This achievement was made by Dr. Ira Black, who is financed in part by my foundation. His laboratory is at the University of New Jersey Medical School, and in a recent conversation, he told me that he would be working on large numbers of rats and mice and then probably pigs before moving into humans. And yet the beauty of his breakthrough is that it uses stem cells that are from within the patient's own body, and therefore there will be no problem with immune rejection or toxicity or tumors. And of course, there are adult stem cells taken from the bone marrow, which have already been approved for use in treating bone marrow cancer in humans. So approval for their use in spinal cord injuries as well as other diseases of the brain and central nervous system should come very rapidly.
Stem cells are cells that are capable of becoming any tissue in the human body.
They have no particular identity. They are called the body's self-repair kit because they are able to perform so many different functions. But in order to create a new heart or to create a nerve to replace the ones damaged in spinal cord injuries, you need cells that have no identity. These cells are able, just by being genetically engineered and placed in a specific environment, to adapt to that environment and to become whatever is necessary. Al Gore has advocated policies, such as price controls, that would devastate the research-based pharmaceutical and medical device industries.