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They're already working to get human clinical trials (bottom of the page) going on this. I'm strongly considering being a test subject for it if they can get a site set up near my area.

Considering how things are currently going in the US though, this could end up being the only chance many of us will have for getting this sort of treatment any time soon. Eventually, some self-righteous asshat is going to propose federal bans on this, forcing those of us suffering from this type of condition to either live with the problem as-is, or leave the country and pay for it out of pocket.

keyword: cardiomyocytes

videlicit:

http://www.geron.com/pressview.asp?id=744

and

http://www.geron.com/showpage.asp?code=prodsthr

keyword: cardiomyocytes

videlicit:

http://www.geron.com/pressview.asp?id=744

and

http://www.geron.com/showpage.asp?code=prodsthr

Yes, to some degree, Geron Corporation has.

The reovirus only kills 2/3 of cancers. There is a company which has invented an agent that attacks 100% of cancers (through telomerase). The company currently testing it is called Geron.

And by the way: They also work on the aging problem.

From the articles that I have read on this very suspect claim it hints that they used the same method as was used with Dolly. I did my Senior Thesis on Geron, the company that purchased the rights to the methode that cloned Dolly; therefore, I have a fare understanding of what is involved with Nuclear Transfer. Although I am not an expert and have never attempted the process in a lab, I have read enough to know that it is a terrible idea to try this on humans at this point.

There is a easy to understand FAQ on the Roslin Institute web site written by the people that actually cloned Dolly. Here are some interesting highlights:

Are clone embryos like IVF and normal pregnancies?
Not so far. The scientists at the Roslin Institute, who pioneered this work, have repeatedly found that the clone foetuses grow much larger than normal ones, and there is a much higher chance of the pregnancy failing, of stillbirth, or of forced Caesarean sections. Dolly was the one successful pregnancy of more than 277 embryos.

What do the experts think? "I think you are always going to run the risk of having aging DNA," says Professor Lord Robert Winston, an IVF pioneer. "I would hate to think of a child of mine being cloned because I think it would be very likely he would have an accelerated aging process." Dr Jamie Grifo, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at New York University, says: "Cloning is no better than any of the other treatments that are out there. A biological child is the husband's sperm, the wife's egg. A clone is not a biological child." Dr David Stevens, of the Christian Medical and Dental Society, asks: "Are we really willing to sacrifice hundreds of embryos - developing human beings - to make one baby who may suffer monstrous consequences?"

So, there are two very important points that must be stressed. The first is that there is a high percentage probability of genetic defect supported by further experiments. Think of the threat of genetic abnormalities in a fetus that managed to survive as much higher than if you had children with immediate family members.

The second is that each cell has an "age" that is determined by the number of times that a cell has divided. If you use DNA from adult cells that have divided many times, than all of the cells cloned from that DNA will be older. A cell can only dived around 50 times before it dies at which point you reach the Hayflick Limit. Although there are ways to prolong the life of cell lines similar to the way cancer spreads through a body, I doubt that this group of individuals thought of adding telomeres back to the end of the chromosomes that would be used to clone a human baby.

The University of Wisconsin provides us with a good example of how the Bayh-Dole Act is implemented. Early work by Dr. Thomson on non-human primates, such as Rhesus monkeys, was federally funded and therefore, the patent obtained on stem cells arising from this work is governed by this Act. In accordance with the law, the invention was disclosed to the NIH, a patent application was filed by the University, through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), and WARF licensed the technology to a small company (Geron). Because federal funds were used for this non-human primate work, the government has a non-exclusive, royalty-free right to use the patented cells by or on behalf of the government. This would allow the government laboratories and contractors the right to use the patented cells for further research. In addition, in handling this invention the University must ensure that the goals of the Bayh-Dole Act -- utilization, commercialization, and public availability -- are implemented.

THE PURPLE BOOK "contained the hardware schematics for the IBM PC as well as the code listings for the ROM BIOS," Dave Bradley, one of the machine's 12 original designers, later explained to me. "It contained just about everything you'd want to know if you were going to build a device that would plug into the IBM PC."

In the Purple Book, as Bradley said during the panel, "We told all the PC secrets."

IBM wasn't the first personal computer maker to spill its guts. Apple published the source code for its Apple II. Atari and Commodore also offered similarly extensive documentations. But for Big Blue, a company that built a dynasty on proprietary products, the Purple Book represented a break with tradition as almost as radical as Martin Luther's breach with the Holy Mother Church.

WHY DID IBM SO WILLINGLY bare the soul of its new machine? Bradley again: IBM wanted to "make it as simple as possible to design hardware and software that would work with the PC."

"We wanted the software and hardware industry to participate."

Participate they did. What's more, the Purple Book made the IBM PC easy to copy, and thus, in came the clones. The result: A de facto standard was born, and that standard made way for the widespread deployment and use of PCs. The rest, as they say, is history.

The historical significance is the parallel that exists between the Purple Book of yesterday and the open-source movement of today. The comparison isn't a perfect one. The Purple Book did not constitute a license for use; IBM retained intellectual property rights.

Whatever! The retaining of intellectual property rights is ther whole point. What they did is what everyone else who had attempted to put out a PC would have to do in that era. The subset of technicians working on these technologies was quite small- small enough that a collegial flow of information was necessary even to drum upo interest in one's hardware.

So what IBM was doing was trying to raise itself to a playing field which Apple and Commodore had already delineated; to break into a technological community which was already occupied with other hardwares, it had to disseminate technical information.

There is a parallel today; Geron, the company which licensed the technology to extract stem cells from blastocyst-stage embryos, dissseminated the technology, advice and support to institutions of learning, retains commercial rights to any salable products that come out of these laboratories - or even the precursors of those products.

Then and now, such a technique is to take advantage of an academic desire for learning, or a desire to help the sick, and commercialize its output.

There is really no choice for software developers in the Microsoft world, or for stem cell scientists outside the apron of federal approval, except to sell their first-born breakthroughs to loan sharks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; capitalist systems cannot sustain innovative energy or scientific responsibility.

Does anyone else have problems with the morality of

• the fact that one can hold patents on these sorts of things, including afaik, gene sequences?
• the fact that a for-profit corporations are holding patents on key scientific aspects of the biology of life?

Does anybody know of an 'open source' movement in fields other than CompSci? How do we go about starting one?

--
People who say "the best thing since sliced bread" have never lived without indoor plumbing.