28th Stem Cell Therapy Patient to be Healed of Heart Failure in Thailand

[Mk]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060109/lf_nm/thailand_stemcells_dc

"I really don't feel nervous at all," said the 37-year-old scuba instructor from Florida, who discovered his heart was failing at 32. "For the last five years, I've been waiting to die. This is the first time I've been hopeful to live."

The source of Bonilla's new-found hope is a novel therapy that involves injecting stem cells culled from the patient's own blood into the heart to try to regenerate ailing heart muscle.

The two-hour procedure, which involves a patient's own adult stem cells, skirts the risk of rejection by the body and thorny ethical issues surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells posed by some who equate using embryos with destroying human life.

"We have not lost a single patient," said Suphachai Chaithiraphan, chairman of Chao Phya Hospital and president of the Heart Association of Thailand. "If you can offer help to desperate people, then I think you should."

The destination for many of the heart patients seeking stem cell therapy is Thailand, where doctors have staked their reputations on a procedure they say could save thousands of people but has yet to be approved in the United States.

 

[sameandnot]

that guy sounds cool. nice post, Mk.