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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."
From TFA:
This is certainly good news, but human eggs are still needed, and from what I understand, harvesting them is still time-consuming, painful, and risky.
From Aurora Health Care:
Ouch.
A truly significant advance would be to use these stem cells to grow a human ovary in the lab, and harvest eggs from that. Such an advance would dramaatically decrease the need for additional female donors.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It shouldn't be long before we can expect have a set of replacement parts ready when our own wear out.
Customer: I'd like a replacement arm, hand and penis, please.
Service Tech: Ah, you must be from Slashdot!
Trolling is a art,
S Korea has been added to the watch list of terrorist states....
I mean, c'mon. Woo Suk Wang? Who would admit to that being their name voluntarily?!?
.sig: Now legally binding!
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.
Professor Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues also successfully cloned human embryos last year.
Scientists clone human stem cells from patients
... regardless of sex or age," Hwang told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Fri May 20, 2005 2:54 AM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korean scientists who cloned the first human embryo to use for research said on Thursday they have used the same technology to create batches of embryonic stem cells from nine patients.
Their study fulfills one of the basic promises of using cloning technology in stem cell research -- that a piece of skin could be taken from a patient and used to grow the stem cells.
Researchers believe the cells could one day be trained to provide tailored tissue and organ transplants to cure juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's disease and even to repair severed spinal cords. Unlike so-called adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells have the potential from the beginning to form any cell or tissue in the body.
Woo Suk Hwang and colleagues at Seoul National University report their process is much more efficient than they hoped, and yielded 11 stem cell batches, called lines, from six adults and three children with spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes and a rare immune disorder.
"This study shows that embryonic stem cells can be derived using nuclear transfer from patients with illness
"I am amazed at how much they have accomplished in just a year and the amount, the quality and the rigorousness of their evidence," Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, a stem cell expert who reviewed the study, said in a telephone interview.
While the patients whose cells were copied do not stand at this time to benefit, the researchers hope to study the cells to understand their conditions better.
They also say their method may be less controversial than other work with embryonic stem cells because, by their definition, a human embryo was never actually created.
The report, published in the journal Science, is certain to add to the growing U.S. political controversy over the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
Opponents say all such work is unethical and should be banned because human life begins at conception and should not be destroyed.
NO HUMAN EMBRYO
Hwang said his method differs from that first used to derive human embryonic stem cells in 1998 and he proposes using a new term for the cloned embryos -- a "nuclear transfer construct."
"I think this construct is not an embryo," he said. "There is no fertilization in our process. We use nuclear transfer technology. I can say this result is not an embryo but a nuclear transfer construct." The sheep Dolly, the first adult mammal cloned, was made using nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus is removed from an egg cell, replaced with the nucleus of the animal or person to be cloned, and then fused. The egg begins dividing as if it had been fertilized and sometimes becomes an embryo.
Cattle, pigs, sheep, cats and other animals have been cloned using this method.
Schatten said when scientists first got stem cells from human embryos in 1998, they broke open the little days-old ball of cells called a blastocyst.
In the current study, he said, they simply laid down the blastocyst in a lab dish filled with human "feeder cells."
David Magnus and Mildred Cho of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics in California agreed.
"There is no reason ever to believe one of these things could ever become a human being," said Magnus, who with Cho wrote a commentary on the work.
"Even for people that believe that potentiality is the key to personhood, these things, whatever they are, they are not people. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is an ethically better way of producing stem cells than using excess IVF (in vitro fertilization or test-tube baby) embryos."
Schatten said the method could also eventually do away with the need for some animal experiments, which some people also find objectionable and which others say is not always a good way to predict human medical treatments.
Opponents of stem cell research had not had an opportunity to review the paper and could not immediately comment.
Well I don't agree with Bush's stance on this issue either, but it is important to note that there is nothing prohibiting stem cell research in the US at this time. You just don't get to do it on the taxpayer's dime (unless you live in California where they force you to).
Why would those parts wear out all at ... oh .
You obviously suffer from poor technique.
sigs, as if you care.
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?
cells in animals before they can try the therapy in humans.
I know it is a personal pet peeve of mine but it just makes my skin crawl when people separate humans and animals. Humans ARE animals!
On a slightly more ontopic note: This is the breaking point for future scientific study specifically biomedic/stemcell research in the United States. There are two bills in the house about to be voted on - The Cord Blood Stem Cell Act 2005 HR 596 and Stem Cell Research Act 2005 HR 810 in the house, which surprisingly has *bipartisan support* which even more surprisingly is more than likely to pass and most surprisingly (well...not so much for some of us) is very likely to be vetoed (first time ever for GWB) by the President. Unbelievable.
