Stem cells repair spinal cord injury

The good news is in the title of the article, "Human neural stem cells differentiate and promote locomotor recovery in spinal cord-injured mice," available in full and for free from the Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The bad news is that the stem cells used in these experiments were derived from fetal tissues.

Hopefully, the lessons learned will enable the recruitment of stem cells from the patient's own body in the future, so that no harvesting, in vitro manipulation and injection of stem cells at the area of injury will be necessary.

The fetal tissues are presumably from aborted fetuses. There is a (very narrow) distinction between the ethics of utilizing the information and treatments which depend on fetal tissues and those depending on embryonic stem cells. The unborn children in the first place were not created for the purpose of killing and weren't killed for the purpose of obtaining medical materiel. In the second, the nascent humans were either created specifically with the intention of destroying them for their body parts or they were abandoned by their parents who began them in an attempt to have a child. The embryos were purposefully destroyed for their utility as "spare parts."