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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Hope For Paralysis Victims

This is a hopeful development:

Scientists have used stem cells and a soup of nerve-friendly chemicals to not just bridge a damaged spinal cord but actually regrow the circuitry needed to move a muscle, helping partially paralyzed rats walk.

Years of additional research is needed before such an experiment could be attempted in people. But the work marks a tantalizing new step in stem cell research that promises to one day help repair damage from nerve-destroying illnesses such as Lou Gehrig's disease, or from spinal cord injuries.

According to the report the stem cells used were mouse embryonic stem cells. Read the whole account here.

The Darwinians constantly remind us that unless science is based on the assumption of evolution it will never progress. I wonder what role evolutionary thinking played in this research.