DEVASTATING SIDE EFFECTS ACCOMPANY FETAL TISSUE TRANSPLANTS.(Brief Article)

As NRL News goes to press, a horrific report in the March 8 edition of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) rips to shreds the myth that brain tissue taken from aborted babies possesses almost magical powers to cure an assortment of neurological ailments, starting with Parkinson's.

Instead, not only are patients not improving, "in about 15 percent of patients, the cells apparently grew too well, churning out so much of a chemical that controls movement that the patients writhed and jerked uncontrollably," the New York Times reported. The Times and the Washington Post have been the loudest media cheerleaders for the simplistic notion that injecting fetal cells into selected areas of a patient's brain would somehow "cure" him.

Dr. Paul E. Greene described as "absolutely devastating" some of the uncontrollable movements suffered by patients.

"They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their wrists flex and distend," Greene told the Times. Moreover, "the patients writhe and twist, jerk their heads, fling their arms about," Gina Kolata reports in the newspaper's March 8 edition.

Greene said one man could no longer eat on his own, and requires a feeding tube.

"It was tragic, catastrophic," he said. "It's a real nightmare." Omniously he added, "And we can't selectively turn it off."

Other instances of transplants gone wrong included a situation where these bizarre disorders came and went randomly throughout the day. In response, Greene's position, at least for now, is unambiguous.