In a heart attack, the blood supply to part of the heart is shut off by a clot in a clogged artery – causing scarring of the heart muscle, which reduces the ability of the heart to pump. The best that doctors have been able to do is to promptly open up the clogged artery and limit the damage with drugs. But one day, there may be a way to get that damaged heart to grow its own brand-new muscle tissue. How? By using the patient’s own cardiac stem cells. This week doctors in Los Angeles have given a heart attack patient an infusion of stem cells grown from his own heart muscle. It’s a first, as CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports. It was mid-May when 39-year-old Ken Milles was blindsided by a serious heart attack – and the doctor’s bad news. Milles said, ‘When he told me that there was permanent damage and that the duration of my life was reduced – that freaked me out.’ Especially since the construction company employee has a wife and two teen-aged boys. So he volunteered be one of 24 recent heart attack patients […]