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FDA Approves First Brain Stem Cell Transplant
no reason to be here writes "An article at CNN.com is reporting on the FDA granting approval to the first ever transplant of fetal stem cells into human brains. The stem cells will be transplanted into six children suffering from Batten disease, a rare, always fatal, genetic neurological illness, which renders its victims blind and speechless before finally paralyzing them and killing them." From the article: "The stem cells to be transplanted in the brain aren't human embryonic stem cells, which are derived from days-old embryos. Instead, the cells are immature neural cells that are destined to turn into the mature cells that makeup a fully formed brain. Parkinson's disease patients and stroke victims have received transplants of fully formed brain cells before, but the malleable brain cells involved here have never before been implanted."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=46546
It is an interesting therapeutic strategy to inject stem cells foreign to the suffering patient to alleviate the problems with the patient's own DNA. The cause of Batten Disease is a series of mutations in membrane transporters with unknown function. While the mutations affect all body tissues, it is powerfully destructive to neurons and so there is the typical accumulation of autofluorescent pigments (the so-called ceroid lipofuscinosis neuronal).
:-)
I think the most important lesson here is that injection of stem cells and the differentiation of those cells and eventual incorporation into the functional neural network is astounding. However, the limits of the therapy are quite evident, since the patient's entire brain suffers from the accumulation of lipofuscin. You'd have to inject enough stem cells to regenerate an entire brain, which is on the scale of billions (could be off by a few factors of ten though....).
As for the cellular and genetic basis for the accumulation of pigments, I'll have to get back to you on that when I conclude my research.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Were antibiotics seen as a moral issue by Christians? No.
Actually, yes. They were considered "violating god's will", eg god wants this person to die, who are you to interfere with god's will? Pretty amazing, but that's the reasoning put forth by christians. Jenner's cowpox vaccine was objected to on the same grounds by christians, and they had no moral objections to using fearmongering like "the cowpox vaccine turns you into a cow" in order to scare people away from taking it.
Has anything changed between jenner and today? Not really. christians still use fearmongering / "god's will" as arguments against.. well, just about anything they disagree with. The christian fearmongering nonsense will lose out in the end, but it will leave many dead / injured / suffering people in their wake, and that's the real tragedy.