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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."
This could be an amazing step forward for the advance of this field of science, or an amazing step backwards for it. The question isn't whether or not it'll work, it's how it will be handled by everyone involved. It won't take much to make enemies on here!
I fear the politics too, but I have to admit to a nasty little surge of glee at the thought of the "pro-life" crowd getting their hypocrisy and self-righteousness thrown back in their faces in such a dramatic manner.
Just to make it clear where I'm coming from: I'm a parent too, and although my child is healthy and will hopefully remain so her whole life, I can tell you that if she ever does need some kind of treatment that someone objects to on religious grounds, that someone had better stay the hell out of my way.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
All the good comments aside, could this end up like a cure for the terminally stupid?
If its possible to cure brain diseases with this process(s), couldn't you also fix things like bad memory? or turn people in to 'lawn mower men' kind of people? What happens when you augment the wetware of 'normal' people? Would they stop smoking? Could you break peoples ingrained habits with a wetware upgrade?
The implications are way more than anyone has mentioned yet...
If you look at human minds/brains as a wetware machine, then some very odd thinking patterns have been (more or less) shown to be wetware problems (epilepsy etc.) and if that is so, can we cure all kinds of psychosis with a wetware upgrade? How does that affect our views of god, humanity, and disease? What if we can make people smarter than Einstein? Science fiction stories have had fields days with this kind of stuff.
If we can augment or repair natural decay, could we also tinker with the endocrine system in general? Perhaps diabetes is just a failed ROM chip initially? Would Thyroidism just be a Flash chip change?
This is indeed exciting, but also very scary. We have had stories about countries not getting enough vaccines for aids and now H5N1 etc. What kind of abuses can this lead to, and how do we set out rules for how this sort of thing should be dealt with?
All we need is one Dr Moreaux (sp) to mess up and everything could get very whacked out indeed.
I'm rather perplexed at the implications.
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If my parents had decided to use birth control, I would not be here today and would never have been able to feel or think; if my parents had decided on an abortion, I would likewise not be here today and would never have been able to feel or think. To me, there's no difference in the sadness level of the two scenarios.