The woman who was paralyzed for 19 years and had partial movement and feeling restored through umbilical cord blood stem cells has had a terrible setback. The story says it was an infection, but it also appears that she may be the victim of unethical human experimentation. The bottom line: Today she is worse off than she was before receiving the experimental treatments.
This brings up an important point I try to adhere to: I always point out that one apparent successful treatment does not a cure make. I have said this about Dennis Turner, who apparently received a substantial remission from Parkinson’s with his own brain cells. I said so about this woman. These are early experiments. The promise seems real. But we must not hype adult stem cells in the way proponents of cloning and ESCR have too often hyped those approaches.
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