Join Fred Williams and Doug McBurney as they delve into the captivating world of stem cells, both embryonic and adult. Discover the groundbreaking developments in Parkinson’s treatment, where dopamine-producing cells are showing promise in slowing disease progression. This episode also introduces the Knucklehead Science Award, a new segment highlighting the quirkiest tales from the world of science, backed by biblical wisdom. In a twist of fate, Lover’s Arch, an ancient natural formation, collapses on Valentine’s Day, challenging the beliefs in long-standing geological timelines. Engage in a thought-provoking conversation about the ethics of stem cell research, the historical context of
00:00:00 Introduction to Embryonic Stem Cell Research
00:00:39 Discussion on Parkinson’s and Lover’s Arch
00:24:14 Valentine’s Day and Lover’s Arch Collapse
SPEAKER 03 :
Back in the 90s, when they started doing embryonic stem cell research, they were literally playing God.
SPEAKER 04 :
Scholars can’t explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune in to Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 04 :
Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 02 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country. This is Real Science Radio. I’m Fred Williams.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I’m Doug McBurney in studio with Fred here in the palatial studio facilities of Real Science Radio. Thank you for inviting me in live in person, Fred. It’s always great to have you in studio, Doug. I love it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Love it! Breaking the confines of California and getting out here every now and then. That’s right. So today, Doug, we’re going to talk about… Parkinson’s stem cell treatments, if you’re interested in that, it’s actually a pretty interesting story. And then there’s this collapse of an arch, lover’s arch. I heard about that on Valentine’s Day.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, that’s ironic, isn’t it? Is that the definition of irony or serendipity? What is that the definition of, that lover’s arch? would collapse on Valentine’s Day, that’s just really interesting.
SPEAKER 02 :
It is, yeah. Coincidental? Is that the definition? Were we lucky again to see something that, you know, they’ll tell us it maybe took hundreds of thousands or millions of years to form, and we got lucky, we got to see it collapse. Yeah. Whereas they would say unlucky because they’re real, you know, upset that this tourism thing
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, they’re very depressed there in southern Italy because they had very little else going for them down there. Well, we’ll get to that story, though.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. And, Doug, we’re going to introduce a new segment for our listeners and YouTube audience. Oh, really? Yeah. It’s called the Knucklehead Science Award of the Week. We provide each of our favorite knucklehead stories. We’ll share those later in the show. The Knucklehead Science Award of the Week. It is, and the segment is sponsored by Ecclesiastes 10, verses 2 and 3. Ecclesiastes 10, 2 and 3.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, Fred, you’re sending me to the Bible already.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think we’ll have to send the listeners and the audience to the Bible too to see why that verse.
SPEAKER 03 :
Ecclesiastes 10. We’re not going to give you the verse anymore. Just read all of Ecclesiastes 10. And then if you can figure out what Fred’s referencing, then you can write to us. And then if you answer that question correctly, you will exempt yourself from any type of knucklehead award for at least a year, right? But the thing is, there’s so much knucklehead science out there, Fred, that we could award two awards a week, we think. I think daily. We’ve done a little bit of pre-market research, and we think there’s enough material to award a knucklehead science award at least twice a week. We think so. We’ll see. If it turns out that the secular scientific world cannot produce a knucklehead award at least twice a week, that’ll be good, Fred, for civilization. Yeah, it will. It’ll be real progress. Okay. All right. Well, we’ll see about that. Now, are we going to start that this week, Fred, or are we going to wait until the next? Are we just inaugurating it?
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s because it’s so easy. You get two or three weeks at least. We’re going to start this week. Okay, all right. So stay tuned until later in the show. You’ll get to see who wins the Knucklehead Award of the Week.
SPEAKER 03 :
And just so everyone knows, I had no idea Fred was going to announce this until right now on the show. And so we’ll see if there’s enough material in the secular scientific world to produce a Knucklehead Science Award, like, live in real time right now. It’s possible. We’ll see.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. All right. So the first story is Parkinson’s patients receive dopamine-producing stem cells. Wow. So I found this particularly interesting because they use adult stem cells. You know, there’s been the thing in the past about embryonic stem cells. It’s definitely, you know, ethical to use those.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and whenever people hear the word stem cell, they—at least older people— We tend to think embryonic stem cells, but the vast majority of research going on now, it doesn’t have anything to do with embryonic stem cells. It’s all about adult stem cells.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I was on a project where we developed a chamber that grows adult stem cells. Because it’s not an easy process, but you have to do things, how you feed it, and you have to remove waste and things like that as these adult stem cells grow. And so that was a really fun project. Got to do the software for a part of that chamber. Wow. Well, and talking to scientists there, by the way, there was a staff of scientists. There’s several that I asked about, you know, how does evolution play into your whole thinking? And it just doesn’t.
