Word: transplantation
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...need for such a device is clear. Every year some 105,000 cardiac patients require a heart transplant, and only about 3,000 hearts become available. That discrepancy will grow as baby boomers age; for better or worse, seat belts and compulsory motorcycle helmets have reduced the supply of donor organs...
...changed in the past couple of years, however, that might persuade Congress to reconsider. Last September the National Bioethics Advisory Commission concluded that harvesting stem cells from discarded embryos is morally akin to removing organs from dead people for transplant. Also, the National Institutes of Health has seized on a possible loophole. In their view, federally funded scientists can do research on stem cells as long as someone else--say, in the private sector--actually dismantles the embryos. Most important, a small but influential group of Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill has started pushing for a relaxation of federal...
There's much more to learn, of course, and many pitfalls to avoid. Consider the case of a 52-year-old American athlete with Parkinson's disease, who in 1989--before human stem cells had been isolated from the brain--traveled to China for a fetal-cell transplant. The goal was to replace some of the diseased neurons in his brain with newly differentiated fetal nerve tissue. While that approach has been at least partly successful in hundreds of other cases, something went dreadfully wrong this time. About two years later, the man suddenly developed trouble breathing and died...
...that pig organs could be available in as little as five years. Hardy believes that whenever the tissue does come along, it will at first be rather small-bore stuff--pancreatic islet cells for diabetics, say--rather than hearts, kidneys or lungs. Whatever it is, even a little new transplant material is a big improvement over what's available now, and for gravely ill patients awaiting a donor, that's no small thing...
RETURNED. SEAN ELLIOTT, 32, two-time NBA All-Star and the first pro athlete competing in a major sport with a kidney transplant; to the court, seven months after the operation; in San Antonio, Texas...