is that too many people are considered fat, with the obese and overweight often lumped together.
"Being moderately plump is not a health disadvantage," Marks said. "Some overweight people may not look svelte, but they may be perfectly healthy."
As defined by the
World Health Organization, anyone with a body mass index above 25 is overweight, and anyone above 30 is obese. Most experts agree the distinctions are imperfect and somewhat arbitrary.
Moreover, Marks and others point to research showing the benefits of a few extra kilos .
In 2005, Katherine Flegal of the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, finding that overweight people typically live longer than normal-weight people. More than a dozen other studies have come to the same conclusion.
Outrage ensued. Prominent health experts called the research flawed and worried that people would gleefully supersize their meals.
"I think some experts found it disturbing that we actually said that overweight people have a lower death risk," Flegal said. In other research, Flegal and colleagues found there to be almost no link between death rates and weight.
"The relationship between weight and disease and survival is very complex and we don't have a good handle on why some of these things are related and others are not," Flegal said. She suggested that being fat may help you survive some conditions, but not others.
Doctors have long struggled to explain the obesity paradox — the mystery that in certain conditions like heart attacks, fat patients often have better odds of surviving than thin people. Some experts hypothesize that fat peoples' hearts already work harder than those of thin people, thus giving them a natural edge when their bodies are stressed.
"We don't want people to think it's ok to be heavier," said Hill. "But not everybody who gains weight is going to get heart disease or diabetes," he said.
Some obesity skeptics question the motives of experts who make dire predictions about obesity.
With millions of dollars for obesity researchers, an industry of anti-fat drugs, and a boom in the number of doctors offering surgeries like stomach-stapling, the more fat people there are, the more profits there will be in selling them solutions.
Experts on both sides of the obesity debate have often criticized WHO's overweight and obesity measures, saying they are too low.
When WHO defined the
body mass index scores constituting normal, overweight and obese, they appeared to be the result of an independent expert committee convened by WHO.
Yet the 1997
Geneva consultation was held jointly with the International Obesity Task Force, an advocacy group whose self-described mission is "to inform the world about the urgency of the problem."
According to the task force's most recent available annual report, more than 70 percent of their funding came from
Abbott Laboratories and
F. Hoffman La-Roche, companies which make top-selling anti-fat pills.
The task force remains one of
Europe's most influential obesity advocacy groups and continues to work closely with WHO.
The blurred lines between pharmaceutical money and obesity groups have also caused concern in
Britain. In 2006, one of the country's top obesity doctors quit the organization he founded to combat obesity, the National Obesity Forum, complaining that its goals had been skewed by drug money.
"There's not a lot of money in trying to debunk obesity, but a huge amount in making sure it stays a big problem," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health care policy at
Johns Hopkins University.
Still, while skeptics insist that obesity warnings must be taken with a grain of salt, nearly all agree that while a little bit of extra padding may not be too deadly, too much almost certainly is.
"The vast majority of people who get labeled under the obesity epidemic are well under 300 pounds and probably are not facing big health consequences," Oliver said. "It's the morbidly obese people who should be worried."
Sierra Leone women demonstrate for 39traditional39 mutilation
Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:39:10 GMT
FREETOWN -
Some 800 women in the
Sierra Leone town of Kailahun paraded Tuesday in favour of genital mutilation and told donors opposed to the practice to keep their money, demonstrators and witnesses said.
Women wearing colourful beads and adorned with seashells chanted songs in the local dialect that warned authorities and foreign organisations against "any attempt to take away our traditional ritual."
Kailahun is a dusty town about 300 kilometres east of
Freetown, in a part of the west African country regarded by human rights groups as the heartland of
female genital mutilation .
The UN World Health Organisation says FGM -- the partial or total removal of the
external female genitalia and related injury -- is recorded in 28 African nations and opposes the practice on medical grounds.
The traditional Bondo Society organised the rally as a "show of strength", said executive member Mamie Banya. "Any organisation that has accepted funds from overseas donors to wage war against FGM is fighting a losing battle. Let donors keep their money, we will keep our culture."