SPEAKER 03 :
Never thought about that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Real world things that need to work. So anyways, so here’s from that study. If the brain can once again produce normal levels of dopamine, Parkinson’s disease may be slowed down and motor function restored. And this is from Brian Lee. He’s got an MD and a PhD, and he’s a neurosurgeon with Keck Medicine and principal investigator of the study. So, Doug, first of all, dopamine. Have you ever taken a cold plunge?
SPEAKER 03 :
Cold plunge, I’ve not had the courage to do that. Like, are you talking about the full-on, like, jump into, like, a lake of freezing water? Like, they cut a hole in the ice and jump in? I’ve never done that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I know a guy I used to work with, he bought, like, a cold plunge container, and he’d fill this thing with, I don’t know, really cold water, and he’d be in there for, like, a minute. It’s like, you’re nuts, dude. Really? But apparently, it increases your dopamine by, like, over 250%. It lasts a lot longer than… than the coffee that we’re drinking. Ah, yeah. They’re using dopamine to try to improve Parkinson’s symptoms. So, you know, Doug, I’ve done really kind of wimpy cold water plunges. You have? Every now and then I’ll take like a very brief cold shower. Really? Yeah. I don’t even have the courage. Yeah, but it’s like super brief and I, yeah. But anyways, there really is an effect to it. I remember when we were in Cancun, so we took a vacation. I got to go on vacation with my wife last month. And there was a couple of people we met in what was a hot tub because for whatever reason, it was like the coldest week that they had had in Cancun in like several years. So we’re in a resort, but it’s a little chilly and the water was cold in the swimming pools. Yeah. And so we actually got in the water eventually after being in this hot tub kind of swimming pool. And people were in the pool. I was telling them, hey, you know, now you’re going to have more energy for the next four or five hours because of the whole dopamine effect. And they’re like, oh, really? That’s interesting. And so some people went in because of that because they wanted to be more energetic the rest of the day. And again, it has more effect than coffee does.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Well, we all want more dopamine. By the way, that’s why they call dope dope. is because drugs, many of the narcotic drugs that people get addicted to, artificially increase dopamine production in your body. Oh, okay. Or they mimic the effects of dopamine. Dopamine is like your body’s natural high, right? Okay, yeah. By increasing dopamine levels, it can help with conditions like Parkinson’s, right? Yeah. And they’re using adult stem cells, right? Which, that matters both scientifically and ethically, right? Because with adult stem cells, you can get adult stem cells from me or you or Fred or anybody, and we don’t have to kill anyone and chop up their body and use it without their consent, which is immoral, unethical, and wicked and evil. Yeah. Right? We can get… adult stem cells. And it looks like, Fred, if I’m reading this article correctly, we’re now able, we, I shouldn’t say we, they, someone besides me, someone a lot smarter than me, are able to somehow induce pluripotency back into the adult stem cell. Yeah. That’s mind-boggling.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, it is. And, you know, I’ve heard that word pluripotent stem cells. That’s been around a while. I remember that from creating BCT. But they have something they call induced pluripotent stem cells. And so they say, and this is from the article, unlike embryonic stem cells, These IPSCs, or induced pluripotent stem cells, are made by taking adult cells, such as those from skin or blood, and reprogramming them back into a versatile state. And to deliver the cells, this Dr. Lee, he creates a small opening in the skull to reach the brain. And he uses magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, for guidance. And he carefully places the stem cells into the basal ganglia, the region responsible for coordinating movement. I wonder if that’s a part of the brain that weighs less than a paper clip.
SPEAKER 03 :
That might be the part. It’s the basal ganglia that you were going for there.
SPEAKER 02 :
So the one time I had a bogus, interesting fact I failed to put into AI. Somehow AI told me that brain weight. But you know what? The brain might weigh as much as a paperclip. Maybe some of these leftist bureaucrats. Hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
Some of the people who are coming up with the tax strategies, let’s say in the state of California, some of those type of governing officials, their brain.
SPEAKER 02 :
Or the same ones that come up with some of these stories later on in this episode on the Knucklehead Science Award of the Week. I’ve got examples now. Some of the folks involved in that. Maybe we don’t have to do the error correction on that interesting fact. Anyway, so talking about MRIs, Yeah. Who invented the MRI?
