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Stem-Cell-Like Cells Produced From Skin
MikShapi writes "Skin cells can now be turned into something resembling stem cells. A genetic modification to four genes using a viral vector reverses differentiating, making the cells revert to a stem-cell state, capable for becoming any other cell in the body. The researchers are calling them 'iPS cells' or 'induced pluripotent stem cells.' In their experiments, iPS cells in the lab turned into nerve cells, heart muscle, and other tissues. The research was published in Cell and Nature by teams from the universities of Kyoto and Wisconsin. The article notes that if the new method proves successful, 'we can disconnect the whole stem cell debate from the culture war, from battles over embryo politics and abortion rights.' And, should this technique be adopted, stem cells will henceforth be abundant, easier and cheaper to come by for research and therapeutic purposes."
And of course this discovery can't go without political interference... the White House is already condemning the discovery, calling for a ban.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Now all those people getting abortions in the name of science can finally stop.
include $sig;
1;
Farnsworth: As a man it has become too much of a chore for me to clean out my wrinkles each day. Is it true that stem cells may fight the aging process?
Geneworks Woman: Well yes, in the same way an infant may fight Muhammed Ali! But -
Farnsworth: One pound of stem cells please.
Quite frankly, up until this point, everything about stem cells was about ethics. That is what makes this story so humongous.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
It is in Science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1151526
Here's hoping it works, the less controversial science is the more likely projects will get funded for it. Just look at cloning in the US.
There are a number of reasons why this could be a huge development. The biggest thing on my mind is that this solves the whole question of were to get all the stem cells you need for what you want to do. Now the source can be the very patient you are working on. I'm going to watch this with great interest.
Nope. I object to using embryos for research, but I have no objections to non-embryonic stem cell research. We will support this research to attempt to divert interest and funding from embryonic research. I think it's great that this not only eliminates the interest in doing things the other way, but that it is simpler, less expensive, and has the potential to eliminate potential difficulties from finding genetic matches.
I wonder, if we hadn't been objecting, would anybody have attempted to find this alternative, or would researchers have considered the embryonic method good enough?
As long as the skin cells are not taken through a form that could be considered a viable human, I think this should end the ethical problems with stem cells nicely.
The issue people have with stem cell research is not stem cells per se, but that the harvesting of embryonic stem cells results in the destruction of a viable human.
Remember, religious people haven't had issues with adult stem cell research -- which this is. It's only embryonic stem cell research and SCNT processes which result in a viable human that people take ethical issues with.
If this can directly transform a skin cell into heart cells or whatever without moving through an "embryonic" state, then it's really the best of both worlds.
The real debate goes far deeper than merely how to create patient specific stem cells. The real issue is longevity and let's hope we're getting closer to where there's something worth arguing about.
You'd think everybody is in favor of longevity, but one of Bush's early science advisers made it clear that he was opposed to life extension in principle and Bush explicitly backed him up on that. It blew me away, but they clearly were making the case in favor of death. Personally, I was shocked at this and I brought it up with some people in my family and I was even more surprised to find that a lot of the older people were sympathetic to the idea that death was something that shouldn't be messed with.
Personally, I say fuck that. Ya'll can be my witnesses, I want to live as long as freakin' possible and if I end up lookin' like Frankenstein carrying my head in the jar in the crook of my sewn on arm then all the better. Sounds good to me.
Some of the arguments in favor of death are kinda lame. I've heard the economic argument over and over. This is a popular one. It's like the economy would get all screwed up if people stopped dying on seventy year clocks because all the old geezer's saving would just accumulate insane interests until the oldest people had all the money. Okay, I can see that but this is not a good reason for people to die. Money aint that big a deal if we all had indefinite life spans. I'm sure we could calmly negotiate something once everyone had matured a few hundred years.
Another pro-death argument is the idea of overpopulation. I think I have a sweet answer to this one and this is what I really wanted to post about. See, the key is that you've got to have an answer that appeals to a really silly level of religious symbolism and I think I got it.
