Stem cell therapy & The *Grundrisse*

[louisgodena@xxxxxxx (Louis R Godena)]

1996 has been a seminal year for the development of  "stem cells"--the
mother cells from which all human blood is formed.   In February,  a US Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee recommended approval for
Cellpro's stem cell purificaton technique;  full approval is expected by the
end of the year.    Stem cell purification techniques developed by Cellpro
and Baxter,  another US company,  are already on the market in Europe.

Stem cells are important for a number of reasons.   Because they are capable
of producing every kind of blood cell--white blood cells,  red blood cells,
platelets,  etc.--they guarantee the recipient a fully functioning
circulatory system.    Hundreds of cancer patients,   for example,   have
successfully received stem cell transplants,  and trials are underway for
treatment of severe multiple sclerosis at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
And physicians at the University of Nevada have used fetal stem cell
transplants to cure several cases of "bubble boy disease"--a condition which
causes infants to be born with no immune system.   There is much real hope
that stem cell transplants can eventually help cure a host of genetic
disorders and viral infections such as AIDS.

Too,  since stem cells make the white blood cells after they have been
placed in a patient,  researchers believe they carry less risk of being
rejected by a recipient's immune system in a donor transplant.    That could
substantially reduce the incidence of deadly graft-versus-host-disease.

Most importantly,  though,  stem cells are in a "purer" state than
later-generation blood cells.   They are therefore more likely to be largely
free of malignancies and other defects.    This "purity" forms the basis of
the most proven use for stem cell transplants to date: to repopulate the
circulatory systems--including the immune systems--of cancer patients.
Stem cells can actually restore a cancer patient's immune system after the
devastating effects of chemotherapy.     And findings indicate that leftover
cancer cells in the blood may play a big role in cancer relapse (breast
cancer-for which stem cells transplants have most frequently been used-is
believed to be especially susceptible to lingering blood cell malignancies).

A number of companies have developed cell selection techniques to isolate
stem cells.   Most-including Baxter,  RPR and Gencell-rely on antibodies
that bind to the cells.    Baxter covers the surface of the antibody with
charged beads and extracts the cells by magnets.    Cellpro coats the stem
cells with a vitamin,  then runs the mixture through an egg-white protein
for which the vitamin has an affinity,  while SyStemix uses a high-speed
laser system to pull out stem cells (they claim the highest rate of
"purity"--though it is expensive is difficult to use for large batches).

Stem cell therapy represents the most thorough application to date of
intense capital penetration into the field of biotechnology.    Its payoff,
judging from these preliminary results looks to be beyond imagination.

The successful development of this technology will not only of course
further enhance science's role as an externality of capitalist expansion,
it will--together with the final dilineation of DNA research--all but
complete the commodification of life itself.    It, too,  will usher in
necessary forms in which labor--as we have heretofore understood it--will
exist only superfluously.

The burgeoning commercial possibility of stem cell therapy recalls in this
respect Marx's seminal observations on the *economics* of production in the
*Grundrisse*,  written largely in 1857-58 but not published in its entirety
until the Second World War.    Marx,  departing from an earlier emphasis on
the market mechanism as a motivating,  causal,  or fundamental factor in
capitalist development,  began to systematically analyze the economics of
*production* as a process far more fundamental than mere exchange.    "As
soon as labor in its direct form has ceased to be the great wellspring of
wealth,"  Marx wrote, "...the system of production based upon exchange value
collapses..."    On the one hand,  capital "animates all the powers of
science and nature...in order to make the creation of wealth (relatively)
independent of the labor-time expended on it."   On the other,  this same
capital,  in the form of production,  "wants to use labor-time as a measure
for the gigantic social powers created in this way,  and to restrain them as
values."   Marx then continued:

"Productive forces and social relations--both of which are different sides
of the development of the social individual--appear to capital only as
means,  and only means to produce on its limited basis.   In fact,  however,
these are the material conditions to blow this basis sky high."

As stem cell research progresses into the area of autoimmune diseases such
as multiple sclerosis,  rheumatoid arthritus and lupus,  the way will be
opened--together with more traditional gene therapy--to truly revolutionize
not only science,  but the basic relations of production within this field
itself.

Comments?


Louis Godena



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