While American authorities have diverged over the proper tack to
take on stem-cell research, Israeli scientists this week
announced a pair of stunning advances in the field. On Sunday, a
team from Hadassah University Medical Center went public with
what they say is the first study in which rats with Parkinson’s
disease experienced improvement after the use of human embryonic
stem-cell technology. The results were published in the journal
Stem Cells. A day later, at a conference in San Diego, a small
Israeli company called Gamida-Cell announced results of what
appears to be the first successful human clinical test of a
commercial product derived from stem cells. Ten patients with
late-stage leukemia went through treatment with StemEx, and five
of them confounded expectations by living past the first 100
days. Both Israeli advances suggest some of the extended global
ramifications of President Bush’s 2001 decision to cut off
federal funding for research on stem cells harvested from human
embryos. Israel is amon