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Unlimited Blood Supply From Stem Cells
Dave writes: "The ABC has a story on some interesting stem cell research going on at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Seems that during their research, they were able to create red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets that were indistinguishable from the real thing."
As is, undifferentiated, naive embryonic stem cells don't have a therapeutic use; they're too dangerous. What this story means is that we've learned how to shunt them down toward a particular cell lineage. We have here the potential to treat a wide variety of diseases; diabetes, Parkinson's, heart disease or many other disorders. This is a fantastic breakthrough; the genuine Holy Grail of medical science.
I'd be more excited if they could do it from non-embryonic stem cells.
Think about stem cells this way, they're like organ donations. It's kind of sick, but the dead "person"* isn't using them anymore. We don't kill people to get kidneys, we don't kill people to get hearts, corneas, livers, or anything else. We just take the usable parts from the freshly dead.
It's probably disgusting, but it saves lives and otherwise the organs would be wasted. Stem cells are the same way, the research is going to save people who would otherwise die.
People do not have abortions or miscarriages to give science more research material. Get that? No one who would have lived is harmed. We don't kill unborn children for science. These are either cells grown expressly for that purpose or harvested from freshly dead.
* person is in quotes because dead things aren't people anymore.