Tumors After Stem Cell Injections

Boy Develops Tumors After Fetal Stem Cell Injections
An experimental injection of fetal stem cells caused tumors to develop in an Israeli boy's brain and spinal cord, according to a new report in the journal PLoS Medicine. The child had a rare, deadly brain disease called ataxia telangiectasia, or A-T. The disease can lead to degeneration of a region of the brain; most people with A-T die by their teens or early 20s. The boy had traveled to Russia at age 9, when he was injected with fetal neural stem cells in his brain and spinal cord, the Associated Press reports. He received two additional sets of injections at ages 10 and 12. By age 13, the boy needed a wheelchair for his A-T, and he was experiencing headaches. The tumors in his brain and spinal cord were discovered soon after that. A test of the tissue found that the tumors were caused by the fetal cells.

Treatments involving stem cells, such as a heart attack procedure offered in Thailand, are still viewed as experimental, yet some researchers believe they may help certain medical problems. Consider these 3 ways that stem cells may speed new cures for certain diseases. Also, human stem cells now can be made from adult skin, without using embryos or eggs.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/h...em-cell-injections-and-other-health-news.html

 

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the price of research.

the question i have is who said this was human safe?
isn't stem cell research still in its infancy?

 

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Still very new and this article does point that out! It is a gamble with stem cell research at the moment...

 

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Why aren't they experimenting with animals first or a computer simulation? Why go experimenting with humans directly, is that ethical to do? :shrug:

 

you cant be serious. experimenting with a computer simulation???

 

With todays super computers they can and do achieve many results from simulations of what chemicals do with each other when mixed as well as many other types of simulations with weather, the atomic bombs and on and on. I only used the computer as just another way to investigate new ideas before experimenting with humans.

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a computer simulation best simulates what is KNOWN to happen and to an extent what is EXPECTED to happen. not exactly ideal for something like this, not even close. or didnt you know that?

 

Actually some of them come up with what might happen when things are asked of them. Take for example the super computers that work on the way an atomic bomb works. Do you know that there hasn't been a detonation of an atomic device in America since the super computers have been giving results from the physicists experiments with them? That would mean that they are getting back data that shows them what happens when certain things are done in an atomic explosion without exploding anything at all.

 

that is an example of extrapolation. in this case there are too many unknowns.

 

which means that human trials are the only way we will know what will happen. animal trials have been recently been called into question because there are huge differences in how different animals react to a substance when compared to us.

 

No one. This exact type of stem cell experiment is being extensively performed in animal models with varying success. Whilst a small amount of human experimentation is also being performed, the technique has not yet progressed to the stage where it is widey attempted. The above outcome is why not.

There are many types of stem cells and many different types of procedures that utilise different types of stem cells. A few stem cell applications are very advanced and are fairly routinely clinically applied to humans. Others are still experimental and have a long way to go before being applied to humans.

As I said above, this particular type of stem cell experiment is still a “gamble” and is some way from being routinely applied to humans. Other stem cell applications have been successfully applied to humans for some time (eg. haematopoietic stem cell transplants into bone marrow after aggressive chemotherapy).

They are. This is obviously one of those instances where a terminally ill person chose to undergo an experimental procedure that was still in the animal model phase. It’s not uncommon. They feel they have nothing to lose.

Biology/medicine isn’t like physics and engineering. No amount of computer modelling will ever remove the need for in vivo experimentation.

 

but was the boy cured?

 

No, not yet from what I read.

 

but he was only 10 when they started using him as a guinea pig.

 

I don’t know the circumstances and there are some serious ethical issues around the ability of a 10 year old to give consent. But whilst he’s only 10 it seems unlikely he was going to make it past his teens anyway. It’s a sad situation.

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The term “guinea pig” is an emotive and judgemental term and is not necessarily fair to the doctors/scientists/parents involved. :bugeye: We don’t know the circumstances. I used to work in a cancer institute. Our branch performed basic scientific research and didn’t do any clinical work with cancer patients. We had a separate clinical branch. Nonetheless, we would semi-regularly get walk-in people or people on the telephone with terminal cancer who would beg us to put them in any trials for new cancer treatments, regardless of how experimental or potentially dangerous they might be. For this reason we never gave out our direct telephone numbers, only the main switchboard number. It was quite distressing to be confronted with such people and to have to tell them that we couldn’t do anything for them.

People with a terminal illness are often quite willing to undergo an experimental treatment regardless of the risks.

 

But even if they are willing, they are still guinea pigs.

 

I'd call them voluntary contributors.

 

agreed.
this is what i especially dislike about organizations such as PETA.
playing "the guilt trip" on lab researchers is 100% wrong in this regard.

 

stem cell reaserch is a great new Idea which could have an incredible effect on modern science but at the moment they are just throwing stem cells at damaged areas. Thus the cells could very easily follow the wrong patterns in the body and form tumours to great detriment. We still do not totaly understand our usage of them. I am not suprised given my understanding of them that complications like this can ocur