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Stem Cells Derived from Human Clones
catbutt writes "Wired News reports that South Korean scientists have made a dramatic breakthrough by deriving stem cells from cloned embryos of patients with spinal cord injuries. It shouldn't be long before we can expect have a set of replacement parts ready when our own wear out." From the article: "Researchers must test the cells in animals before they can try the therapy in humans. But embryonic stem-cell researchers were shocked and delighted by the advance, which many had referred to as a distant possibility until they saw this study by Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues at Seoul National University, which appears in the May 20 issue of Science."
I remember the huge debates of the stem cell issues, how Bush was saying the existing stem cell lines would be enough.
Obviously, as it was pointed out multiple times, that just wasn't true. Of course, as was predicted, the places that do allow that sort of research will move in leaps and bounds ahead of the US in these fields.
Didn't think it would be quite that quick though..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Yeah, well, he can go fuck himself. My best friend will probably be dead within 20 years from acute diabetes. If this helps him get a new pancreas, I'm all for it.
So what if a woman needs stem cells to repair her spine. She uses her own DNA and her own eggs to produce stem cells.
How can a woman "concieve" all alone?
If it is still life, then why can't gay women get married under the church?
Heh! Sadly there are those who will indeed propose a hostile stance towards countries that push back the frontiers of cloning and stem cell research. So far all that the U.S. restrictions have done is ensure that the discoveries will be made elsewhere. I guess now if N Korea destroys S Korea, it'll be seen as divine retribution...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
And this somebody can go to hell. If we're gonna be a bunch of luddites in the US then technological innovation will lust continue elsewhere, probably with the involvement of all the American scientists who'll be frustrated or well-paid enough to move.
And as far as the whole "Axis of Evil" thing, we have too much economic and military interest in South Korea to safely piss them off.
You would know that the scientist uses UNFERTILIZED eggs and then removes the nucleus! The scientists then introduce the intended tissue type cell into the egg and shock it it, at which point the cells reproduce. This is akin to multiplying gut/skin/white cells in a cell culture laboratory - which NO religion/poltical groups have problems with.
Please read the article before comenting next time.
..........FULL STOP.
It sounds an awful lot like Blade Runner to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for advancing the health of the living, and I'm all for stem-cell research. But you have to admit, it's kinda freaky to be talking about putting expiration dates on what can conceivably be considered a "human" lifeform.
Another echo from the movie quote database in my head is from Jurassic Park, where Ian says something like, "You were so concerned about whether you could, you never stopped to think about whether you should."
Like I said, I'm all for stem-cell research, and I recognize that cloning is a natural progression, but that doesn't mean there aren't some tough ethical questions to address.
--- -a- "I'd love to change the world, but it'd be easier if the universe exposed its API."
It's not that simple.
If you have Organization A -- say, a university -- which does LOTS of things other than stem cell research. If they do that kind of research without using the cells that W approves, then they lose federal funding for the WHOLE UNIVERSITY. Not just the Stem Cell Dept.
So, yeah, it is a showstopper for many places.
But hey, I'm sure the US won't mind outsourcing it's health care to Asia in the future.
WHY NOT dump embryo research and head towards alternatives?
Because it is a promising and helpful line of research. I mean if you want to stop other people from researching something, I think the onus is on you to provide a scientific and proven reason why they should do it. Otherwise it is just your unscientific opinion against theirs and there is no reason to give your opinion about what someone else is doing more weight than their own.
But don't ask people who are firmly opposed to such research to help pay for it.
Why not? People who are firmly opposed to the war in Iraq have to pay for it. Do you think we have the luxury of only using our tax money for things we personally approve? There's quite a long list throughout history that shows that people are usually taxed to support things they may or may not support.
Interesting.
So what you are saying is that we can now breed 47 generations of people without having to actually go to the trouble of actually growing the people. Just reproduce the gametes and you can have sexual reproduction.
In theory you could do experiments on people that previously were only practical on rats/bacteria (which have shorter generation times).
How's that for an ethics nightmare?
Spiritually, I can almost see a "mother goddess" story thing here.. with a good (O?) blood type, she could be organ donor to thousands... Here is woman, from whom your entire body can be reborn. kinda mystical.
meh
How is it that such an ordinarily enlightened group of people that gather here, can become JUST LIKE the fundamentalists they hate when presented with a hot-button issue.
