Atchison’s story reveals provocative insights into one of the most closely watched medical experiments, including what some may see as an irony: that a treatment condemned on moral and religious grounds is viewed by the first person to pioneer the therapy, and his family, as part of God’s plan. “It wasn’t just luck, or chance,” said Atchison, who thinks, six months after the treatment, that he may be feeling the first signs that the cells are helping him. “It was meant to be.”
Atchison, whose Sept. 25 crash occurred while visiting home during his second semester at the University of South Alabama College of Nursing, had heard about embryonic stem cells’ potentially revolutionary power to morph into almost any tissue in the body, as well as their infamy because days-old embryos were destroyed to get them. “I didn’t know as much about it then as I know now. I did know that stem cells could be used to cure all kinds of things.”
Raised Baptist in a small town where the main road has more churches than fast-food restaurants, Atchison nonetheless has no moral qualms about launching the first U.S. government-sanctioned attempt to study a treatment using embryonic stem cells in people. The cells implanted into his spine were obtained from embryos being discarded at fertility clinics, he notes. “It’s not life. It’s not like they’re coming from an aborted fetus or anything like that. They were going to be thrown away,” he said. “Once they explained to me where the stem cells were coming from, once I learned that, I was okay with it.” Washington Post
Editor: He is woefully mistaken and his awe is misplaced.
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