A group called the National Emancipation for Progress has led workshops and seminars to have FGM banned in Sierra Leone, but faces opposition from people who hold the practice is harmless, promotes marital fidelity and is in tune with religious values.
"We have inherited this culture over 100 years ago and it has made us women be responsible housewives to our husbands," one demonstrator in the noisy march told AFP by telephone.
Another demonstrator, teacher Sally Kwapika, said "we love FGM as a culture in the past, today and tomorrow. I am appealing to the president that if he wants us to stop supporting him, let him advocate for an end to FGM."
Asked how the Bondo Society would respond if the Freetown government outlawed the practice like several others in Africa, Banya said: "We will become uncontrollable. Past governments have not interfered directly in our society. Why only now?"
Oral Allergy Immunotherapy Helps Control Asthma
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:47:20 GMT
By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, March 4 -- Oral
allergy immunotherapy -- in
the form of drops or tablets -- is effective at reducing asthma symptoms
and the need for asthma medications in children who have what's known as
allergic asthma, a new study finds.
The findings bolster hopes that these oral medications might someday
replace injections, never a hit with kids.
"[Oral] immunotherapy is effective and safe, easy to administer,
well-accepted by patients," said the study's senior author, Dr. Giorgio
Walter Canonica, professor of allergy and respiratory disease at the
Medical University of
Genoa, Italy.
Commonly known as allergy shots in the United States,
allergy
immunotherapy works in a manner similar to vaccines -- essentially
re-educating the body's immune system so that it doesn't overreact to
harmless substances such as pollen or dust mites. While this therapy can
be effective, it's currently only available via injections in the United
States, and usually involves at least one to two shots a week for three to
six months, making it a less-than-popular alternative with children.
Oral immunotherapy is available in
Europe, but has yet to gain
Food and
Drug Administration approval in the United States.
The new study reviewed nine studies that looked at the use of so-called
sublingual immunotherapy in children with asthma. A total of 441
kids between the ages of 3 and 18 who had been diagnosed with allergic
asthma were included in the studies. Allergic asthma means that asthma
symptoms can be triggered by exposure to an allergen, such as dust mites,
pollen or mold.
Two hundred and thirty-two children received oral immunotherapy and the
remaining 209 got a placebo.
The dosing schedule varied depending on the study and whether drops or
tablets were used. Canonica said that during the maintenance phase of
immunotherapy, drops or tablets were given three times a week. The
average duration of the studies was 12 months. The most common allergen
treated was dust mites. Grass mix and pollen were also included in one
study each.
The researchers found that those taking sublingual immunotherapy
had significantly fewer symptoms and needed to take less asthma
medication. Not enough of the studies included measurements of lung
function for the new study to assess whether SLIT affects lung function
significantly.
"SLIT is highly effective in treating
pediatric asthma patients,
reducing both symptoms and medication use," said Canonica, who's also
president of the World Allergy Organization.
Additionally, SLIT appeared to be better tolerated than allergy shots.
The chances of a severe reaction are less with oral immunotherapy than
with the injected type, according to Dr. Andrew MacGinnitie, an
allergist/immunologist at
Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
"There have been some rare cases of severe reactions with SLIT, but
they're much less common," MacGinnitie said. Another big benefit, he
added, is that "shots have to be given in the doctor's office and drops
are designed to taken at home."
The results of the new study are published in the March issue of the
journal
Chest.
Other studies have directly compared SLIT to allergy shots and they're
both equally effective, according to Canonica. And MacGinnitie said that,
"immunotherapy is really the only treatment that gets to the cause of the
allergic response."
"This is a potentially new and exciting treatment for kids with
asthma," he concluded.
More information
To learn more about
allergy immunotherapy, visit the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and
Immunology.
Restricting TV and Computer Time Helps Kids Lose Weight
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:47:24 GMT
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, March 3 -- Cutting kids' TV and computer time
by half reduced the amount of food they ate and helped them lose weight, a
new study found.
The finding offers hope to the problem of
childhood obesity in the
United States, where an estimated 16 percent of children ages 6 to 19
years old are overweight, a 45 percent increase in one decade, according
to federal researchers.