Why can't we evaluate the moral and ethical implications of this? Why is anyone who attempts to do so instantly labeled a "luddite" or someone who tries to fight progress. Surely we are not so quickly reduced to ad-hominem attacks. Surely there are reasoned explanations?
In short, what is wrong with looking before we leap? I think we all agree that a lot of disturbing science fiction revolves around scientists who should have stepped back and wondered: "Should I really be doing this?"
I'm sick of hearing that the US has a 'ban' on stem cell research. There is no ban! The bill signed into law placed a limit on funding of stem cell research. Scientists are perfectly free to pursue research all they want, so long as they pay for it with non governmental money. Stop claming that the goverment has made it illegal to engage in stem cell research. It's just not the case.
My blog
so what's the difference between getting some kid's organs and killing an embryo to harvest them?
Do you mean the organs of a child who has died in an accident? Nothing wrong there - you'd expect most parents to be proud that their kid's brief life might at least have continued to flourish in some indirect way.
Or do you mean, killing kids to get their organs? I'll be looking forward to your pointing that one out in the news when the time comes.
But killing an embryo? OK, so you've got a handful of cells dividing, at least for a little while, anyway, in a petri dish. No mom, no pregnancy, and no way they would ever amount to anything - let alone a person - without continual intervention from science, which is still beyond us anyway. So, that group of cells, completely unviable as they sit there, and without any means by which to be differentiated from a similarly complex group of paramecium (which is to say, there is no there there yet, no framework on which to hang the concept of person-hood - merely the eventual potential, which could also be said of the reproductive organs of a man and a women eyeing each other over a beer), what's wrong with using them to save lives? To shoot for getting the paralyzed to walk again? For that kid nearly does die in an accident to breath again off a respirator?
just to improve the quality of an old one - that possibly won't last much longer?
So, the son of a friend just had his spine severed in a road accident. He's done from the waist down, now. He's 22. Might as well write him off, huh? After all, he's so old, he's pretty much close to dead. Those dozen cells in the petri dish, though - set them next to his hospital bed, and they'll thrive! Why, they'll be a smiling, bubbly little baby in just a matter of months! No? No.
Whether you eat plants or meat or both, you kill billions of cells every day to improve the quality of your life. You eat them to survive, remember? There's as much of a human being in a dozen cells as there is in a stalk of asparagus. But if I could produce eggs (that would otherwise go to waste) that could be used to help restore my friend's son's mobility to him, I'd do it in a heartbeat. And, any dozen cells that divide along the way won't have it in them, under the circumstances (lacking, as they do, any sort of nervous system as a platform to have anything), to really weigh in on it. That's not an "all-new human life," it's a dozen cells. But a 22-year-old able to walk again: that would be an all-new human life. When we've made it that far, bio-tech-wise, and your child is lying there with a broken back, pretty much guaranteed never to have children as a result, would you begrudge her the same? Or, does God prefer a dozen unviable cells in a dish over paralyzed people or new mothers with degenerative neural diseases that will rob their children of a normal life? Getting that mom healthy is for her young children, though you're not set up to see that larger picture, it seems.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
so what's the difference between getting some kid's organs and killing an embryo to harvest them? Also, doesn't it sound a little ackward to dispose an all-new human life just to improve the quality of an old one - that possibly won't last much longer? A very sick person will last a lot longer then an embryo in a petri dish.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But would the time necessary to carry out this process--from cloning the embryo to harvesting stem cells to growing the organ--negate the benefit for many people?
From a substantial body of experience, we know that we can go from stem cells to working organs in nine months. (Less, really, with lungs generally taking the longest.) That's not enough in some cases, but average wait for a donated kidney currently is ~1000 days, so that's a huge reduction.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
First: At what point does a jumble of cells become life?
At this point, the defiinition in the U.S. legal system is at 27 weeks. When all the major organs have formed, and life and growth are possible outside the womb.
Second: Does stopping a potential life mean the same thing as killing?
You have to watch that one, because contreceptives are suddenly a no-no. As is taking a vow of celebacy.
Third: How is growing a cloned fetus of yourself any different than growing a culture of any other cells?
