It sounds like the sort of remedy a witch doctor might dream up: take blood from the discarded placenta of a newborn baby and inject it into a child suffering from leukemia. But it is not voodoo. According to a study of 25 children published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, the unusual treatment may work better than a bone-marrow transplant in treating the childhood cancer. Placental blood might even be used someday to treat other blood and immune-system disorders--from sickle-cell anemia to AIDS.
The procedure appears to solve a medical Catch-22. Although the transplantation of bone-marrow cells...
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