“Latest Stem Cells News”

While America continues to waste put its money into Embryonic Stem Cell research, a doctor in Iraq is actually treating patients with their own Adult Stem Cells.   Dr. Abdul Majeed Alwan Hammadi is treating patients for free- and has so far treated 34 patients with stem cell therapy and treatment, mainly patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

Dr. Hammadi claims no side effects have been reported in his patients and this isn’t surprising because it is the patient’s own stem cells he is using.

We covered Dr. Hammadi briefly last month when he was treating  Reverend Andrew White, the vicar for St. George’s church in Baghdad.  Reverend Andrew was suffering from multiple sclerosis before his stem cell treatment.

Reverend Andrew had no qualms about using his own Adult Stem Cells for his treatment because they were cells from his own body, already designed to repair damage.

Dr. Hammadi started treating Reverend Andrew in January 2009.  Since then (from the stem cell article):

White said his slurred speech and other MS symptoms improved since starting the three-hour therapy sessions, which involves Hammadi extracting adult stem cells from White’s blood and then injecting them into his spinal cord.

“When there’s no other treatment, you kind of just go with it,” White said. “At least there’s a chance.”

White said the therapy itself “can be a bit painful” since it involves a spinal cord puncture, but there has been a “massive difference” in his condition.

“It’s very rare for me to actually feel ill now,” he said. “My balance is still quite bad and my vision is not perfect, but I do not feel ill.”

Look at this.  In the middle of a warzone, a doctor is treating patients with their own Adult Stem Cells for free.  While in the peaceful United States, too busy with their Embryonic stem cell research, multiple sclerosis patients wait (and suffer) for the right to use their own stem cells for treatment. Is there something wrong with this picture?

original post by Don Margolis

The Pentagon has made its first significant development with ‘induced’ stem cells (stem cells not obtained from embryos) to regenerate the limbs of amputees who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Researchers were successful in transforming epithelial cells, which were manipulated to regress to their primordial state, into blastemas. A blastema is a mass of undifferentiated cells, which can develop into new body parts. In nature, blastemas are present in salamanders, and newts, animals, which are capable of restoring their own limbs with functionality after amputation.

The final goal, which is still far away, is to replicate this extraordinary capability in humans. Before the final objective, reports Wired, researchers are now targeting a second phase: transforming these cellular masses into molecular tissues. The researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute involved in the discovery received 570,000 dollars from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The objective is to effectively replace lost muscle,” explained Professor Raymond Page. The DARPA project, “Restorative Injury Repair”, aims to “fully recover the functionality of muscular and nervous tissue that has been damaged or amputated due to injuries suffered during combat”.

The program was launched on April 20th by the Pentagon, which invested 250 million dollars over a 5-year period. The researchers built a new facility, the Military Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) to develop the new Japanese technique, which is not the subject ethical controversy, since stem cells are generated with the regression of adult epithelial cells obtained from the patients.
This technique of obtaining stem cells removes the risk of rejection and gives cells the possibility to change into 271 types of tissue in the human body.

Canon Andrew White

An English priest living in Baghdad, Iraq has had his own Adult Stem Cells used to treat his Multiple Sclerosis. Canon Andrew White, the vicar of St. George’s Church in Baghdad was the recipient of this stem cell therapy to treat MS.

No Ethical Issues to Use His Own Stem Cells for Multiple Sclerosis

Andrew has a medical background and had helped establish the Bone Marrow Transplant Centre in Baghdad in 2001. He was good friends with Dr. Majid, the director of the center who saw that Andrew was suffering from the effects of his Multiple Sclerosis and approached him about using his own Adult Stem Cells for treatment.  Andrew had no objections or ethical issues about using his own stem cells and agreed to the stem cell therapy.