Neato!
Scientists restore eye sight by stem cell treatment
In yet another medical achievement, British scientists have restored eyesight of a partially blind person using pioneering stem cell treatment.
Eye surgeons at the North East England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI), has almost completely restored the vision of Russell Turnbull who was blinded in one eye by a chemical attack.
Huzzah. But in order to bring this back to politics, consider this line:
his sight has been almost fully restored thanks to the new technique in which doctors regrown the outside membrane of his cornea from stem cells taken from his healthy eye.
Note that this was *not* done with embyonic stem cells… but with his *own.* While the embyronic stem cell arguement seems to have faded from the scene (pretty much the moment Bush was out of office, and it was no longer a useful political arguement for the Left), it’s important to note that just about all (maybe just “all”) of the actual practical advances in stem cells have come from using the patients *own* cells, not embryonic. And there’re good reasons for this… not least being that anythign grown from your own cells is *you,* while anythign grown from embyros is *someone* *else,* meanign you’ll live the rest of your life with your immune system attacking and rejecting it.
2 Responses to “Stem cell treatment restores sight”
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It is funny, all of the successes in this field are from stem cells from adults, and usually from the person it actually works on.
I have never found any legit reason for pursuing embryonic stem cell research. And yes, I have read A LOT on the subject, a stem cell treatment having been put forward for Sjogren’s Syndrome, a condition I have. It has not panned out, so far.
The whole EC movement is political at its heart, and not about actual medical advancement. Otherwise they would just slap all their successes on the table, and leave the political hackery out of it.
Damn neat trick.
Jim