Another Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Successful Application

Doctors have successfully treated babies with a usually fatal genetic disorder of the brain by using stem-cell transplants from umbilical-cord blood.

The successes, reported Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, offer hope for victims of a host of rare diseases brought on by genetic flaws that cause specific protein deficiencies in the brain.

There are more than 45 known such diseases, affecting about 5,000 babies of the roughly 4 million born in the United States each year, with some fatal, others severely disabling.

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Unlike embryonic stem cell research, the destruction of a human life is not necessary to obtain stem cells from umbilical cords. And, more than 6,000 patients and 66 diseases have been successfully treated with stem cells from cord blood.

This leads me to wonder why 238 U.S. legislators, including 50 Republicans, voted yesterday to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell resarch.

More information here.

Posted May 25, 2005 6:25 AM