People magazine reports that Ethan Zohn, the winner of Survivor: Africa who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in April and underwent unsuccessful chemotherapy in the summer, is now using his own stem cells in treatment in hope of eliminating the disease. Doctors will take his white and red blood cell count down to zero during a month-long daily radiation regiment and reintroduce his own stem cells to (they hope) rebuild his immune system. In his People vlog, Zohn explains that Fall is a good time to harvest stem cells:
“What happens is they take the blood out of this arm, it goes up through these tubes and over to that weird, Star Trek, 1950s console. Then it’s put back into my body through this arm.”
Proponents of unethical and destructive embryonic stem cell research often trot out patients who could theoretically be treated with ESCs. It is good for the pro-life side to have stories of their own to be told.