If there was an easy answer, we would have found it.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Well, I cannot for the life of me remember the date of the publication. But in the last year Science News has reported on a group of scientists that were able to coax adult stem cells to undergo meitic division. That would mean that from a few cells extracted from ones bones, one could produce eggs. True marrow extraction is painful as hell, but you do get much more cells for the process.
There would be the added benifit of those cells having the same mitocondria (though I don't believe that has ever been an issue, but by definition that would mean the cells are "true" clones)
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Sure life starts at conception. All the cells in a person's body are alive, including egg and sperm cells. That doesn't make the fertilized egg cell a person. Whether something can be labeled a 'person' or not has more to do with its mental abilities, if it has any. Whether they have, or have the capacity for, intelligence, self-awareness, and abstract thought.
We destroy 'life' all the time. Everything we eat was alive at one point, regardless of whether you are a vegitarian or not. The fact that something has DNA similar to ours does not make it 'sacred'.
To anticipate the obvious troll response, someone who is asleep or in a coma, might not be self-aware, but they have the capacity for it. And no, Terri Schiavo was not in a coma. Huge peices of her brain had been liquified. She no longer had the capacity for self-awareness.
Yes, by the way. If we ever create a computer that has these qualities, then I would consider it a person.
Technoli
Sadly, natural selection only works if the "darwin award qualified" individual removes itself form the gene pool prior to procreation. The sad fact is, those most likely to procreate at the most prolific rate will be those most likely to believe stem cell research is a tool of satan.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
"I oppose destruction of embryoes"
Do you realize that embroyoes are destroyed during fertility treatments? When a couple is trying to conceive they fertilize many eggs and destroy all but one.
What you probably meant was that you are against destroying embroyes for scientific research purposes, you are most likely perfecty OK with destroying them as long as somebody is trying to have a baby.
evil is as evil does
I suggest you open your eyes and look around. Getting your perspective on religion from Slashdot is like asking the KKK for information on blacks.
Do you see any difference between somebody intentionally destroying an embryo and an event in nature resulting in that destruction?
Do you see any difference between me shooting a person and between a person dying in a hurricane?
I guess you'd say I'm "against hurricanes," but it'd be senseless to pass a law against them. In the same way your question doesn't prove anything to me. We pass laws against people killing people, and accept that we can't save every life.
I believe that an embryo is a human being and I accept all conclusions that follow from that fact.
And I do not believe that we can legislate that an embryo is not a human being simply because some people disagree than we can legislate that a black person is not a human being simply because some people believed so in the 1800's.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Here's a little lesson for you guys:
1. You claim God is all-powerful. Then he doesn't need your help, does he?
2. You claim God is unknowable. If you then claim that you know what God would want, or that something is God's will, you are a fucking moron.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
"Fundemental" is a word that does not need a definition to anybody familiar with science. "Fundemental research" refers to research that deals with abstract problems with huge, long-term payoffs, as opposed to research that deals with concrete problems with limited, short-term payoffs.
Hell, most people in drug research will tell you that corporate drug research is not fundemental. Heck, fundemental research isn't even profitable. You think the cure for cancer is going to come out of a corporation? Don't bet on it --- it would cost them an enormous amount of money, and there would be no way they could profit from it. Not enough people have cancer to let them charge a low price for the resulting drug, and there is no way they'd get away with charging the $100,000 per dose they'd need to break even...
You think drug research has given us a longer lifespan? You think most people need drugs at some point in their life? Hah! You know what has given us a longer lifespan? Government agricultural and health planning, government supported healthcare, government-dictated sanitation regulations, government sponsored disease control, etc.
Its just a product of the numbers. Not many people have AIDS or cancer. Lots of people drink water. For every person that lives 10 years longer because of some new AIDS drug, there are a thousand kids that don't die at age 10 because of vaccination programs. Which one do you think has a bigger impact on the average life expectancy?
Also, don't conflate 'drug research' with 'medical research'. Medical research has given us enormous advancements, but medical research is also funded in large part either directly by the government (eg: NIH grants), or indirectly by the government (eg: hospitals, who get a lot of money from medicare).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Nor am I. I'm still under the conviction that adult stem cells can be harvested without the use of embryos. We just need more research in that area.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
If you were right the USSR would have beaten us in the arms race. The USSR took your position that the research should be done by the government. They didn't beat us because our private companies (like lockheed) outperformed their lame attempts at development and production.
