Word: stem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...20th century medicine did little to increase the natural life-span of healthy humans. The next medical revolution will change that, because genetic engineering has the potential to conquer cancer, grow new blood vessels in the heart, block the growth of blood vessels in tumors, create new organs from stem cells and perhaps even reset the primeval genetic coding that causes cells...
...coined the term eugenics, from a Greek stem meaning "good in birth," was a cousin of Charles Darwin's. Englishman Francis Galton (1822-1911) had a substantial inheritance and a Victorian range of scientific curiosity. He dabbled in a number of fields, including geographical exploration, but his passion was mathematics, particularly the infant field of statistics...
...last thing you want is for your brain cells to start churning out stomach acid or your nose to turn into a kidney. The only time cells truly have the potential to turn into any and all body parts is very early in a pregnancy, when so-called stem cells haven't begun to specialize...
...this untapped potential could be a terrific boon to medicine. Most diseases involve the death of healthy cells--brain cells in Alzheimer's, cardiac cells in heart disease, pancreatic cells in diabetes, to name a few. If doctors could isolate stem cells, then direct their growth, they might be able to furnish patients with healthy replacement tissue...
Cord blood, which is painlessly harvested after birth, seems to be an ideal solution. The placenta is teeming with the all-important stem cells that can generate a new immune system. Even better, these cells are, as doctors put it, "naive," making them less likely to attack their new host. As a result, a cord-blood transplant doesn't have to match a recipient quite so closely as a bone-marrow transplant. This experimental treatment could prove especially helpful to African-American patients and other minorities whose greater genetic diversity often means they have trouble finding a good bone-marrow...