The little ray of hope that flew out of the Pandora's box of 2008

http://www.marionstar.com/article/20081231/OPINION02/812310303

December 31, 2008

Every year around this time the Associated Press conducts a poll of editors and news directors from across the nation who vote on the biggest, most important stories of the year. The AP releases the Top Ten rankings in late December.

Not surprisingly, the top story from this year was the presidential election. Not only was the outcome historic, the entire process - from a long, grueling primary to a hard-fought general election - dominated the news cycle for nearly the entire year.

Close on the heels of that top story was, as the AP referred to it, the "economic meltdown." In some ways, that story surpassed even the presidential election in the final months of the year.

The number three story was the fluctuating price of crude oil, which went from a high of $150-a-barrel in July before plunging below $35 a barrel by year's end. The price at the pump followed this roller coaster ride, going from over $4 a gallon in mid-summer to under $1.60 by late December.


The "surge" of troops in Iraq came in at number four on the Top Ten. Ironically, the success of the surge seems to have diminished its newsworthiness.

The fifth and sixth top stories involved China. For the first time ever, China hosted the Olympics, and the summer games in Beijing were deemed a success. The other China story was much grimmer: the huge earthquake in Sichuan province in May that killed more than 70,000 and left 5 million people without homes.

Sarah Palin's story - from being virtually unknown outside of Alaska, to becoming a household name after John McCain picked her as his running mate - was voted the seventh top news item of 2008.

The terrorist attack in the city of Mumbai, in which 164 people were killed, came in at number eight on the list. Given the heightened tension that the attack caused between India and Pakistan - never terribly friendly to begin with - it's likely this story isn't over yet.

The number nine story was Hillary Clinton's run for office. She didn't win, but she came closer than any woman ever did to capturing a major party's presidential nomination.

And rounding out the Top Ten was the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia. Because the five-day war occurred during the Beijing Olympics, it probably didn't get the coverage it would have otherwise received.

Rather incredibly, the story of Cyclone Nargis, the tropical storm that hit Burma, did not crack the Top Ten. More than 84,000 people were killed in that disaster. The death tolls from the Burmese cyclone and the Chinese earthquake are just mind-boggling. For those stories not to be the top two of the year probably says something about how insular we are in our view of the world.

But there was one story - from the world of medical science - that didn't even gain honorable mention. It appeared, largely unnoticed, one day in November, and then nothing more was really said about it.

The story involved a woman named Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old mother of two from Barcelona, Spain. Castillo's windpipe was badly damaged by long-term tuberculosis. Her left lung had collapsed and she faced the possibility of having the lung removed, a dangerous option that would have severely restricted her quality of life.

But then her doctors decided upon a different, pioneering approach to Claudia's problem: they grew a new windpipe using stem cells. The entire procedure, which included doctors working in three different countries - Spain, Italy and England - was almost too fantastic to believe.

First, the doctors got a windpipe from an organ donor. That windpipe was used as a kind of scaffold upon which the stem cells would be placed and where they would be manipulated to grow a new windpipe.

Of course, stem cell research has been a hot-button political topic for years because much of it has involved the use of embryonic stem cell tissue, which is typically derived from aborted fetuses. But in this procedure, doctors used adult stem cells to grow the new windpipe.

And here's the best part: the stem cells weren't just from any adult; they were from Claudia's own body. The doctors in England took a sample of Claudia's bone marrow from her hip, and after millions of cells had been produced, injected various chemicals to induce the cells to turn into highly specialized cells that would create the new windpipe grown on the scaffolding provided by the donated one.

All of which is very good news, and not just because it avoids the ethical and moral implications that accompany embryonic stem cells. The truly great benefit here is that the new windpipe in Claudia's throat contains her own DNA because it was constructed using her own stem cells. Thus, rejection by the body isn't an issue as it is in typical organ transplants.

By the time her story was published, in mid-November, Claudia was already home and, in her own words, "enjoying life and ... very happy that my illness has been cured."

While the early results are encouraging, the doctors and scientists involved cautioned that this is only a halting first step. But it's a promising step, and some of the doctors voiced real optimism, saying that this technique might even be adapted to other organs. And another said that while it's still years away, one day we may be able to produce organs in the laboratory using a patient's own stem cells, without the need of donor organs to use as templates.

So, as it stands, really significant advancement in growing new organs from stem cells that could cure many of our diseases is still well in the future, if it happens at all. But if does happen, this story - which was barely noticed amidst the political turmoil, economic upheaval and deadly natural disasters of 2008 - may end up being like the little ray of hope that flew out of the Pandora's box of 2008.

Happy New Year everyone.

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