Stem cells derived from aborted foetuses will be injected into six children sufering from Batten’s disesase. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for Bioethics, has pointed out that the stem cells are derived from aborted fetuses instead of human embryonic stem cells that will not cause identity crisis, thereby posing a threat to ethics. Batten disease is caused by the incapacity of genes to create an enzyme required in the brain to remove cellular waste. However, these immature neural stem cells when injected will turn into cells able to produce the enzyme required to dispose the cellular waste. The presence of this waste causes a child to go blind and dumb, leading to death in a child’s teenage. Stanford University Medical Centre chief neurosurgeon Dr Stephen Huhn plans to bore small holes in the children’s skulls and inject the cells directly into the brain.
This medical development is a breakthrough; now there is a cure for this rare disease. Jonathan Cooper, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London feels that there can be cure to a large number of brain related diseases with stem cells.