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Carte Blanche Medical (21 June, 2010):
What is a stem cell?The use of embryonic stem cells has caused heated debate for years. Moral objections aside, there’s the biological problem of one person’s stem cells being rejected when transplanted into someone else.
But could adult stem cells - which come from most tissues and organs - be taken from one’s own body and returned to the embryonic state to be used to treat chronic disease?
In 2006, a Japanese researcher turned the world of stem cell science on its head by announcing to his astonished peers that he had found a way to do just that - with ordinary adult mouse cells.
What are stem cells and do they have the potential to deliver the health benefits long promised?
Producer: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Locked-in SyndromeWhen Dr Cival Mills crossed the finish line of a four-day ride on a quad bike, there wasn’t a dry eye in sight. He shouldn’t even have been alive - let alone be first to finish a 500km long off-road trip.
10 years ago, a car accident and a resulting stroke left him with Locked-In Syndrome - a condition in which people are fully conscious, but literally trapped in their own bodies, unable to move any muscles, except the eyelids.
Carte Blanche first met him when he was undergoing stem cell treatment in Germany in 2006. Now, able to move his head and two fingers on one hand, Cival is an author, motivational speaker and has astonished all by his refusal to give up.
Presenter: Bongani Bingwa
Producer: Eugene Botha
Carte Blanche Medical is on M-Net on Mondays at 19h00.