A Woman Went Blind After Stem Cells Were Injected in Her Eyes
By Sarah Zhang,
The Atlantic
| 10. 19. 2017
And she isn’t the only one.
Last year, a 77-year-old woman traveled to a clinic in Georgia to have stem cells injected in her eyes. She came in hope of a cure—or at least something that could help her macular degeneration, which causes a dark spot to appear in the center of vision.
The procedure was supposed to work like this: The clinic would take fat from her belly, separate out stem cells that naturally occur in fat, and inject them into her eyes to regenerate damaged tissue. The procedure cost $8,900. It had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and was not covered by insurance. To pay out of pocket, she had to raise money on a crowdfunding site.
Her vision did not get better. It got much worse. Within three months, her retinas—the eye’s layer of light-sensitive cells—had peeled away from the rest of her eyes. As a result, she can only make out hand motions in her right eye and light in the left, according to a recent case report. She could no longer...
Related Articles
By Tomoko Otake, The Japan Times | 04.09.2024
A decade ago, researcher Haruko Obokata caused a sensation when she published two papers in the journal Nature, in which she claimed that she had discovered a way to create stem cells easily using the so-called STAP method.
With STAP...
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024
A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level of destruction that only nuclear weapons could previously achieve is fast becoming as accessible as a cyberattack.
Now for the...
CGS is excited to announce the launch of a new anti-eugenics initiative that has been years in the making. Legacies of Eugenics in Science, Medicine, and Technology kicks off with a monthly essay series published at the Los Angeles Review of Books that will expose and contest the reemergence of eugenic ideas in contemporary health sciences, human biotechnology, public health, and medicine. Community and campus-based events featuring the authors are also being planned. The project is a collaboration among CGS...
By Tristan Manalac, BioSpace | 04.02.2024
Verve Therapeutics has suspended enrollment in the Phase Ib Heart-1 study evaluating its lead gene editing program VERVE-101 following a serious adverse event, the company announced Tuesday.
A patient, who received a 0.45-mg/kg dose of VERVE-101, developed a grade 3...