Word: patient
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...indeed possible to take a skin cell from an adult patient and tweak it to revert to an embryonic-type cell, that would mean that any patient needing a stem-cell-based treatment could, in theory, heal himself. Last year, Yamanaka was the first to announce success with this approach, by exposing the cells to four growth factors and nutrients. But the stem cells he generated were genetically abnormal and unstable. Building on the initial technique, Yamanaka's group, as well as those led by Rudolph Jaenisch at Whitehead and Konrad Hochedlinger at HSCI, showed that the process does indeed...
...meantime, Eggan's group has provided an alternative method for generating customized stem cells that would take advantage of the early-stage embryos frozen in IVF centers around the country. The most reliable way of generating patient-specific stem cells remains nuclear transfer-taking the nucleus from a patient's skin cell and inserting it into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. This hybrid then begins to divide, and within a few days, generates stem cells that are genetically identical to the patient. The problem, however, as Eggan puts it, is that "there are never any extra unfertilized...
...very pale when they talk about it. TB is bad enough, wasting bodies, ravaging lungs. The multi-- drug-resistant kind is worse. And XDR is the very rare but very awful strain that has all but exhausted the medical arsenal, leaving mainly faith and force as weapons: keep the patient isolated and hope that some treatment works against it, which happens in less than one-third of cases. The good news is that most people infected with the germ won't develop the disease; there have been fewer than 50 cases in the U.S. since 1993. The bad news...
...from migrating or dangerous viruses from mutating, the only way to stop a disease like this from spreading is to keep the carrier away from anyone he might infect. "We depend on a covenant of trust," said Dr. Martin Cetron of the Centers for Disease Control, and after the patient ignored the agency's warnings not to fly, he found himself under the first federal isolation order issued in 44 years...
...government has claimed broad powers to isolate anyone who poses a public-health threat--including those who may have been exposed but aren't yet sick--to contain a flu pandemic or a bioterrorist attack. Various states are flexing their muscles; authorities in Arizona have locked up a TB patient because he refused to wear a mask when he went outside. In New York, patients who refuse to take their meds--an action that can promote drug-resistant strains of TB--can be confined. Such cases are a reminder that there are no antidotes yet for ignorance or indifference...