Boy Wonder
Photograph by Max Aguilera-Hellweg, M.D.

A bone-marrow transplant performed in Paris by physician Francoise Bernaudin cured nine-year-old Anthony Pululu of sickle-cell anemia. The treatment is actually a decades-old stem cell therapy in which a sick patient's immune and blood systems are wiped out and replaced with healthy marrow stem cells that repopulate the body. It's one of a growing number of promising therapies using so-called adult stem cells—as opposed to the more controversial embryonic stem cells.