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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."
Sure, it'd be nice (in theory) to be able to clone a nice new kidney for someone whose kidneys were failing. 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? For a kidney, a person can go on dialysis (not a piece of cake, but better than dying I suppose!), and we do have artificial hearts that can help some heart disease, but I'm sure there would be other cases where the patient might die before his or her "new organ" was ready. Is there a way to speed the process, I wonder, as well as make it more "efficient"?
Right, but many women put these eggs into storage just in case they want a baby in the future but are too old. There are millions of eggs in freezers already that will never be used. Instead of throwing them in the trash, maybe they could be used for one of the most important advances in human history. Just a thought.
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(My subject is sarcastcic.)
This is a good example of how really vital research is happening in other parts of the world, and we're off on the sidelines. Our kids will be able to explain how evolution is wrong, and creatiomism explains everything. Their kids will be able to cure spinal cord injuries.
From what I understand, this is really huge because stem cells from other people tend to be rejected by the immune system.
So the bush administration compromise that allowed researchers to work with existing stem cell lines isn't really good enough. They can get stem cells, but they can't get the right stem cells that they'd need for a patient, which won't be rejected.
For that you need cloning.
Not full blown human being cloning, but the very beginings of life in a petri dish cloning. I think that the cut off date is something like 4 days after the clone is created.
I heard some scientists on a panel show talking about this a few months ago. Everyone thought it was what was necessary, but no one thought it would happen any time soon.
Our scientists have been fighting with ways to turn off the immune system response in patients when they get someone else's stem cells. Scientists in other parts of the world don't have to struggle with that problem.
And I want something purely technical but readable by the layman. Also, I'm looking for something with as little discussion of "ethics" as possible. I'm coming from a POV that would allow abortions until the fifty-seventh trimetster, so the ethics side of it bores me.
A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.
For those that are for abortion. Please explain to me how "place" changes the nature of a thing. That is, when inside the mother's womb, it is a blob. But when we move it two feet, it becomes a person.
Stem cell research is not banned. Embryonic stem cell research is. The major political sticking point is that embryonic cells come mostly from abortions, which to the religious types is akin to profiting off of murder.
If these guys are smart, then they will describe an embryo as a fertilized egg. Since the harvested egg is never fertilized (they are just using the cell itself, not its nucleus) they might define this as a new category of material and get around the ban on embyotic stem cells.
Just my $0.02 USD.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
If natural selection really works(and I think it does) then people with moral misgivings about this technology will refuse to accept medical help from stem cells and will have a higher mortality rate than godless heathens. Maybe they'll interpret their decline as the arrival armageddon. It could also mean a true separation of church and state.
Of course this all assumes that people will actually refuse treatment because of their religious/moral beliefs which I highly doubt, even diehard churchgoers don't believe that the sun revolves around the earth anymore.
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But if people actually read the article, then they wouldn't be able to blindly bash the Bush Adminstration... There's nothing in the article that could not have been done by American companies and universities, if they hand't been spending all their time whining about federal funding.
This method is taking Unfertilized Embryo cells and replacing its nucleus with the chromosomes of the Adult Host. If the Embryo grows to maturity, it would be considered a Clone of the Adult (but it couldn't, because it isn't implanted into a womb). The Scientists culture the cells in the lab, take the developing Clone, chop it into its component Embryonic Stem Cells, and now the Embryonic Stem Cells can be used in other Adult Hosts to treat ailments...
Now, some may argue that destroying the blastocyst of the Clone (same genetic material as adult) is the same as destroying the blastocyst of a fetus (unique genetic material from adults). Personally, I'd rather use the method above, than have to resort to nastier methods (such as developing a [sub-]human species specifically for harvesting.... )
How is a cloned embryo a human life?
Would anyone ever let one finish gestation, grow up, get a job and have kids of it's own?
Just a matter of time before somebody does.
And if you have a problem with it, you will be called a bigot because you value people grown "the old fashioned way" more than lab-grown people.
It's banned under executive order, i.e., Bush commanded it.
