Saturday, December 15, 2007

Sickle Cell Cure on the Horizon?

Wassup, Y'all!

There's a pretty encouraging Washington Post article that showed up in Ol Ty's mailbox the other day. We've all heard the ruckus going on in D.C. related to embryonic stem cells (if you haven't, stand in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic for about ten minutes and wait to get hit by a brick...). Since there's been so much moralistic pressure against using embryonic stem cells despite the amazing promise stem cells hold for curing a laundry list of illnesses, scientist have been trying an end run around this by developing viable stem cells from other sources...

According to the article, a recent technique for turning mouse skin cells into stem cells has shown real promise. Though this news is big, the bigger news is that once these stem cells were reintroduced into their mice donors, each sick with sickle cell anemia, the mice were cured. Of course there's always a long path between here and there, but this has be considered welcomed news to the southside community, the community predominantly effected by this chronic and lifelong affliction.

Two snaps up to our biologically inclined homeys who decided way back in high school that biology would actually be a pretty cool profession. This is just why you little homeys need to stay in school and forget about that thug life ruckus.


Peace@Least,

Tyrone

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