Every medical treatment has some risk associated with it, even those which are clearly established and undoubtedly efficacious. This includes adult/umbilical cord blood therapies, such as using bone marrow to treat leukemia. Case in point: World famous musher Susan Butcher died recently of complications of a bone marrow transplant.
It is important to keep in mind as we discuss the advances being made in adult/umbilical cord blood experimental therapies, that these potential avenues of treatment—if they become generally available—will not be risk free. (The same would clearly be true of ESC therapies.) Even the most innocuous therapies can cause harm. The primary issue in making an informed choice about whether to accept a medical treatment is a weighing and balancing of hoped for benefits against potential costs. Stem cell therapies—no matter what their source—are, and will be, no different.
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