The scientific term for cloning is reprogramming of somatic cells. The induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), more accurately known as induced pluripotent somatic cells or artificially reprogrammed adult cells, have been sold by their publicity stunts as the biggest breakthrough for stem cell research. However, iPS cells are actually an alternative for cloning, not for stem cell research. The idea of reprogramming is almost as ancient as cloning. And the flaws of cloning have also been revealed by mounting scientific evidences to prevent it from being tried in humans. Just like the Korean cloning scam in Science, the iPS cells would have never made to the front pages of those top scientific journals if it was not backed by those highly influential well-connected big names of ISSCR (International Society for Stem Cell Research). When President Obama signed the Executive Order to relax Federal policy on human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, those hard core cloners also had the President include iPS cells in the bill with more aggressive hidden agenda to remove the barriers for human cloning. To implement it, NIH (National Institutes of Health) has subsequently formed iPS center headed by Mahendra Rao.
Although the booming of molecular biology in past twenty years has not yielded a single cure for cancer, the cause of cancer or cancerogenesis has been well studied and understood. The process of cancer or cancerogenesis is also reprogramming of somatic cells, by abnormally turning on those genes normally only active in embryonic cells. The truth is that the iPS cells were made with the same mechanism of cancerogenesis, probably the biggest stem cell scam ever pulled off by ISSCR. At one Scripps meeting, Hans Schöler, after easily got his iPS cell papers published in well-publicized Cell & Nature, said “this (iPS cells) is so easy”. Hello Sir, of course it was easy, you were making cancer/disease, not curing cancer/disease. Hans Schöler then showed the even more severe abnormity of iPS cells than that of cloned cells, causing 100% premature death.
Although Prop71 prohibits cloning, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) RFAs & awards’ strong emphasis on iPS cells/cloning, in contrast to no emphasis on hESC research & therapy of the law whatsoever, has been undeniable. Their upcoming initiative to only bank the abnormal iPS cells but not the normal & much more potential hESCs of the law Prop71 is just one example, despite piled papers on that iPS cells are abnormal, aging fast, low efficiency, severe immune-rejection after transplantation, useless & dangerous for therapy. Why would CIRM throw CA stem cell bond money exclusively into the iPS cells that are even more defective and worse than cloning? Such heavy trend of CIRM towards cloning can only be explained if you know that CIRM president Alan Trounson’ real background is cloning, not stem cell research. Internationally famous stem cell celebrity Alan Trounson’ connections with International Stem Cell Corp (ISCO) and Stem Cell Center Director Martin Pera of USC have been well known. ISCO is a company unofficially founded by Alan Trounson, after CA passed Prop71, to use unfertilized eggs for human cloning, not the embryos for deriving hESCs. CIRM’s cloning trend has not been without implementations among CIRM ICOC institutions. My mentor Evan Snyder used to complain that “nobody wants to do it (iPS cells).” Eventually, they picked Leanne Jones of Salk, a fruitfly cell biologist from Stanford University, and Kristin Baldwin of Scripps, Rudy Jaenisch’s cloning protégée, for the iPS cell awards. Please note, it had been decided before their grants were even submitted to CIRM. No one could get mesenschymal cells to have any stem/progenitor cell activity, how come 5 mesenschymal cell awards got on CIRM disease teams and went to the same UC in the same awards round? Go figure, who receive the awards have apparently already been pre-picked by CIRM. CIRM has also implemented non-transparent pre-application process NOT in the law to keep it only behind the close door. All the award process required by the law Prop71 has never been anything more than a symbolic gesture of CIRM, like the allowed 5 min’s public comment and usually no show of public in ICOC meetings.
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