We at Stemblog have decided to weigh in on the medical tourism issue, which is fueled by the lack of adequate curative treatments available in the US for many of the 100 million Americans who suffer deadly or chronic medical conditions. As this doctor says on the hope that stem cells injected into the spinal cord area will morph into the specific cell type needed to heal the damage:

“There is some evidence that this occurs in animal models,” Magnuson said. “There is some basis for this. It’s just not proven to work in humans.”

So should we wait or not, to try and improve our lives? Continue Reading »

Kevin Everett, the Buffalo Bills player who was paralyzed after breaking his neck on the football field, will soon walk. That’s what doctors said as he was transferred from Buffalo to a Houston hospital today, less than two weeks after sustaining a life-threatening spinal cord injury.

“Soon… they’re going to stand him up,” Dr. Barth Green, president of The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, told the Associated Press. “(Doctors are) very confident he’ll be walking very soon… in the next days or weeks, not months.”

Incredible news. Some would consider Everett’s progress a miracle.

But it’s not. Continue Reading »