Is the transplantation of nueral tissue considered an The transplantation of human fetal neural tissue into the brains of humans suffering from progressive neurodegenerative disorders is one of the hottest arguments Fetal neural tissue is being usedas a possible treatment for some diseases. The treatmentand possible cure for many of these diseases falls upon thesuccessful transplantation of fetal neural tissue from thebrain, spinal chord and peripheral nervous system. Some ofthe possible beneficiaries of these transplants would bethose with Parkinson's disease, a common neurodegenerativedisorder of the nervous system. Fetal tissue transplantation involves injecting fetaltissue obtained through electively aborted fetuses intoanother human being. Because fetal tissue deemed mostappropriate and acceptable for transplantation is primarilyobtained from elective abortion procedures, many concernshave arisen in the public, political, and scientificcommunities. It is because of their unique characteristicsthat fetal cells are far more ideal for use in tissuetransplantation than tissue derived from an adult donor.Fetal tissue grows much faster than tissue obtained from anadult donor, a few fetal cells from a donor have thepotential of replacing a large number of host cells. Fetal tissue transplantation is a relatively newprocedure that has a rather large history behind it. Thefirst attempts to transplant human fetal tissue into patientstook place in the 1920's. The first major success usingfetal tissue to treat a medical condition was in the 1950'swhen a vaccine for polio was developed. There was relativelylittle public concern about the use of fetal tissue until thelate 1980's when the procedure of fetal tissuetransplantation became known.In 1988, researchers in New Mexico reported in TheNew England Journal of Medicine their results of human fetalneural tissue into the brains of patients suffering fromParkinson's disease. This case ...