What you do is, you say that anybody who wants to extend their life past a certain age and have children will have to voluntarily exile themselves into orbit or the moon or some other place off the surface of the earth. This is the perfect solution. Why? Because, the result is that the people who accept eternal life can only do so if they . . . wait for it. . . go to heaven.
Is that sweet or what?
As opposed to the other extreme, where science has no sense of morality and is only another function of the wants of the state. Like the Nazi's and Imperial Japanese in WWII experimenting on live humans. Such as testing biolgical warfare on them, the identical twin studies of Mengele, Japanese scientists dissecting Allied prisoners alive, and so on. Or the US for a scientific study letting blacks with syphilis go untreated for decades. And who knows what the USSR and the Chineses did/are doing. Science has to have some moral responsibility for its research and conclusions. The hard part is where to draw the line, and reasonable people can disagree on that.
I'd say that one of the main ethical issues is that it is unethical to tell people that a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell lines would spare the destruction of those embryos when it only really means that those embryos would be destroyed as medical waste instead.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
I understand perfectly what you're talking about, but it's not ethics that are the issue it's morality. To a dying man using a blastocyst to cure him is the ethical decision as it saves his life and allows him to continue to contribute to society. To a person who believes that the blastocyst is a living person then this is an immoral decision because to them it's killing another human. I hate to nitpick, but people often confuse the two.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
stem cell researchers were using cells from unused IVF samples, not killing babies as you people like to compare it to. I can't even begin to understand how you could equate a couple of cells in a petree dish to a human.
And no, this line of research would still have been pursured without your stupid agenda, because it solves other problems not rooted in religous objections. So you don't get to claim this is some kind of victory.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I would guess it more likely that the breakthrough will be held back by people who don't want their skin to turn to stem cells before their eyes because of some virus escaped from the research labs.
Then again, someone's probably already claimed movie rights on this and will sue anyone who voices this idea.
These assholes who are against stem cell research will just find a new angle to attack this research. They will claim we are playing god or some such retarded objection.
i mean after all wtf is wrong with playing god? if we listened to these whacko's we'd still be praying on our needs in a dirt hut.
If i was a rich billionaire i'd pump shit tins of money into stem cell research and have them make me some kind of catdog style animal.
Wow! That's not only a troll, but 100% Grade-A Certified Organic FUD!
Conservatives, or more accurately, Christian Conservatives, have nothing against stem cell research. Hell, Bush was the first president in history to authorize funding of stem cell research. Yes, George Bush authorized funding for stem cell research, as long as the money was not spent on NEW stem cell lines derived from embryos. Existing stem cell lines from embryo's, chord blood stem cells, this type of stem cells, or any other, is fine and government funded. This type of funding is perfectly fine with everyone, including Christian Conservatives.
So your comment only shows that you are either ignorant or the facts or simply a liar. Which one is it?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
And that is where we disagree. And I'm sure you can understand this line of thought even if you don't agree with it. It goes to the question of what is a human deserving of human rights. We consider it a unique being with DNA, post-fertilization.
We find this definition has a scientific and ethical clearity that can avoid a lot of the horrors of history that now (most of) humanity regrets based on what counts as a human worthy of protection.
We've found your previous and current standards of tribe/religion/family/ethnicity/sexuality/age/disability/ or simply 'might makes right' distinctions to be unworthy of our species.
So you disagree - so if we are not persuasive, are we at least not 'stupid?'
you don't get to claim this is some kind of victory
To quote Jerry Sienfeld's response when he was told he was not in listed in the top 10 of comedians in the history of America but was instead number twelve, I'll take it.
In my view, the scientifically deficient position is that life has a beginning.
The concept of being alive is a vaguely defined multi-dimensional continuum. Some things are more alive and some things are less alive. Some things are more alive in one way and less alive in another way. The idea that life (and "not life") is somehow a clear binary distinction has no basis in factual observation. Of course, even more fundamentally, the idea that "life" must be preserved and protected has no basis in science and only an indirect basis in fields of ethics and aesthetics - but that's a topic for another time.
