Understandably, all the attention in response to an article posted Monday in the journal “Nature” was captured in the headline in many ensuing stories: “Second HIV patient is in long-term remission, a decade after the first.”
The patient, “whose identity hasn’t been disclosed, was able to stop taking antiretroviral drugs, with no sign of the virus returning 18 months later,” reported Matthew Warren.
What was completely ignored is the source of the stem cells that were responsible for this long-term remission from HIV infection—they were adult stem cells. As we have written many multiples of times, adult stem cells carry none of the ethical baggage associated with using stem cells from aborted human embryos and are not only effective, but have been in wide use for years. In fact, adult stem cells are the only successful stem cell in clinical practice, now treating more than 70,000 patients a year.
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