Today as the cameras were rolling on Capitol Hill, the US Senate debated the stem cell issue . Yet a more notable “giant leap” occurred in Brazil when a group of physicians there temporarily reversed Type I diabetes in fourteen patients. What does this mean for people with Parkinson’s disease? Well, if they can convince stem cells to become pancreas cells that produce insulin, can it fuel our optimism that science will be able to program stem cells to become dopamine producing cells? It is also worth mentioning that they use the patients’ own adult stem cells to accomplish this feat. So, there is little debate about the ethics of the issue. Thank you scientists for plowing ahead with the tools you have. We hope that funding and innovation will give scientists more tools in the very near future.
You can read related stories from a couple of respectable media outlets:
