On International Stem Cell Awareness Day, quadriplegic Martin Codyre tells TheJournal.ie about the power of regenerative medicine – and how this potential opens the door for scammers to take vulnerable patients for a ride.
IN AUGUST 2008, I fell at a wedding and broke my neck. I was immediately paralysed from the shoulders down. I can use my biceps, I can bend my wrist a little bit; all the top of my shoulder muscles work. But I can’t use my hands.
Physically, since my accident I haven’t got any functionality back. And I’m statistically incredibly unlikely now to regain any functionality now without therapeutic interventions. Which don’t actually exist yet, but through working with people like the Irish Stem Cell Foundation and other groups around the world, we are moving that field forward.
Stem cells were only really discovered in 1998, so they’re very young in scientific terms. There are many different types, which occur naturally throughout the body at all stages of development. They are cells within the body which can continuously renew themselves, and which are capable of turning into other cells, so you can drive them into becoming different types of tissue. Some of them are essentially immortal – they don’t die per se, they can keep replicating forever unlike regular cells which have a limited life span.
Stem cells used for medical purposes come from all different types of places. It’s possible to isolate them from bone marrow, from all different parts of the body. And then there are embryonic stem cells, which are derived from fertilised eggs. Although there is another way of getting them, called induced pluripotency, which can allow you to turn even skin cells into stem cells.
We have to preface all this with the fact that all these technologies, except for specific examples, are a long way away from being able to help the majority of people. But it really is conceivably unlimited. Some of the simplest benefits are things like: a person recently had a trachea replacement where they were able to actually grow a new trachea using the person’s own cells, which negates the risk of an organ being rejected. For a spinal cord injury like mine, you could cause the existing cells to regrow, back towards where they were connected originally. To essentially reconnect the circuitry.
One of my bugbears is the amount of regulatory hurdles which are stopping us from making these things happen. I think we’re going to look back on these things in ten or 20 years and think, ‘Wow, we actually had issues with allowing this technology to move forward.’ It’s kind of embarrassing actually. The media bear a lot of blame in this as well, because they love the sensationalist stories. These are difficult concepts to grasp, and the media has a tendency to communicate the more sensationalist aspects, rather than a comprehension of how the whole thing works.
Of course, there are very large ethical issues that need to be examined closely by all concerned. Issues like exactly where the cells come from, or how old a fertilised embryo is after which it should not be used for stem cells. And decisions need to be made based on the facts, as opposed to the more scandalous aspects of things that are portrayed by religious and other groups. But for me, in the way science is being done in places like the States and other places like Spain, there really aren’t any ethical problems. One of the biggest things is, a lot of these cells are slated to be destroyed anyway. All the material that comes from IVF clinics is slated to be destroyed after a certain number of years.
I get sick of seeing stories about ‘stem cell miracles’. Many hundreds of millions have been spent by patients who have been sold this dream that stem cells will cure everything. Clinics have popped up all over the world selling purported stem cell cures – and they’re just selling snake oil. They can charge people €50,000 and then say ‘Well, the results don’t work for everybody.’ Whereas of course they don’t work for anybody. One doctor that I work with believes that just on spinal cord injury, more than $400million has been spent by people that he has either heard of or been in contact with – on essentially scams. But if that money was to be spent on actual regenerative medicine, who knows? Maybe I’d be able to use my hands today.
The field is moving fast, but it’s obviously not moving fast enough for me. The lack of legislation around it in Ireland is embarrassing. I think enabling the judicious use of embryonic cells in research into cures is essential, and it’s not something that other countries haven’t done already. England and Spain already have strong legislation around it; we’re lagging behind, as per usual. At the moment it’s a grey area. So scientists aren’t going to invest their careers in it, and funders aren’t going to invest the many millions that are required. You could get five years into a ten-year trial and suddenly someone could go ‘Sorry, this is illegal’.
Another thing is that a lot of the pharmaceuticals which operate in this country – which I think account for €65billion in exports every year, a huge amount – are actually eventually going to move to regenerative technology. And if we’re not able to legislate around it, if these companies aren’t able to create these medicines here, a lot of that money is going to go away.
Eventually, I believe that spinal cord injury will become a thing of the past. And the more I learn about the field, the more positive I become about that. There’s no doubt in my mind that we will not only be able to prevent people from getting into wheelchairs, but we’ll be able to get people out of them. Give them significant function, which for me is being able to use my hands again. Because then I’d be able to live independently. To get out of bed in the morning. I believe that is very achievable for me – within my lifetime for sure.
We are at the cusp of the revolution. We will look back in decades to come and think ‘Wow, imagine that people had to live in wheelchairs after spinal cord injuries.’ It really is an exciting field. I just want it to happen faster.
Martin Codyre is a director of the Irish Stem Cell Foundation, and a spinal injury patient. As told to Michael Freeman.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say