Back in the U.S.: Stem Cells Save Babies

Cells from umbilical cords stave off a disease that is otherwise lethal by age 2

Almost lost in the hoopla over the stem cells cloned in South Korea was a stem-cell breakthrough closer to home--in more ways than one. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Duke University Medical Center reported that infants born with a fatal nerve disorder have been helped--and perhaps even saved--by treatment with stem cells taken from the umbilical cords of healthy babies.

Of course, the stem cells used at Duke are not the kind that have caused so much anguish and debate in the U.S. Because these cells are taken not from embryos but from cord or placenta...

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