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Successful Stem Cell Replacement of Windpipe

Posted by timothy on from the difficult-to-gasp dept.

thepacketmaster writes "In what is being hailed as a medical milestone, CNN reports a woman suffering from long-term tuberculosis had her lower trachea and bronchial tube replaced by tissue grown from her own stem cells. A team from the universities of Barcelona, Spain; Bristol, England; and Padua and Milan, Italy, decided to go ahead with the surgery instead of having to remove her left lung. The operation, reported Wednesday in the British medical journal The Lancet, has been hailed as a major leap for medicine that could offer new hope for patients suffering from serious illness."

7 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:!embryonic by fish_in_the_c · · Score: 3, Insightful

    which makes a reasonable argument against doing something morally questionable and that upsets lots of people, if you can get the same or better resaults without it.

    --
    âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
  2. Re:!embryonic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's nothing morally questionable about using embryonic stem cells, and just because it upsets certain people doesn't make it so.

  3. Re:!embryonic by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Humm. So you decide what is moral and not for the planet?
    Interesting.....

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  4. Re:!embryonic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you believe that a dozen undifferentiated cells constitute a human being, that's your problem.

  5. Re:!embryonic by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    which makes a reasonable argument against doing something morally questionable and that upsets lots of people, if you can get the same or better resaults without it.

    For specific areas where adult stem cells make sense and indeed have advantages that hardly needs saying.

    Of course you have to acknowledge that embryonic stem cells are different and may provide viable treatments in areas where adult stem cells won't work for some reason.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  6. Re:!embryonic by philspear · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why make an exception for humans?

    Well, I think it's the other side that's making an exception for humans. The only time anyone has a problem with harvesting ES cells is when it's from a human blastula. "Human" means more than a genetic identity. It's not illogical to say a human blastula may not have human rights, because it's not a "Human" in that sense, even though biologically it is an individual human embryo.

    I'm not endorsing that view, for the record.

  7. Re:!embryonic by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Humm. So you decide what is moral and not for the planet?
    Interesting.....

    I'm going to wait to see who actually attempts to impose their opinion on someone else by either requiring or prohibiting some action before I say who thinks they decide what is moral and not for the planet.

    Oh that's right, I don't have to wait.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are