Baby Teeth Are A Source Of Stem Cells

Makarand writes "A pediatric dentist at the National Institutes of Health has found that baby teeth can be a rich source of stem cells. Just like the stem cells found in embryos from which all organs arise, the stem cells in baby teeth could be encouraged to grow into nerve cells, fat cells and the precursors to tooth cells. This alternative approach to harvesting stem cells from baby teeth could help researchers to bypass the moral debate over using embryonic stem cells for research."

Comments

No

[falsification]

This alternative approach to harvesting stem cells from baby teeth could help researchers to bypass the moral debate over using embryonic stem cells for research.

Not quite. If this turns out to be the case, it will mean that those of us against embryonic stem cell research, where the embryonic stem cells come from a fetus destroyed for this purpose, will have a new, even more devatstating argument.

Re:No

[rothic]

This alternative approach to harvesting stem cells from baby teeth could help researchers to bypass the moral debate over using embryonic stem cells for research.
Not quite. If this turns out to be the case, it will mean that those of us against embryonic stem cell research, where the embryonic stem cells come from a fetus destroyed for this purpose, will have a new, even more devatstating argument.
Devastating argument against what? The original post was regarding the ability of scientific researchers to take stem cells from sources other than embryos...and in doing so, they themselves can bypass the debate on such practices. It had nothing to do with whether or not people were still capable of disagreement on embryonic research.

Re:Stem Cell Uses and Origions

[Dr. Manhattan]

Life does begin at conception...

Personally, I have a hard time thinking of something without a brain as a human being. An anencephalic baby, for example, seems like a failed attempt at a human. So, a blastula, whether implanted or not, even in the early stages of differentiation, can't be a person, even if it's composed of human tissue.

Before the brain is formed (~30 days), I don't really have a problem with abortion. Regrettable, certainly, but it's not murder or anything like that.

I don't know what the minimum number of brain cells is needed to support sentience though, and I'm squeamish and conservative, so I'd say after about 30 days there has to be a risk to the life of the mother to justify abortion. (You can't force someone to risk their life to save another.) In the case of rape, I think the woman should start checking for pregnancy before 30 days. After that, there's at least a strong case to be made that there's another person to consider.

Re:Stem Cell Uses and Origions

[Mr. Slippery]

In Biology, I learned that one life cannot transform itself into something else.

Then your biology teachers were remarkable ignorant. All life is constantly transforming. Organisms grow and die, changing size and shape (sometimes radially - think catepillar to butterfly) along the way.

On the cellular level, single cells spilt in two. In some organisms two cells merge into one, or two cells swap DNA. Cells differentiate.

Everything changes. That's why today, life is more than a puddle of primordial uck.

The only difference between a blastula and an amoeba is that a blastula is actually a human, and then by definition a person.

It is not at all trivial to say that all humans are persons. Is a brain dead human still a person? Is a pre-verbal infant a person? A newborn? A severely retarded adult? The issue of what organisms should be accorded "person" status is a condsiderable debate.

Nor is it obvious that a blastula is a human - composed of human cells, yes, but so the drop of blood I washed down the sink after cutting myself shaving. Don't confuse "human" as an adjective (e.g., "human cells", "human blood") with human as a noun.

A blastula is human, but it is not a human. It certainly isn't a person under any reasonable definition I've encountered that excludes supernaturalism (appeals to "the presense of a soul" and the like).

Re:Use teeth instead of blood from the umbilical c

[gene_tailor]

Maybe! More research is needed to see how versatile the stem cells found in baby teeth are. So far the researchers found the cells from baby teeth can make several types of differentiated cells, but these cells may not be able to make all kinds of other cells (medical jargon: they may not be pluripotent) like embryonic stem cells.