Leukemia patient completely cured with cord blood stem cells

BERLIN, November 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Doctors associated with the German umbilical cord blood bank Vita 34 say that they have cured a child’s leukemia completely using an infusion of stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

The procedure was reportedly performed in 2005 on a four-year-old girl whose chemotherapy treatment had failed and who had a prognosis of only three months to live. The procedure was possible because the parents had decided to preserve their child’s umbilical cord blood at the time of birth.

After continuous monitoring of the child for five years now, with no sign of leukemia cells in her blood, doctors say that they have confirmed that the treatment worked.

“Seventy-five months have passed and we can speak of a cure with certainty,” said Eberhard Lampeter of Vita 34.

According to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, this is the first case in the world of a child cured of leukemia by her own stem cells. In most cases the child’s umbilical cord blood is not available, and the stem cells of close family members must be used.

The new treatment is the latest in a long string of hundreds of successes in the science of stem cell treatments that use mature cells rather than embryonic stem cells...

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Scientists successfully treat rats' injured spinal cords

Still, you do have to wonder just how these rats injured their spinal cords...

Prague, Feb 1 (CTK) - Czech scientists have succeeded in treating spinal cord chronic injuries in rats and want to start testing hydrogel with stem cells in people as soon as possible, Eva Sykova, from Science Academy Experimental Medicine Institute, told CTK yesterday.

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How Barack Obama is going to endanger stem cell research...and other medical research and innovation

The truth is, despite the great promise of new medical technology out there now, in terms of new cancer treatments, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and more, the potential marvels of the next twenty years will never be developed unless some developer thinks there's a market.

And with bureaucrats in charge of deciding what treatments to pay for, the existence of such markets will be much less certain. Oh, sure, federally-funded medical research will still go on at the NSF, NIH, etc. But turning that research into actual products is a different story.

My family benefited from innovative treatments that probably wouldn't be around if the United States had adopted socialized medicine when that was first proposed over half a century ago. In 20 years from now, a lot more treatments -- and, probably, dramatically better treatments -- won't be around if we adopt a national healthcare program now.

It's ironic that the same Democrats who were pushing the medical prospects for stem-cell research during the last election are now pushing a program that will make such progress far less likely.

Glenn Reynolds on the hidden cost of national health care

Are YOU fooled by Obama's moral arrogance?

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

Morally Unserious in the Extreme

H/T: PowerLine

Stem cell research breakthrough!

The new technique, while far from perfected, is so promising that the man who managed to clone the world's first sheep, Dolly, is giving up his work cloning embryos to focus on studying stem cells derived from skin cells.

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Stem Cell Research

“Stem cell research needs neither government money nor politics. It is better to get the government out and let the private sector continue its good work. Those people calling for increased funding could take out their checkbooks and support it. Those who oppose embryonic stem cell research would not be forced to pay for it. The vast majority of medical and scientific breakthroughs in this country’s history have been accomplished by the private sector. There’s no reason for stem cell research to be any different. Let’s end the political debate, and get back to scientific research.” — Michael Tanner