Stem Cell Treatment of Spinal Injuries Works in Rats-Human Trials Next

Science Daily has a report on using stem cells to heal spinal injuries in rats. Rats treated with stem cells recovered 97% of their walking ability while rats that were not treated has 38% of walking ability.

This study was apparently a necessary step prior to getting approval for human tests. This type of thinking is flawed as the differences between animal and human tests is sufficiently large as to have little predictive power-i.e. some things work in many animals and not in humans (example: thalidomide) while some things work in humans but not animals (example: aspirin).