Successful Stem Cell Replacement of Windpipe

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."

Comments

Re:!embryonic

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:!embryonic

[LWATCDR]

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

Re:!embryonic

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:!embryonic

[Chuck Chunder]

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.