Anyway, the most accurate scientific statement is that life is passed continuously from parents to children. If life had a "beginning", that beginning would have been millions of years ago when the first nucleic acids started making copies of themselves. Sperm is alive (and human - in the case of human sperm). Unfertilized egg cells are alive (and human - in the case of human egg cells).
Based on factual observation, over time an embryo/fetus develops attributes that make it desirable from an ethical or aesthetic perspective to preserve the the embryo/fetus's life. For example, eventually a fetus probably develops an ability to feel pain. A late term fetus may even have a rudimentary will to live. An embryo/fetus also begins to look progressively more "human" and many people have an aversion to killing things that look human.
What needs to happen with this whole business is that the law needs to recognize that, based on factual observation, there is no distinct boundary between alive and not alive. Instead there is a gradual development of attributes that make destruction increasingly undesirable. A fertilized human egg cell has essentially no attributes that makes its destruction undesirable. A late term fetus has most of the same attributes that make destruction of adult humans undesirable.
People do all kinds of crazy things on the basis of beliefs that have no basis in science. That's just the way life is. But, when it comes to positions that are scientifically deficient, the most scientifically deficient position with regard to this issue is that life is a binary state that has a distinct beginning.
I'd say that one of the main ethical issues is that it is unethical to tell people that a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell lines would spare the destruction of those embryos when it only really means that those embryos would be destroyed as medical waste instead.
Think of it this way. The government wants to do X. X in itself is not that bad, but it is a minor version of Y, which is totally unacceptable. X can lead to Y if you are not careful. Do you allow X?
Now let's say X is limited wire tapping of international phone calls without a warrant and Y is a police state. Do you allow X?
Now the way I see it is this. X is experimenting with human embryos. Y is experimenting with fully formed humans. Do you allow X?
If you did not provide the same answer for both, can you explain why?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
...looking at this, I think it wasn't so bad that there was a strong opposition to embryonic stem cell research in the first place. If you think about it, this forced scientists to find a new source for stem cells. Now they hit the jackpot, since skin cells are much more available, and can be easily grown in a lab.
I can't even begin to understand how you could equate a couple of cells in a petree dish to a human.
At what age does a human/zygote make the cut so that it is no longer available for scientific research? Two months? Six months? Birth? Five years? When they are potty trained? What classifies a human as a human deserving human rights? What test must be passed before that clump of cells is human? Who are you to decide? What if the government decided the age of liberty was your age +1? How would that make you feel?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Your signature makes a false assumption. That is that Religion is between people. Religion is about a relationship with God.
... you might be right. But that's not the way it is. Organized religion is, at the core, all about social control, with compliance encouraged by the threat of eternal damnation and the dangling promise of everlasting life.
Word games. That sounds all well and good, but ignores reality. You see, organized religion (which is what we all mean when we say "religion" hereabouts, it does not refer to some unique personal profession of faith) is all about people, not God. In the end, if it turns out that God is just another of Man's less useful inventions, even that caveat will go away.
More to the point, it's all about people doing things to each other in the name of God. If it were true (and it isn't) that the bulk of the faithful were permitted their own personal belief systems, their own ways of communing with God, without any dogma or ritual being imposed upon them from without
God has less to do with that most people want to admit.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You can't use dry skin cells because they're dead. You have to have living cells.
Nobody in their right mind would set up donation banks though. One of the best parts about being able to induce pluripotency is that you can use cells from the patient themselves, which means no rejection.
A full grown human is "literally a mass of cells." You have to draw the line somewhere when you define what is human life and what isn't. Where you draw it and remain ethical isn't as clear cut as you seem to believe.
