Neural Stem Cell Transplant

Controversy about the ethics of stem cell research has hindered its research for the past 8 years. I was initially concerned by the headline I noticed published by Scientific American that read, "Fetal Stem Cells Cause Tumor in a Teenage Boy." According to the article the nine-year old suffers from ataxia-telangiectasia, a childhood disease that causes degeneration of parts of the brain that control muscle movements and speech. As a result his parents sought treatment in Moscow where he received multiple injections of fetal stem cells in his brain.

I did some further investigating and found a study published by the Public Library of Sciences. The study was entitled "Donor-Derived Brain Tumor Following Neural Stem Cell Transplantation in an Ataxia Telangiectasia Patient." It does say that "this is the first report of a human brain tumor developing from transplanted neural stem cells." So to conclude that stem cells can cause brain tumors is a part-to-whole fallacy or a composition fallacy. It's fallacious to assume that this one case is representative of the whole of all patients whom could benefit from this procedure.

The study states that the patient was treated with two or more donors. They concluded that the tumor in the spinal cord was donor-cell derived, although the tumor in the patient's brain has not been examined yet. The researchers suggested that the multiple masses, which were benign, probably arose independently from transplanted cells.

Furthermore, it is important to note that people with ataxia-telangiectasia often have an impaired immune system. This would make them more susceptible to complications like brain tumors because a healthy immune system would normally help reject tumor cells. It is upsetting that this incident occurred but it is very important to note that this is the first example of a donor-derived brain tumor developing from fetal neural cell transplantation. Further research is required before any causal arguments are justified.