this week in sickle cell news April 19th to the 26th

By Sean Marshall

The National Post reported this week that British Doctors cure children of deadly inherited disorders using stem cells. It was stated that doctors in Britain have cured inherited blood disorders in children using “ground breaking stem cell treatments. That heralds a new dawn for genetic therapies.”

The reason this is coming to light now is because according to the article patients with “severe and rare blood disorder Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome have been free of the disease for four years now.” Since this rare condition has been successfully treated it opens up new possibilities for the treatment of

other more common blood disorders. The article even mentions that people with sickle cell anaemia could be the next group to be treated.

The complete article can be found here: http://news.nationalpost.com/health/stem-cell-treatment-

wiskott-aldrich-syndrome-748293

Medical Marijuana made it into sickle cell news this week. A one hour special on CNN on WEED 3 debuted and Trauma neurosurgeon Dr. San Jay Gupta brought up the benefits it can have on those suffering from sickle cell disease. For those who missed the special WEED 3 is “the use of medical cannabis to treat PTSD, lessen the epidemic of painkiller overdoses in the U.S., treat Alzheimer’s and manage the pain of sickle cell disease.” For those how are unfamiliar Dr. Gupta is CNN's chief medical correspondent and is most noted for changing his mind in August 2013 on his stance for medical marijuana use for treating illnesses linked to chronic pain.

This was a historic moment because the medical benefits of cannabis are being exposed as an alternative way of helping those suffering from sickle cell anemia. The article sated it was a “historic moment in medical cannabis’ history to have such a major platform air footage of the kinds of stories that for too long only appear in the dry papers of medical journals.” These highlights were all covered by smellthetruth.com a website generally focused on the positive effects of marijuana.

The original unabridged version can be found here: http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2015/04/21/the-science-behind-sanjay-guptas-weed-3/

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