SPEAKER 03 :
We interviewed him, remember? So the inventor of MRI was Dr. Raymond Demadian. He’s been on Real Science Radio. Bob interviewed him a few years ago. And there was some dispute over who invented MRI until Dr. Demadian eventually won the lawsuit. And now, even if you Google it, Fred… Google says Raymond Damadian invented the MRI. So that’s a real science radio. We’re happy to have been involved in advancing the truth that Raymond Damadian invented MRI and MRI is used in placing these induced pluripotent stem cells into a particular portion of the brain and Just the fact that anyone could do that is astonishing. It’s just unbelievable. Wow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. And if I recall, he, he was in the running for like the Nobel prize for that, but because he’s a creationist, he’s not a secular evolutionist. Yeah. Oh, that played into the whole politics between all of this. And then trying to deny that he, uh,
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah, Dr. Damadian and the MRI. Yes, yes. So the doctor who’s using Dr. Damadian’s MRI to place induced pluripotent stem cells into a particular part of the brain… Neither him nor Dr. Damadian are thinking anything about evolution during any of that to do this. They’re doing this and never have they ever had to refer to or even consider the idea that everything they’re working with is evolved accidentally for no meaning or no purpose. They don’t think about that. In fact, I would bet you that while you’re using an MRI to place induced pluripotent stem cells into someone’s brain, that you probably assume that everything you’re doing has a purpose and is on purpose. Nothing is accidental. It’s just astonishing and amazing. This is, what a story.
SPEAKER 02 :
Wow. Yeah, it is. And, you know, getting back to adult stem cells, when you deal with the embryonic stem cells, you can’t, first of all, they cause tumors.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re dangerous.
SPEAKER 02 :
They’re very dangerous. You can’t really match it to a patient. With adult stem cells, from what I recall at Cradian, a lot of times you take adult stem cells from yourself. Because there won’t be any kind of rejection or whatever. So you can obviously match a patient with adult stem cells. And back then, there was a very strong clinical record for adult stem cells. And I know it’s just gotten better. Because if you research, do a Google and you’ll see a lot of the advancements, pretty much all the advancements we’re getting in stem cells is adult stem cells. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
The development of an embryo is an extraordinary singularity in life. It’s not anything that we can reproduce, and it’s, so far, it’s something that is beyond our ability. We shouldn’t even play in that zone. So people think that doctors and scientists They’ve been accused of playing God, right? Well, back in the 90s when they started doing embryonic stem cell research, they were literally playing God because they were literally taking the bodies of other human beings without their consent and doing experiments on them. Anyway, they were punished for that, not mystically by God, but it turned out that they couldn’t play God. It didn’t work. They weren’t smart enough. They didn’t have the resources, mental, spiritual, physical. They didn’t have the capacity to play in that space. And so, interestingly, God excluded men from working and playing in that space just by the natural way things are made. We can’t play with those stem cells without hurting ourselves. And so, thankfully, God is merciful and he’s kept us out of that space, at least for now. But the adult stem cell space is amazing and producing incredible results for rejuvenation, longevity, healing, right? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, so Doug, it’s time for our interesting fact of the week.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, and the interesting fact this week, before we get to it, Fred, I want to thank Pete in Houston, Texas, as the sponsor for the interesting fact of the week. And I wish Pete had given me more information about himself and his company and his products so that I could have more to say before you actually get to the interesting fact of the week. But all I have is, thank you, Pete in Houston. May I have another?
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, here we go, Doug. So here is the interesting fact of the week. Which is the only human part, just any part, which is the only human part that does not receive blood?
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, what? Okay, well, the only part of the human body that does not have access to the blood supply, if I’m not mistaken, is the epidermis.
SPEAKER 02 :
The epidermis?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, so it happens to be the cornea. Yeah. The eye, the cornea in the eye. Ah, well. Yes. It is a transparent dome-shaped structure that covers the front part of the eye and is essential for focusing light. It receives its oxygen and nutrients directly from the air and tears and does not contain any blood vessels. Interesting. Interesting. Do you know what the cornea is made of? Um, cornea? Cornea sites. I do.
SPEAKER 03 :
Uh-huh. Okay. Yes?
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s made of cells, atoms.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes, yes. It’s made of, uh… Corneocytes are the cell types. Do you know what your epidermis is made of? At least the very top cells? Skin cells. Corneocytes. They’re the same cell.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, really?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, yeah. And so I will file my official, what’s it called? My official protest against AI because the cornea is actually the same tissue type as the surface of the epidermis, neither of which has access to the blood supply.
