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MIT Team Creates Cancer Stem Cells
MIT scientists and colleagues have found a way in the lab to create large amounts of cancer stem cells, the cells that can initiate tumors. The work, reported in the August 13 issue of Cancer Cell, could be a boon to researchers who study these elusive cells. Labs could easily grow them for use in experiments.
Now we just need to to infect the top seven world leaders with it and we'll have a cure. (MAD TV reference)
There are already plenty of very effective ways to cause cancer that are a lot easier, cheaper and more easily deliverable.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's just you. Just because they made some small technical advance and then ran to the media with it doesn't mean anything. Before this comes out, just wait for the super efficient solar cells, face recognition, robot servants, super nanotube application (fill in here), gene therapy that doens't kill helpless teenagers, fusion on the desktop, and god knows how many other vaportechnologies.
Terrance: What are you doing?
Scott: I am wishing cancer upon you.
Phillip: What?
Scott: I am giving you cancer with my mind.
Phillip: No, don't give me cancer!
and look what happened....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This actually brings up an interesting idea.
I've always been a proponent of the idea that scientists were the true moral crusaders of our age, not protesters, demonstrators, and certainly not religious zealots.
Think of it this way - when scientists have perfected a means for reproducing reliable and testable human cancer cells in a laboratory, there will no longer be any need to use lab rats in cancer research. Cancer will be closer to being cured, and rats will be spared. What has the Animal Liberation Front done on that magnitude, apart from burn medical research facilities?
I imagine that when we are able to create vehicles that produce no pollution, it will be considered excessive and morally repugnant to drive gas guzzlers. I imagine that we have developed a means of engineering meat that it will be considered immoral to kill living animals to get it. The idea here is that immorality is scaled and determined in terms of gross excess of what is necessary for survival, and that our technology makes survival easier (thus altering the scale).
Inserting [insert witty signature here] here does not constitute a witty signature.
Has to be tailored to each person. At that it's highly questionable. Otherwise the body will just destroy the cells. Cancer lives by playing the game of cups, and balls with the immune system. When it finds the right way to act like it's part of the body to the immune system it's kind of a bitch to kill off. Easier to just poison someone. Plus this would require a fairly advanced lab. It takes far less, and generates allot more fear mailing an envelope with Anthrax in it to one person.
Now I am sad.
Not really, you would need the cells to be immunologically compatible to each person you wanted to infect. That would be harder than a large number of other ways to hurt them. On the other hand, a biological weapon could come from the method they use to turn the cells into cancer stem cells. This generally involves a gene transfer using a virus vector. That kind of virus could be used to create these types of cells inside someone. I don't think large scale virus vector weapons are currently feasible but it may be something to worry about in the future.
"Hello, Husband. How was work? I made you a cup of your FAVORITE COFFEE. It's fresh... Now drink up. Drink it ALL... Feel anything? No? You will in a few years."
Odd. I got the image of a factory putting the tumors into jelly molds and producing politicians, lawyers and civil servants.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Russell Crowe: Well, we couldn't find cancer, but we found a man with cancer. *Punches old man* Take that, cancer! And that! *Punches again*
Eureka! All we have to do to cure cancer is take this machine and reverse the polarity!!!
Then it's nothing to worry about. There's no possible way anybody could get a sample of a slashdotter's DNA.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I'm talking about laboratory agents, not Tab or pastrami.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Why am I so certain the Apple iCar would have one pedal, and you'd have to press a modifier button (on the steering wheel?) to use the brake?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
There are multiple advantages of using cancer cells in research. Stem cells are generally hard to come by. Cancerous versions of the cells tend to be tougher and grow much more rapidly enabling cell cultures to be easily shared among scientists. Normal cells tend to stop growing after they reach a certain density and form only a thing layer on a Petri dish. Cancer cells exhibit no such inhibitions. The first mammalian cells that could be cultured indefinitely were the HeLa which were cancerous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa I would imagine that these cancerous stem cells would greatly aid stem cell research.
Yes Mr President, our assassin has delivered the payload. The target should be dead in .. 5-10 years depending on health care and current insurance plan.
Assassination weapon? Cancer tends to take years to kill you. Sure, while this might speed the process up to several months or something, that still gives the person in question plenty of time to spill everything that they know, or otherwise cause serious damage to the cause that the assassins are trying to protect.
No, there are much better and more clever ways to do these things. Like how they iced Georgi Markov (always a classic).