I'm not sure the girlfriends will be happy, but the blond, hot, swedish, twins will be.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
I absolutely refuse to get another head .. or toungue for that matter.
And I don't need two heads - my brain is already a dual coreQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
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.
Didn't you see "Star Trek: Nemesis"? Weren't you paying attention when Shinzon's cells were breaking down because the Romulans attempted to do EXACTLY what you are suggesting? One mistake and Shinzon was a dead man intent on taking the planet earth with him out of spite. Do you want that on your conscience?
Geez, don't people learn from Science Fiction anymore? Why do they even bother if we're not going to listen? WHEN ARE WE GOING TO LEARN ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF PLAYING GOD!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I would like to point out that while you may disagree with the those who believe in creationism and those who oppose stem cell research, you should realize that neither stem cell research nor production of new stem cell lines has been banned in the US. The only restriction is that taxpayer funds cannot be used to support it. If you feel that new stem cell lines are necessary, you are more than welcome to gather support from others who feel the same and provide the necessary funding. But don't ask people who are firmly opposed to such research to help pay for it.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Only a Slashdotter would dream of using this technology to further masturbation instead of a way to have real sex.
Sperm and egg cells are alive and can be kept viable indefinately. They are also half-human.
Kill one of each and you've committed murder. Allow one of each to die and it's manslaughter.
And if you sincerely believe that, and you've ever allowed your eggs or sperm to die instead of having them frozen, please turn yourself into to the nearest police station to face charges.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
"The Chinese," bellowed a drunken Australian, "Chinese bloody invented nerve-splicing. Give me the mainland for a nerve job any day. Fix you right, mate..."
"Now that," Case said to his glass, all his bitterness suddenly rising in him like bile, "that is so much bullshit."
The Japanese had already forgotten more neurosurgery than the Chinese had ever known. The black clinics of Chiba were the cutting edge, whole bodies of technique supplanted monthly, and still they couldn't repair the damage he'd suffered in that Memphis hotel.
--
make install -not war
...Dick Cheney and other senior White House officials with serious medical conditions were noted to have chartered Air Force One to S. Korea yesterday. Mr. Cheney, with a suitcase full of bills and his 'senate gold' health care plan, said that he was taking the trip to S. Korea to investigate the ethics of stem cell research...
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.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
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.
Google cached version
Here's the BBC with their coverage of the same story.
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?
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.
The only restriction is that [federal] taxpayer funds cannot be used to support it.
No, that is not the only restriction. There are two restrictions:
1. Federal money cannot be used for embryonic stem cell research.
2. Any facility performing embryonic stem cell research will not receive federal funding for any project regardless of subject.
Due to the amount of items that federal money is used for, this is about as close to a ban as you can get without just coming out and saying it.
Luckily we have progressive states like New Jersey and California who are attempting to fight back against the conservative Federal government. As a resident of New Jersey, I fully support the efforts of Governors Codey and McGreevey to setup stem cell research in the State.
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
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
Bush's response
0 .html
Bush Blasts Human Clone Research
Associated Press
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,67586,0
08:40 AM May. 20, 2005 PT
The White House on Friday condemned research in South Korea for producing human embryros through cloning and said President Bush would veto any legislation that loosens federal restrictions in the United States on embryonic stem cell research.
White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said the work in South Korea amounted to human cloning for the sole purpose of scientific research. "The president is opposed to that," Duffy said. "That represents exactly what we're opposed to."
Separately, he said the president would veto legislation to permit spending government money for stem cell research that would destroy human embryos. A measure by Reps. Mike Castle (R-Delaware) and Diana DeGette (D-Colorado) would lift Bush's 2001 ban on the use of federal dollars for research using any new embryonic stem cell lines.
Bush, in his fifth year in office, has not yet exercised his first veto. The White House also promised a veto this week of a highway bill if it exceeded the administration's spending limits.
Bush began the day at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast where he was cheered for urging people to "pray that America uses the gift of freedom to build a culture of life."
The remark was a public reaffirmation of his position on sensitive issues such as abortion and stem cell research.
Bush recalled the legacy of the late Pope John Paul II and said, "The best way to honor this great champion of human freedom is to continue to build a culture of life where the strong protect the weak."
Bush won 52 percent of the Roman Catholic vote in last year's election and got the support of 56 percent of white Catholics, defeating the first Catholic presidential candidate from a major party since John F. Kennedy. In 2000, Bush narrowly lost the Catholic vote.
End of story
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
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.