SPEAKER 02 :
But the question was the only human part that doesn’t receive blood. So there you go. Well, wait a minute. My epidermis is a part. It’s a part of me. Yeah, but it receives blood, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
No. You don’t think so? No, I don’t think so. I know it does not. Okay. In fact, interestingly, the epidermis was considered non-living tissue for many, many years because it lacks a blood supply. Well, it turns out that even though the epidermis—and I’ll bet the cornea is the same, Fred, because they’re the same tissue type—even though they don’t have access to the blood supply, they do meet all of the other qualifications for living. Okay. Which, by the way, that’s a whole different… I have actually a segment of a Bible study on what’s alive and what’s not. There are many things, Fred, that we think are alive. Like, let’s say that ficus plant there behind you there, that beautiful… A ficus plant there you got? The ficus tree? Yeah, that thing I have to water about once every 30 years. We think that they’re alive, right? Yeah. But according to the Bible, they’re not alive. Okay, well, that’s actually artificial. I know it looks real, but… Plants, bugs, they’re not alive, not according to the Bible. So anyway, but that’s a whole other topic.
SPEAKER 02 :
But whether or not— We’ll have to research that because when I do a quick Google search, and I know a lot of times Google’s using AI now, it says the epidermis, the outermost layer of the skin, does contain blood vessels. It does not. Okay. Well, you should know, actually.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, though, here’s the thing about the epidermis. For many years, most of my career, I was taught, and I taught other people, that it was non-living tissue. But recent research… Indicates that it is living tissue. And so it’s quite possible that it does access the blood supply. And we’ve only now discovered it. It’s quite possible, Fred. I’m going to have to defer to doing some more research before I officially launch any protest against it. There we go. All right. And then we’ll have to look into this whole cornea thing too, because right now we think the cornea doesn’t get blood, but we might not know. Okay. It’s possible. You have a shot. You have a shot. Have a shot at that one. All right. We’ll come back to that. We’ll revisit this topic the next time we water that ficus. Yeah. We’ll keep an eye out for this one. All right. All right. Now, Fred, so I want to get back to the induced pluripotency of the stem cells. So the reason embryonic stem cells have proven so dangerous and disastrous in research is precisely their pluripotency, which means they’re exceedingly potent to do so many things that they’re really difficult to control.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s why they’re associated with tumors often.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, right. Uncontrolled cellular reproduction is cancer. So by inducing pluripotency, we’re able to, we, I shouldn’t say we, they, people a lot smarter than me, obviously, they’re able to induce a level of potency that is manageable and usable. And is it helping with Parkinson’s? It was my question. Fred, we’ve seen, I read the headline that they’re putting these adult stem cells in which they get from the skin or the blood, they reprogram them, make them, give them some level of pluripotency, inject them into a particular portion of the brain, have we seen any documented improvement in conditions like Parkinson’s? Which, by the way, I just hope I live long enough to get something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Parkinson’s and what’s the other one? There’s two diseases that we used to just call old and crazy, but we don’t anymore. Well, there’s dementia and there’s Alzheimer’s. that we’ve had time now to analyze these conditions. It’s not just grandma’s old and gone baddie, which is what we used to say 100 years ago. Now we actually can see what’s happening because there are hundreds of thousands and even millions of people who are now living long enough to suffer through things like Parkinson’s and dementia and Alzheimer’s. We’re able to actually analyze the breakdown of the human brain the physiological breakdown that’s occurring in our bodies. There’s enough of us living long enough now that we can actually see what’s happening and start to treat it.
SPEAKER 02 :
And this is one of the treatments for Parkinson’s. Well, looking at the article, it sounds like right now it’s just in the trial phase. And so they’re still closely observing patients who volunteered for this. Now, would you volunteer for this?
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t have Parkinson’s. I would hope I was too crazy. I’d be too crazy to be able to. Someone would have to volunteer me for it. In fact, Fred, we should do this. Since I’m of sound mind right now, at least I’m going to allege that. If I end up to where I’m in Parkinson’s and I can’t decide, please volunteer me for this. Yeah, I’m all for it. All right, all right. I’m willing to take one for the team. Sacrifice my brain cells for…
SPEAKER 02 :
For science, I suppose. Okay. So, Doug, a couple weeks ago, Valentine’s Day. Yeah. I hope you got your wife something. I did. Oh, good. I bought her a house.
SPEAKER 03 :
Bought my wife a house for Valentine’s Day.
