This past week stem cells have hit blogs in a big way. One young woman went public, along with her physician parents, as having benefited from 50% in one ear to 100% in the other from several stem cell treatments in a Korean clinic.

At first it struck me as interesting in several ways: 1) stem cells being a natural treatment with one's own harvested cells, 2) the young woman was suffering late-onset deafness from an overactive immune system attacking her hearing cells, and 3) she had to go out of the country to obtain this expertise since it was not allowed to develop in the United States up to the present.

Troubling was: 1) the doctors involved have not been interviewed and the technology revealed; and 2) the lack of medical documentation on these first patients released to the public.

In the cyberdiscussions I went on record as saying I'd be interested only when it has gone through rigorous evaluation for safety and efficacy for a number of years.  Such evaluation has limitations: it cannot know now what the effects would be after 5, 10 or 20 years.  Would the cells have a high failure-to-grow rate? Would they turn malignant or grow where they weren't supposed to? What side effects could one get, such as disruption of the balance organs, tinnitus, or recruitment and other disorders of hearing?

That aside, yes, I'd be interested, even after being deaf all my life and having adapted (pretty well, I should say) to a life without hearing. I was also interested in the past by new gadgets on the market, eagerly adopting the TTY, the Telecaption device, the computer and the videophone as they appeared on the horizon. Even tried several makes of hearing aids as a youngster, each promoted heavily by its maker. 

Cool that after stem cell treatment I might be able to hear the doorbell a floor below, a crying child in the next room, or a cat accidentally shut in a closet. If I learned to pick out my name called in a crowded room, even cooler. But I wouldn't expect, at my age, to be able to understand the TV or conversations with hearing people. Nor would I expect a stem cell miracle to change my life or affect my relationships with people in and out of the Deaf Community.

Then, tonight, I came across several entries in cyberspace talking about Don Margolis, Stem Cell webpages and invitations to fill out forms that would connect me to one of several stem cell clinics around the world. These webpages even had a long list of conditions that stem cells were to cure: from autism to diabetes to spinal cord injury to X-linked ataxia. Prominient is the engaging slogan: "Stem Cell Therapy can improve your Quality of Life when all else has failed!"  My mind instantly flashed: HYPE.

Friends, it is my hope that we do not see misguided parents desperately seeking a cure, hard of hearing people scrambling for a better medical treatment, late-deafened people trying to regain their old life, or wanna-be-hearing deaf people rushing to moneymakers for something that is not ready nor proven safe at this time. In every medical advance, there will be people who suffer from the mistakes of pioneers and who therefore fail to benefit from later improvements. Let's not be hasty. Demand that there be proof, and more proof, that it is safe before throwing away your health. Demand that it is effective before investing your life's savings. Demand that it will meet your expectations before changing your goals and hopes for life.

It is human nature to see the grass greener on the other side of the fence. Also to see magic fixes for problems behind every door. After all, in my lifetime cancer went from an always-fatal disease to a manageable illness with new treatments. Babies born in a non-survivable condition now are living to grow up. But I have also seen oralism and hearing aids touted as the "advance that eliminates deafness" and the CI as "rendering sign language non-sustainable" turn out to be far from complete answers. We are today still years and generations away from where we wanted to be 25 years ago.

I've also seen an explosion in hucksters trying to prey on us. Instead of misguided, almost religious do-gooders crying the siren call of oralism, we now have sophisticated industry representatives  hawking the promises of CI manufacturers...can one see the representatives of stem cell clinics coming? I am concerned that these entrepreneurs will blanket our already troubled community and mindlessly attempt to divert our careful chartings in education, personal adjustment and finding niches in life.

Will implantees have to wait for another time when stem cells grows new cochleas to replace the ones damaged by CIs? Will doctors happily refer all deaf babies to stem cell clinics without understanding its effects when the children become teenagers? Will educators ask to see certificates of stem cell treatment before signing up kids for school? Will insurance companies wait another 20 years before approving stem cell treatment?

The most reasonable thing to do now is to learn from the lessons of the past and build upon them before one even considers the advances in the near future. Time-tested wisdom is the bedrock of building lives and a platform for the future. And hang on to your money.