The only cogent logical argument for definition of life other than "life begins at conception" that I've heard is that the definition of life should be the opposite of the definition of death as it is currently defined. No heartbeat, brain waves, etc. In other words, when you can't medically define a mass of cells that will eventually develop into a human as "dead," then it's a human life.
If there's any other logical definition, please let me know. Otherwise, the definition of what is human life really is just an emotional plea to support whatever you want to advocate. But "it doesn't even look like a baby!" isn't a rock-solid basis on which to form an ethical argument.
And certainly the potential of the mass of cells has to be considered. If you were in a coma on life-support with little or no brain function, but we were 99% certain that in nine months you'd recover completely, could you justify pulling the plug on the machines keeping you alive?
If not, how do you ethically justify doing the same thing to that mass of cells?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
A long series of lame questions with no discussion of the problematic aspects of any answer at all is proof that you are an idiot.
To demonstrated, let me extend your hysterical little list with one more: what makes conception special?
Now, to demonstrate I am not an idiot, I will actually discuss this question rather than stupidly spewing forth an endless series of minor variations on it.
Genetic uniqueness is not required to make a human human. On the one hand we have identical twins, who are unique individuals despite being genetically identical. Likewise, a clone of a human would be a unique individual with the same political and moral status as anyone else (side note: all arguments about the supposed ethical conundrums surrounding human cloning can be solved by replacing the word "clone" everywhere by "child" or "adult" as appropriate.) And on the other hand we have chimeric individuals, who contain more than one complete set of genes in two different cell populations, yet are only one human.
So there is nothing special about conception due to it being the point of creation of a genetically unique human being, because there is nothing about genetic uniqueness that endows a human being with their political and moral status. Identical twins, on the one hand, and chimeric individuals, on the other, demonstrate that nothing about humans depends on the uniqueness or number of their genetic codes. But the only thing that happens at conception is the melding of two haploid cells to create a new genetically unique cell. There is nothing special about this genetically unique cell versus any of the billions in my body or yours. It is just a cell that has a non-zero probability of becoming an adult.
Yet that non-zero probability is not interesting either. A zygote has a fraught and difficult course to become an embryo, a fetus, a baby, a child and an adult. Depending on time and place each of these, particularly the first, have probabilities of well below 1.0.
Sperm and egg have much smaller probability of becoming zygotes, but it is with absolute certainty more than zero.
Ergo, given that you have a deep and apparently obsessive fascination with arbitrary numeric limits, and you furthermore seem to be concerned with zygotes and later rather than sperm/eggs and earlier: at what point does the probability of a cell becoming an adult drop low enough that it no longer enjoys any rights?
Only by invoking an arbitrary and subjective dividing line can you avoid this question, and whatever argument you use, that very same argument can be used to justify a different dividing line based on a different (but equally arbitrary) division.
You, of course, have already established you're an idiot, so no doubt this argument will have no effect on you. Idiots are remarkably resistant to anything that might wean them from their idiocy. So this whole post is rather pointless. But there are those of us who think that even idiots ought to be given an explanation of their errors once in a while.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
One problem with these techniques is that they use lentiviruses to deliver these genes. The lentiviral genome integrates into the host which could pose the threat of integration into a tumor suppressor gene or into another critical gene. Additionally, despite measures taken to prevent this, some studies have found that these integrants (proviruses) may be packaged into another virus if you're subsequently infected with a wild lentivirus (ie HIV), creating stem cell inducing viruses (which can't replicate, but can infect other cells).
Having an extra copy of these genes might also pose problems for normal differentiation and differentiated cell function. They need to find a way to excise the provirus after the genes are expressed and reprogram the cell. Or, better yet, activate the endogenous copies of these genes in skin cells, leading to reprogramming without needing to deliver exogenous copies. Still, even if they can't be used in therapies yet, research using them could lead to a lot of useful data.
Bush was the first president in history to authorize funding of stem cell research.