SPEAKER 02 :
She was thrilled. Isn’t that good that we can pick things that we got on throughout the year and say, hey, this is your Valentine’s gift.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s exactly it. That’s exactly what I did because I had kind of forgotten about that perspective. particular day, because it’s not really a big thing with us with Valentine’s Day, but I took my wife out on the patio and I said, look, dear, happy Valentine’s. I love you. And the I love you part I meant. The Valentine’s was kind of a joke.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I ended up, we were both, as you know, we both had the flu that week. Oh, that’s right. We missed Valentine’s Day. Thank goodness. You guys were sick as a dog. Yeah, I remember. And I ended up, I kind of felt bad. So I went online to Amazon and I bought a little, I thought a pretty neat looking little ring holder. You know, put your rings, your wedding ring. Uh-huh. Okay. And so it shows up like a day later and she opens it and she’s like, oh, I already have three of these. Oh, that’s. You know, I’m just not the most observant guy I have to. She appreciated the thought, but you know. So speaking of Valentine’s Day, we mentioned this rock in Italy, Lover’s Arch. Lover’s Arch. The famous Italian rock arch, or should I say used to be a rock arch.
SPEAKER 03 :
It used to be, yeah, down there on the southern coast. If you’re familiar with Italy and the boot shape, this is the heel of the boot. Southern Italy, there was an arch right there where the Adriatic Sea crashes up against the Italian shore for millennia. There’s an arch that’s been carved there by the ocean in the rock. It’s called Lover’s Arch. It was called Lover’s Arch. And oddly enough, it collapsed on Valentine’s Day, which that’s got to make everybody just stop and just wonder about, like, could everything that’s happening actually be an accident when things like that happen? Yeah. It just makes you stop and think. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
On Valentine’s Day? Wait a second. And, you know, we’ve talked about these collapsing rock structures around the globe. They happen. They seem to happen. There’s one like every month. And these are supposed to be geologic formations that many times are claimed to take hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, yeah. Well, there was a Fox News article, Fred, that said the arch collapsed because it was millions of years old and gravity finally won.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and that was actually some goofball writing a comment to the Fox News article.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, that was in the comments section.
SPEAKER 02 :
It was in the comments section. But it shows you, though, Doug, just the impact that the public school system has had on people. Yeah. Most people would just think that because that’s how they were brainwashed into thinking about these geologists.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely. So the fact that in the comments section, this comment would be prevalent, would be that people assume it’s millions of years old.
SPEAKER 02 :
And if you read the replies, nobody replies saying, well, that’s ridiculous. No, of course not. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, if you want to take the temperature of civilization, just go through the first 10 or 15 comments of every news story where there’s a comment section, and it’ll kind of tell you where we are. It’s a little bit depressing.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s a little bit off-putting, I must say.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, this was a candidate for our Knucklehead Science Award of the Week, by the way.
SPEAKER 03 :
The guy who assumed that the arch was millions of years old.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And that gravity finally won. Uh-huh. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
So.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, the public schools have definitely done their job of brainwashing.
SPEAKER 02 :
But instead, this thing very likely, you know, after the great, the flood, no, it’s flood. Mm-hmm. You know, with all that sediment being laid down from the fountains of the great deep, somewhere in that whole mix of things is probably where this thing formed.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, yeah. You might guess. Well, sure. Or at least the infrastructure for the arch formed. And then, of course, the Adriatic pounding against the shore for about 5,000 years. I mean, you can get a lot done in about 5,000 years. That’s a long time of erosion and things like that. But… it’s not such an amazingly astonishing, unbelievably long time that people could expect that maybe something like that could actually collapse in our lifetime where we would actually see it 5,000 years. Yeah. There’s a good chance. A lot of people alive are going to actually see it, not only develop and they’re going to be able to go kiss under it and become a part of the local legend that they’re destined for lifelong love and all that. And, God bless them. I hope everyone who kissed under that arch had lifelong love. I hope so. But because it’s only a few thousand years old, there’s a good chance that either the people who kissed under it or their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren might see it collapse because the ocean is still doing its thing. And 5,000, yeah, it’s about right. Yeah. If it was part of a 4 billion-year-old infrastructure and accidental evolved accident of, what, dirt and mud and wherever that came from, we’d have to go back and figure out, well, how do we get the dirt and the mud?
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, we’re running out of time in this broadcast, so go to our website to catch the rest of this program, realsignsradio.com.
SPEAKER 04 :
Scholars can’t explain it all away.
SPEAKER 1 :
Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God. Tune into Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio. Keeping it real. That’s what I’m talking about.
