[extropy-chat] Pioneering medical treatment in China

[Dirk Bruere]

Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote:

>This very interesting development in China has been in the news for a
>couple of days.
>Dr Huang Hongyun cultivates the cells of aborted foetuses and injects
>them into the brains and spines of his patients. His method is
>controversial, but his results have led hundreds of westerners to his
>Beijing surgery.
>Some have been in wheelchairs for years and believe he can help them
>walk; others are kept alive by respirators, yet hope he can make them
>breathe. The voiceless have heard he can bring them speech. The
>terminally ill seek nothing less than more life.
>They come in search of one of the most pioneering - and controversial
>- medical procedures on the planet: the injection of cells from
>aborted foetuses into the brains and spines of the sick. And the
>object of their faith is a Chinese surgeon who spent many of his
>university years labouring as a peasant and is now conducting
>trial-and-error experiments on live subjects despite his research
>being rejected by the western medical establishment.
>Dr Huang Hongyun promises nothing. He claims no miracle cure. He
>admits he cannot fully explain his results. All he knows, and all he
>tells his patients, is that his method often works, that the results
>speak for themselves.
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1363260,00.html
>Video coverage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianfilms/china
>_______________________________________________
>  
>
You missed the most interesting bit:

"Among them is Van Golden,
a Christian, anti-abortion Texan who has sold his house so that he can
travel to communist, atheist China and have Huang inject a million
cells from the nasal area of a foetus into his spine. According to
Golden's doctors, his spine was damaged beyond repair in a car crash
last Christmas. The damage to his nervous system was so bad that he has
been in a wheelchair and racked by spasms ever since. But Golden
refused to give up, even if it meant having to compromise his values.
"This is the only place that offered us any hope," he says. "Everyone
else offered only to help make me sufficient in that chair. But the
chair is not my destiny. It is not ordained.""

Even hardcore opposition crumbles when the "what's in it for me" factor is big enough.

-- 
Dirk

The Consensus:-
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