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Stem Cells Restore Sight For Corneal Disease Patients
Sean0michael writes "Australian scientists have restored the sight of three human test subjects using stem cells cultured in contact lenses. All the patients were blind in only one eye. Two were legally blind, but can now read the big letters on an eye chart. The third could read the first few lines, but is now able to pass a driver's test. The University of New South Wales reports that these patients all had damaged corneas, and the stem cells came from each person's good eye. The best part: the procedure is inexpensive, raising hopes for being able to push this to the third world sooner than other, more expensive medications."
Which is to be expected. Controlling the differentiation of a cell is still not completely understood and difficult to do. It is easier with partially differentiated cells, and hence with stem cells from the tissue that we wish to regrow. Therefore, the first practical treatments and applications of stem cell research will be using adult stem cells.
Where embryonic stem cells come into play is by helping understand this differentiation process better. Increasing our knowledge will enable us to develop treatments that aren't possible using adult stem cells, but it will also likely contribute to having safer more effective adult stem cell treatments treatments. It may even shed some light into the entire aging process and cell life-cycle. They are very important things to be studying.
To put it succinctly, adult stem cells are currently at the R&D stage, embryonic at the pure science stage. Both are important.
Ah, dude, he said breakthroughs, not research.
I already told you what the breakthrough was. They were able to successfully restore locomotion using embryonic stem cells in people with spinal cord injuries.
I also did a google search and didn't find much that was successful, though there are hundreds of breakthroughs using adult stem cells.
Which are all using as a base the work of those working on embryonic stem cells. Anyone who thinks that none of these breakthroughs were based off of any work done with embryonic stem cells is just plain ignorant.
OR maybe we think that the embryos shouldn't have been created in the first place.
Well then it's amazing that not a single one of the embryonic stem cell whiners have ever publicly stated this.
Only take what you need for the in vitro fertilization and no more.
But one doesn't know how many are going to be needed which is why they make and freeze so many. If you knew anything about how in-vitro fertilization works you'd know that there are usually a very small likelihood of successful implantation which is why they have to create so many.
Then you don't have an ethical dilemma about whether to kill them by throwing them in the garbage or kill them to experiment with ESCs.
There is nothing to kill. These are just clumps of undifferentiated cells.
ESC research could actually induce fertilization clinics to make MORE embryos than they need, knowing they'll be used for research as well.
And yet they don't need to since the fertilization clinics already had way more than they can use even before embryonic stem cell research started.
But it's nice of you to put words in the mouths of people like me to tear down to benefit your argument.
I didn't put in words into anyone's mouth. I was just describing the ultimate reality of what happens when the frozen embryos aren't allowed to be used for research. They are incinerated or simply thrown away.
You could call it a strawman.
Outlining the consequences of what happens when the embryos aren't allowed to be used isn't a strawman.
Congratulations on the insightful mod since that strawman was pretty tough to tear down.
You didn't tear anything down. You just basically repeated the wacko nonsense that comes from the religious right.