"Television viewing is related to consumption of fast food and foods
and beverages that are advertised on television," the study authors said
in a prepared statement. "Viewing cartoons with embedded food commercials
can increase choice of the advertised item in preschoolers, and television
commercials may prompt eating."
The findings are published in the March issue of the
Archives of
Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
For the study, Leonard H. Epstein, a professor in the department of
pediatrics and social and preventive medicine at the University at
Buffalo, the
State University of New York, and his colleagues studied 70
overweight children, aged 4 to 7, who watched TV or played computer games
for at least 14 hours a week.
The researchers installed a monitoring device on each television and
computer the child used; the device allowed for the reduction of the
children's weekly screen time by 10 percent a week until a 50 percent
reduction had been reached. Each family member was given a unique code to
activate the TV or computer. In addition, the kids received such
incentives as money and stickers to spend less time with TVs or computers.
The other overweight children had no restriction on their use of TVs or
computers.
Epstein's team found that the children who had no restrictions on their
computer or TV use reduced their TV watching or computer-games playing by
5.2 hours a week. But the kids with restricted use cut their TV and
computer time by 17.5 hours a week.
And, the children with restricted TV and computer time lost more weight
than the other children. However, the researchers found no difference
between the two groups in terms of physical activity.
"Using technology to modify television viewing eliminates parental
vigilance needed to enforce family rules and reduces the disciplinary
action needed if a child exceeds his or her sedentary behavior limits,"
the authors concluded. "Perhaps most important, the device puts the choice
of when to watch television in the child's control, as opposed to a rule
such as 'no television time until homework is completed.'"
Dr. David Katz, director of the
Yale University School of Medicine
Prevention Research Center, said the study, "shows the upside to this
ominous mix -- reducing screen time can help prevent childhood obesity by
several mechanisms. Less screen time may be even more important to dietary
pattern than to physical activity pattern. But by either means, the ends
here are encouraging and highlight the importance of this strategy."
More information
For more on childhood obesity, visit the American Academy of
Pediatrics.
Brazil court to rule on stem cells
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:10:05 GMT
By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press Writer
SAO PAULO, Brazil -
Brazil's
Supreme Court is set to decide if scientists in Latin America's largest country can conduct
embryonic stem cell research, which many say can lead to cures for degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
The court's 11 justices are scheduled to rule Wednesday on a 2005 petition by then-Attorney General Claudio Fontelles, who argued that a new law allowing embryonic stem cell research was unconstitutional because it violates the right to life.
The law opened the way for research with embryos resulting from in-vitro fertilization that are frozen for at least three years.
"Brazil has the potential to be a significant leader in this field," said Bernard Siegel, the executive director of the
Florida-based Genetic Policy Institute. "And if the Supreme Court decides to allow this kind of research, then Brazil will become the Latin American leader in this field."
He said Brazilian scientists have done "pathfinding" work with
adult stem cells for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and Type 1 diabetes. If given the green light to use
embryonic stem cells, "then there is no reason why they won't be able to make important breakthroughs," he added.
Roman Catholic Church officials have urged the court to ban such research because the process results in the destruction of embryos, which it and other groups say ends human life.
"Our position is not against science," Archbishop Geraldo Lyrio Rocha, president of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops, said last week. "It is in favor of life."
He noted that the church supports adult stem cell research, which he described as "ethically acceptable."
Adult stem cells, which are harvested without destroying an embryo, can be used to recuperate damaged tissue. But scientists say they are less flexible than embryonic stem cells, which can develop into different types of cells.
"Adult stem cells are excellent and have generated a lot of valuable knowledge," said Mayana Katz, a University of
Sao Paulo geneticist. "But embryonic stem cells are more powerful and offer many more possibilities to find cures for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's."
She said that while
embryonic stem cell research is legal, scientists have put most projects on the back burner pending the Supreme Court's ruling.
"We want the chance of conducting the kind of research being done in developed countries like
Great Britain,
Sweden,
Japan and
Israel," she added.
Meanwhile, a January survey conducted by the
Public Opinion Research Institute, or Ibope, shows that 95 percent of those interviewed favor embryonic stem cell research.
___
Associated Press writer Marco Sibaja contributed to this report from
Brasilia.