A medico from Florida claims that he has managed to “ cure ” 60 percent of his patients of sightlessness by injecting their eyes with stem cellular phone derived from the participants themselves . The treatment is not being conducted in a command clinical trial run , and the doctor involved is not affiliated to any university or government institution . Yet according to theBaltimore Sun , he claims to have doctor over 100 mass ’s pile .
While local doctors advised against it , one of the patients , Vanna Belton , went ahead with the controversial procedure anyway . Belton was name in 2009 with optic neuritis , a condition in which the optic heart fop and run to blindness , though no doctor could definitively say that this is what she suffer from . She ’d heard about shank cell treatment , and finally found Dr. Jeffrey Weiss in Margate , Florida . He has apparently performed stem turn cubicle treatment on 278 blind patients , despite not being part of a university or clinical test .
Belton reportedly paid Weiss $ 20,000 for the subprogram , in which she had os marrow from her hip removed , the stem cells pull , and then injected back into her oculus . While Belton says that she can see again , another doctorhas commentedsaying that she is still de jure blind , as she only go steady “ islands ” of vision among blind speckle . Either way , apparently that is enough for Belton , as she is prepared to undergo further treatment from Weiss .
With no command for the trials , it is impossible to say whether or not the patients would have improved anyway without the treatment , and with so many different cases of cecity – the campaign for which are wide varied – it is highly difficult to paint a picture a mechanism in which the stem cellular phone might have worked . Not only that , but thecase studyof Belton confront by Weiss and report in the Baltimore Sun raised further yield as doctors were never sure of what the precise cause for her blindness was in the first place , let alone whether or not it could be fix .
The estimate of using stem cellphone to treat blindness is not a radical whim . The London Project to Cure Blindnessstarted prescribed clinical trialslast year , in which they have treat 10 patient role ' eyes with a “ mend ” seeded with human embryonic base cells . The Bob Hope is that the cells will modernise and heal the patients ofage - related macular degeneration , and although the first trials have been on those who have the less common “ wet ” form of the condition , they trust it could also be used to treat “ teetotal ” macular degeneration . So far , one patient has apparently recovered some of her sight , though the researchers will be supervise all the participant for 18 month .