To jog people's memories: the ban was signed by Bush after he spent a week or so on retreat "thinking" about the subject exclusively, and listening to religious pundits, yet few if no scientists. It was late August and early September. Of 2001.
The weeks he didn't read the briefing titled "bin Laden determined to strike within U.S."
Good trade. No stem cell research in the U.S. for the twin towers, the Pentagon, and four airplanes.
Just for the record, I think you should gloss over NIH, NIMH, and NSF, to see how much scientific research is funded by the gov't.
Research universities are funded by the gov't. Labs are built with government money. Supplies are shipped courtesy of Uncle Sam.
"Private Funding" is BS in academia.
On that note, "there was no federal funding before Bush chose to allow this limited funding" is also crap. The issue became large during his term in office; it's an issue of research and medicine, it should have nothing to do with the President's Approval. Pointing to the fact that it happened during his term in office is a bogus coincidence. It would be like saying President Lincoln was a homophobe because he never addressed issues of Gay Marriage, or that Washington was totally insensitive to AIDS issues. Bush gave meager funding to something that should be totally outside of his authority.
We have panels of scientists that can decide whether or not to approve Grants for medicinal and scientific research, we don't need totally unscientific neoconservatives doing it for us, thank you very much.
In theory you could run over the kid next door when you're driving home from work. How's that for an ethics nightmare? Hmm, it isn't really an ethics nightmare, is it? It's just a speculation on something you don't want to see happen.
Among the problems with your supposed ethics nightmare is that it wouldn't be forty seven generations of "people" it would be forty seven generations of undeveloped embryos. Furthermore, you'd be introducing an enormous amount of variables by cloning each generation. After all, this is going to require labratory intervention at each generation. How useful is this kind of "analysis" really going to be? What kind of control group are you going to compare your results to? So, there's probably not much you can learn from this radical procedure except that it sounds controversial and might invoke a gut reaction of fear if you dropped it in a public forum. So, this is not really a problem that poses an ethical nightmare. This is specualtion on something you don't want to see happen but the possibility of it happening seems overstated to say the least.
Yeah someday I will learn never to pres submit without a preview...
anyways here is the link:
Oogenesis in cultures derived from adult human ovaries
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
If I read a prior post correctly research institutions risk losing their federal grants for *all* research (not just stem cell) if they accept private funding for prohibited stem cell research. Its another front on the war against science.
No. The X-Prize is a pittance. A single DARPA program manager has a yearly budget twice that big. America's Space Prize is a good-sized contract for a single small company for a couple of years. Of course, the government hands out thousands of those every year.
Of course, none of that stuff is really 'big'. Its not fundemental research. We've been to space, its a routine thing now. The X-Prize is just trying to get companies to do stuff we can already do, except faster and cheaper. Which is great, because companies are really good at that sort of thing. There is little commercial risk in embarking on a project that you already know is possible. The question you have to ask, rather, is whether it would have been possible to get into space in the first place just by relying on corporations? Or, could fundemental physics breakthroughs that have had huge impacts on our economy (a significant fraction of our economy is possible only thanks to quantum physics), been possible by relying on corporations to build particle accelerators. Would the nuclear age, something that has kept America at the top of the world for half a century, been possible by relying on corporations to do the research? No!
As for the artificial heart, I presume you're referring to the AbioCor replacement project. If so, then this interview with Abiomed's president is particularly interesting to read. I quote:
" Yes. The majority of our research efforts from 1981 until 1996 were funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and that funding contribution has held up over the years. Historically, the artificial heart project is a national mission with government support".
And,
"Yes, funding from the National Institutes of Health supported the major portion of R&D activities for the artificial heart until 1996".
Finally,
"In 1996, our technical team told me that the major technological hurdles for the AbioCor had been overcome, and that we were ready to move the product into a commercial development path".
In other words, government funding sustained the project for 15 years until 1996. At that point, all the really difficult challenges had been overcome, ie: the commercial risk had been minimized, and it was then possible to commercialize the technology.
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