Injecting autologous stem cells directly into the heart of patients with chronic heart failure appears to revers the disease according to a study published by Bodo-Eckehard Strauer, of Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Injecting stem cells into the heart improve ventricular performance, quality of life, and survival, according to an open-label, nonrandomized study. Stem cell therapy had an almost immediate effect with reversing chronic heart failure as early as three months after administration. The benefits continued to appear up to five years later when patients were seen through follow up. Patients who, however, continued on the traditional pharmaceutical approach continued to deteriorate over the same five year followup period.

There were no negative side effects to the stem cell therapy. There are always negative side effects to pharmaceutical drugs.

This news comes at a time when the FDA is trying to position itself to "regulate" and control stem cell therapy like its a drug. Most stem cell therapies extract the host cells from the patient who will be receiving the therapy. They then incubate and culture the stem cells to make them robust and ready for deployment. Then they are injected back into the patient. The FDA would like to treat your own stem cells, harvested from your own body, like a drug.

Embryonic stem cells are no longer needed. Breakthroughs in harvesting autologous stems cells from skin tissue and bone marrow have been made successful. In fact the stem cells used to reverse chronic heart failure in the study came from the patients own bone marrow. There is no reason for eh FDA to stand in the way of legitimate doctors performing stem cell therapies here in the USA... but they will try.

Ask yourself why? If stem cell therapy is only 10% as effective as many of us believe it can be... who will suffer? Big Pharma. So who is the FDA really protecting? The question is rhetorical.