A South Korean woman – paralyzed for 20 years – is reportedly walking again, thanks to treatment with stem cells harvested from umbilical-cord blood.
Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, walked for the first time last week, Agence France Presse said yesterday.
She shuffled several steps using a walker.
“This is already a miracle for me,” she said. “I never dreamed of getting to my feet again.”
Her doctors hailed the breakthrough as a major advance in realizing the promise of stem cells.
Research on stem cells, which are typically harvested from embryos, is highly controversial in the United States. President Bush has forbidden the use of federal money to create new stem cell lines.
Umbilical stem cells could sidestep the ethical question, but they are less useful because they can develop into only a few types of different cells.