JawsBlog

So much has already been made about the story out of South Korea which claims that a woman who had been paralyzed for 20 years, via the use of umbilical cord stem cells, is apparently able to walk again!

If this is true, it’s amazing on multiple levels. Obviously it’s an amazing occurence, but on a secondary level, to those of us in the scientific community (especially within the neuroscience community) this could be a huge discovery. Not only does it involve neuronal regrowth and reconnection, it also involves restoration of function, paterned locamotive activity among other things.

However, being a science person, I’m still going to reserve my judgement on this claim of a breakthrough until the doctors publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal some time in the first half of 2005. I want to see the details and data before I come to a conclusion one way or another.

Obviously, this story is going to be picked up and used as part of the political hot potato issue of embryonic stem cell research–as this feat was apparently accomplished not with embryonic stem cells, but rather umbilical ones.

For a synopsis of the “talking points” see Just One Minute