India's Medical Schizophrenia

I still don't understand medicine in India. One day I can be investigating illegal clinical trials that spawn mutant children and the next I will be profiling a top-notch hospital that attracts American patients. A week after that I'm uncovering gangs of kidney thieves that steal thousands of organs from poor people and a little while later I'm discussing revolutionary new stem cell treatments that seem to be years ahead of the United States. Welcome to my life of juxtapositions. Today I'm interviewing a man who was paralyzed from a broken spine and is now able to talk again with a first-of-its-kind stem cell treatment. Real the bodyhack post below.

A paralyzed man with a broken spinal cord can walk again after a revolutionary spinal cord treatment implanted his own stem cells into the injury and sparking a recovery. The patient had broken his spine while working on a construction site in Abu Dhabi and had been paralyzed from the waist down. The treatment was deceptively simple. A joint team with Lifeline and Nichi Center for Reproductive Medicine isolated stem cells from the man's bone marrow with a cooled centrifuge and introduced the fluid into his spinal cord.

It is still too early to know if this treatment is one of a kind or could be transformed into a regular treatment for spinal cord injuries.

Doctors from Lifeline Hospital have had a recent string of success with clinical applications of stem cells, including a major breakthrough I reported for Wired News involving a successful treatment of a diabetic ulcer in November.

I have been in touch with the doctor's at lifeline for more than a week and will have updates on this case soon. For more information check out the story in the Hindu. [link]

As for what I'm up to tomorrow. I shudder to think of what I'm going to find behind the city's morgue . . .