The first spinal-injury patient to receive embryonic stem-cell therapy has come forward with details about his treatment, but one doctor thinks his case is being used to give attention to an ineffective method of therapy.
Alabama nursing student Timothy Atchison, 21, was paralyzed from the chest down after he was in a car accident in September. Within two weeks of the crash, he gave doctors permission to inject him with the stem cells. But Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council (FRC) tells OneNewsNow that no more information has been given about the results of Atchison's treatment because researchers do not want to talk about them.
"It's too early to know whether he will be developing tumors," Dr. Prentice explains. "It's actually too early, if ever...[to] know whether the embryonic stem cells had any effect, because a lot of spinal cord injury patients show spontaneous recovery during the first 12 months."
But he believes this case is being used as media hype to keep the public open to the idea of embryonic stem-cell research, even though it has yet to produce any positive results. "In the meantime, we're not hearing about the dozens of patients with spinal cord injury who actually have been improved with adult stem cells, as documented by the published science," Prentice laments.
He points out that success with that method, which does not involve killing a human embryo, is continuously overlooked, and he concludes that the publicity over Atchison's case is just another way of promoting a research method that leaves nothing but empty promises.
Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