This is really a questionable statement. People had been getting grant money to do embryonic stem research well before Bush became president. He became the first to create a specific category of NIH funding towards stem cell research, but that was with the major caveat that you could only use existing stem cell lines which in effect froze embryonic stem cell research in the US and set it back 5 years. It's akin to setting aside NSF funds for space exploration research but then saying you can only use Legos to do it.
People need something to fight over, it's one of the things that makes us human.
One day (probably in the far distant future) the science-types will work out how to assemble (from scratch, no less) one (1) Hew-Man Being(patent-pending, tm, etc most likely) without the mess involved with "an embryo".
What you gonna do now?
You think this is insanely unlikely? (remember folks, people once thought it insanely unlikely the earth was NOT the center of the universe)
Until it's born, it's "an embryo". Of course essentially the same thing occurring as "just a bunch of separate organs" is (by definition) not "an embryo" although (in theory, so far) you could piece the jigsaw-puzzle together in "an assembl-O-mat" and produce a walking-talking fully-functional human.
And maybe we won't do it that way - maybe we'll just use full nano-assembley and build him (or her) one atom at a time.
At what point do you differentiate between "a human" (or "a person") and something that was literally designed and manufactured by "those geeks in Building C" you see in the cafeteria some days?
Do they deserve any rights? Rights the same as "the rest of us" or not? (anyone seen Blade Runner lately?)
Should "they" be any less worthy simply because we fully understand how they came to be, and can control that process?
Does anyone else in this room find it odd and unsettling that the very same people who are so against killing people before they're born are constantly requisitioning more funds from congress in order to kill people after they've been born? (well, very long after. And "those people" aren't "my people" so that makes it fair and just, doesn't it?)
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
What will really throw a wrench into the anti stem-cell argument is when an adult skin cell has a non-zero probability of becoming a zygote.
We certainly can't do it now, but is there any real doubt that this will be a possibility in the future?
Of course, we still need to answer some questions: what are rights? who(what?) gets them, and why?
Once we really have the answers to those questions, all this controversy will sort itself out.
Hardly. Frankly this is pretty interesting, and certainly would be useful for the getting stem cells for a person to grow a new body part. The question remains are these cells totopotent or pluripotent? Do they have the same range of use as ESC? Or just the range of ASC?
The answer is, we don't have an answer. We haven't done the leg work to find out what the range of use is on embryonic stem cells. This debate has nothing to do with ethics. No medical ethics are violated here, the debate is 100% about religion. The fact is, if one actually worried about the embryo, scientists would be happy to make lines by taking some cells from a developing embryo, then make a stem cell line out of those and implant the embryo and get an infant out of the deal. So rather than some embryo which would otherwise be medical waste, we would have a stem cell line and a child. Who could object? -- Um, religious folks; they still object.
It could very well be that ASCs are all we need and that we could dedifferentiate them easily with full usability, able to make everything from a new kidney to an embryo and a clone army. The problem however, is we just don't know because the research isn't there. The idea that a clump of 150 cells without any nerves at all is the ethical equivalent to a child, or that that clump of cells is more valued than somebody with a spinal cord injury whose treatments are being prolonged is a joke. A fly has 100,000 nerve cells and is by far the ethical superior of swaths of embryos.
Embryonic stem cells might not be any more useful. And we'll always have that "might" there until we do the research.
There's nothing about medical ethics which suggests some kind of soul thing jumps into a zygote at the moment the gametes join, and nothing to suggest that a couple cells aren't just that, some cells. If you read this story you must realize that there is no more ethics problems with ESCs then there is with scratching my ass. In fact, I'm bound to scratch away swaths more cells with the ass-scratch. Ethics? No. This is about religion and the unevidenced nonsense it advocates for no reason in particular. This research is useful, but it doesn't answer the actual questions we need answered.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
And then it diverts attention from all those acts by crating fake controversies, over imaginary "murders" of "living cells".