They were generally better at "fundamental", groundbreaking research, at trying to solve problems that had never been solved before. They thus got the first satellite into space, the first humann into space, and the first space station into space. This is the area where government-funded research excells, at the initial high risk gamble to create something that may or may not work. Once the groundbreaking is done, however, corporations are much more efficient at incremental and evolutionary improvement. The USSR tried to continue their space programme through the same strict government planning and production with which they had started it, and immediately fell behind. Once the initial concepts had been proven, the USA gave the contracts for improving its programme to corporations, which were able to work much more efficiently.
And for every government funded research success that you mention, billions of dollars were wasted supporting untold numbers of spectacularly failed projects.
This is necessary, and is exactly why corporations are bad at fundamental research. There is no way of knowing which projects are possible and which aren't until you try. This is too big a risk for any corporation to take, so nobody does. It is necessary for the government to take this risk in order to find which ideas are viable so that private corporations can then build on and improve these ideas.
See NASA and the nationalized space industry. Woopee, we got velcro.
And communication satellites.
The scientist, in his act of forming the embryo with no intention of fostering its development has taken responsibility for the viability of the life. His very action is the killing of the embryo.
No, the scientist is creating a small group of cells, using material from the person that he intends to help, and with no intention or expectation that those small cells will or could form a viable embryo. You can call it an embryo if you want, but it only has life in the sense that any small group of cells has life. There is no nervous system, there is no means by which those cells can respirate, and certainly no means by which they can be invested with any of the qualities we assign to a more fully formed organism (let alone a person). The scientist isn't suddenly confronted with a "life", he's just looking at the cells he put together specifically to accomplish the theraputic task that is his goal. You make it sound like he's looking at a fetus, which, of course, we're not talking about. When he uses those cells to theraputic effect in his patient, he is, of course, sending some of them off to live and reproduce as part of the therapy. Those that he doesn't need aren't preserved any more than you preserve all of the cells that make up your arm when you scratch an itch (the act of which "kills" hundreds or thousands of your cells).
Okay so life as you understand it is defined by the number of cells that make up any being.
You won't be any more credible or pursuasive by putting words in someone else's mouth. I didn't say that, and you know it. This issue is about whether or not a dozen or two cells provide an adequate source of stem cells. One thing we don't have to worry about is whether or not those same dozen or two cells are a person, because they simply are not. If all goes well in a scenario supportive of gestation, those cells can wind up, millions of divisions later, being the start of a fetus. Until then, you've got undifferentiated cells (which is why they have so much theraputic promise) and no structure that could conceivably be referred to as a fetus, let alone a "baby" or "unborn person."
So according to your logic gorrilas are more alive than humans are
No, that's according to your twisted rhetorical version of what I'm saying. Just because it would serve your point of view to somehow "catch" me saying that, I didn't say that, nor can you infer that (with any intellectual honesty) from what I said. Gorilla embryos, at the dozen-or-two-cells level, are virtually indistinguishable from ours. But in any way that matters, so are chickens and toads. The meaningful differences between us and gorillas (which are slim indeed, as an expressed percentage of their DNA) don't really manifest themselves until farther along in development. That species evolved along a different path, and found (until pretty recently) a succesful niche that didn't require quite the IQ or communications skills that man did. They stayed in the jungle, while we spread out into the steppes and savannah, where better upright mobility and keener group predation made for better survival. Either way, both the gorilla and the human are fantastically complex by the time gestation is complete - but then, so is a mouse, just not as much so, on the neurological front.
Your understanding of the ethical implications of embryonic research is hinged on number of cells and viability. So according to your theory, my friend who was born very prematurely was technically not alive while being cared for in an incubator.
Again, you're pretending, because you think it helps your case, that I've said something that I did not. Because you find it important to see a "person" in a dozen cells, you can't imagine (even if it's shown to you, which surely it has been, if you've managed to get through junior high school) any middle ground between the first few divisions of the cells of an embryo, and the extremely complex structures of a several month old fetus. It's not like the
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.