How *do* you define life then? It might be fine to just ban the abortion of a unborn fetus older than 2 months. There are tons of medical reasons to support that decision. But if you want to push the line even further, where does it stop? A ban on the morning after pill? A ban on condoms, since they interfere with "potential" life and thus "murder" it as well? A ban on masturbation perhaps, since it is also wasting potential "life"? How *do* you define life? What makes one kind of cell(fertilized egg) "alive" and yet other(sperm) is not, when neither is showing any greater sentience than the other at the early stages at least? If you make a criterion, what is the "rationale" behind that criterion?
And how soon before we get people being persecuted for masturbating, or using protection during sex? What is the guarantee that this lunacy will not lead to *THAT*? Historical evidence shows that when we put "government" in charge of personal decisions, and allow them too much power, *that* is when "experimentation on humans" happen. Care to give one example of a reasonably democratic country where human experimentation was tolerated? I can definitely give examples of fascist, police states, where the human experimentation happened and was ignored by citizens. And a government making insane, illogical laws that are just a step way for interfering with personal decisions of people, is more likely to lead to a fascist, police state.
And if "life" is so holy, what is the arrogant reasoning behind killing and eating other "near-sentient" lifeforms? By your logic everyone should be forced to become vegetarian? Oh wait! Even plants have been proven to be alive! So, it is the arrogant belief that only human beings are "truly" alive, right?
But that is a very Christian belief, isn't it? i.e. humans being the only "really" alive beings! As a matter of fact Jain and Buddhist religion consider even lower life forms to be just as alive and forbid killing them because of the desire avoid the very same arrogant hypocrisy. So basically the American Government is just enforcing a "Christian" belief, while paying lip service to the idea of being secular, "religious equality" and "separation of state and the church".
Ad hominems directed toward the parent aside, you misunderstand the argument one might make in respect of conception as the beginning of life, and have clouded the water with only marginally related (although interesting) questions regarding cloning and such.
Conception as the beginning of life follows a line of thinking something like this:
1) The zygote/embryo/fetus is a human thing. (of course, so is your arm or kidney)
2) This thing is not non-living, so it is a living thing. (whether it is independent has nothing to do with whether it is living--see arm/kidney)
3) This thing is genetically distinct from the parents. (as opposed to unique, as per your example of identical twins)
4) So the zygote/embryo/fetus is a living human thing that is not either parent.
Viability outside the womb, or relative completeness of development, is actually irrelevant. At conception, there is a living human thing that is distinct from, and hence not identical to, its parents. The question is whether you think that living human thing has value. Most people think that other human living things have an inherent value, such that it is morally reprehensible to cause such a thing to cease to live (at least against its will, but that's another debate) or to harm it. Also irrelevant is the apparent dissonance in those people who believe that an unborn human living thing must be protected, while one that has been born can be justly killed.
The arbitrary and subjective line drawing enters when one attempts to differentiate between one living human thing and another based on something other than its nature: a living human thing. That nature does not change with stage of development, intelligence, impairment, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, political persuasion, age, criminal behavior and so on.
That's why this matters. It's easy to point at a petri dish and say "it's just a bunch of cells;" as others here have pointed out, the same is true of an adult living human thing. Distinguishing between the two cannot be a matter of mere rhetorical device.
To reign is to serve.
At what age does a human/zygote make the cut so that it is no longer available for scientific research? Two months? Six months? Birth? Five years? When they are potty trained? What classifies a human as a human deserving human rights? What test must be passed before that clump of cells is human? Who are you to decide? What if the government decided the age of liberty was your age +1? How would that make you feel?
This is an appeal to emotion. Which happens to be a logical fallacy when it comes to argumentation.
It seems to me that sentience should be the test. At some point in the not too distant future we will create sentient beings that are machine based. This is inevitable. They will have no DNA at all. Using the typical arguments that you seem to embrace, such being should not be afforded the same human rights that you and I have even though they may be thousands of times more intelligent than we are.
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves, what makes us human? I don't think relying on a purely biological answer is very wise or useful.