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Reprogrammed Skin Cells Turned Into Baby Mice
InfiniteZero writes "According to this WSJ story, 'Two teams of Chinese researchers working separately have reprogrammed mature skin cells of mice to an embryonic-like state and used the resulting cells to create live mouse offspring. The reprogramming may bring scientists one step closer to creating medically useful stem-cell lines for treating human disease without having to resort to controversial laboratory techniques. However, the advance poses fresh ethical challenges because the results could make it easier to create human clones and babies with specific genetic traits.'"
yep. [Second post cloned from skin cells of first post.]
one persons moral code should never prevent someone else getting medical treatment. bottom line, if you don't believe in that you don't believe in freedom. this kind of research is what will save lives in the future.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I am sure I am not the only one who is tired of hearing about ethical challenges that come with every small new incremental step in stem cell/cloning research. The issues haven't changed, they are the same as when cloning was first brought to the public spotlight when dolly was cloned; and they are the same as have been discussed in science fiction circles way before that.
Seriously, they freakin' took skin and turned it into another living creature! That is by far the coolest thing I've heard this week, and the only thing you can think of to say about it is something about ethical issues? That's like saying, "I invented artificial intelligence, but I don't know what to do about my ugly computer case, where can I get a nice one?" seriously, this is a problem that, while somewhat interesting, can be solved, is not particularly relevant, and really doesn't need to be discussed here.
Qxe4
What bullshit. If you support stem cell research (as I do) have the balls to call it what it is...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
To clone the organs inside the cloned skin. A bunch of mouse skins running around is just too creepy.
I really don't understand how this experiment could be seen as controversial, as the cloning effort was to prove that an adult's cells could be reprogrammed to form any type of tissue, as opposed to harvesting our own young, which is clearly a practice with ethical question marks all over it. The focus was not cloning. We can do cloning well enough now. The technology already exists. What this research does mean is a glimpse into a future with no waiting lists for donor organs, no harvesting from the dead and far fewer rejection issues for new organs, as they would be your own tissue, from your own cells. Good stuff.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Seriously, was that you , Taco? Oh, no, sorry; you would have tagged it penisgrownfromskincells. :=========D
Soon enough, there won't be a single, simple, answer to the classic question
how is babby formed
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If I hear one more "I turned stem cells into X" story without proof - real proof! - I think we're going to need to start posting these things under "comedy".
kulakovich
Getting stem cells from "safe" places is one thing that should not be controversial. Now, doing full clones is a different matter. But if is so easy, just take a few skin cells and could get my own (baby) clone what use will be done for that could lead to some controversy, or at least some redefinition on what is life, what is human (and probably what is soul for the ones that keep thinking that there is one by then), or even what are newborn rights.
Scientists now how the power to turn people in to baby chickens? Delicious!
Think of the implications this could have. I can have my giant army of penguins in no time! Mwuhahahahahaaa!
I think this is a great argument against the more extreme anti-abortion people, the ones who consider a zygote or gastrocyst to be an human being.
They typically do so on the basis of such being living, of human origin, and of potentially growing into a baby...but if such is true of any random clump of skin cells....
.......... Computers outsmarting man
How much would a Jennifer Love Hewitt with no inhibitions that doesn't pork up when she gets close to 30 run?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
OMG WE CAN REPRO MJ!!!!!
The summary is trying to bring up classic fears of cloning. However just because they raised pups from skin cells does not mean they can raise offspring from those cells that have a legitimate chance of living full lives. If they are indeed starting from adult skin cells, then they are starting with essentially old material; mammalian cells (excluding gametes and their progenitor cells) generally only can divide a certain number of times before they are no longer really viable for growth.
So before we see people start banging the drum over "ZOMG! Teh humanz r cloning!" we need to see if these mouse clones are actually viableclonesof their parents.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In his book 'Laws of Form', G.S.Brown stated, (from memory) "draw a distinction and a universe comes into being". His book was widely panned and he was seen as markedly eccentric but the idea of a universe coming into being when a distinction is drawn is useful. Our moral code is necessarily somewhat arbitrary and plastic, but we need an agreed upon moral code if we're to govern ourselves. Democracy should ensure the greatest possible personal freedom under the rule of law. Where you go from there is up for grabs. I believe in the family unit as paramount. A man and a woman raising a family is my personal kernel, for others, my values might seem ridiculous or even criminal but that doesn't vitiate the need for a value system that carries moral weight. From my value system cloning is immoral but stem cell research isn't, from my value system abortion is a woman's right for others not. Ultimately, in the face of all the choices and dilemmas, experience and common sense shows democracy and the rule of law to be the best available form of government. Right now people like me who value the family unit as the heart of democracy are still in the majority although the line is fuzzy on stem cell research, the line on cloning isn't, cloning technology should be closely scrutinized and regulated.
ideopath @ play
God did it when he made Eve from the rib [cells] of Adam. This is nothing new or remarkable. But, because God did it, we shouldn't... just like flight and other technologies man has managed to understand the develop. Have I said that right? What say you "Religious Right"?
Yeah, I never liked ASP either. And that was BEFORE dot-net.
RTFA, anyone? In their study published in the journal Nature, scientists led by Qi Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing described how they injected reprogrammed mouse cells into an early-stage embryo to see whether the introduced cells contributed to the tissue of the eventual fetus. Of 37 stem-cell lines created by reprogramming, three yielded 27 live offspring. One of these pups, a seven-week-old male named "Tiny," mated with a female and produced young of its own. How does injecting cells into an embryo, then verifying that the cells were incorporated into the adult animal, possibly constitute "[using] the resulting cells to create live mouse offspring."
Is this where "That makes my skin crawl" came from?
This is Slashdot after all...
Although... where are they going to get THOSE cells is beyond me. Unless he is referring to the surrogate.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I don't see any problem with these researches. Choosing characteristics of your children is not a big deal too.
Even so, I can't help but fear when I think there might be a future filled with genetically engineered people where "the imperfect" (our average joe) will have miserable lives, if allowed to live at all. I believe there are many fiction works depicting that scenario. Unfortunately, I didn't get in contact with any of those.
Maybe people like enough of the old way of having children, maybe not. In that case there might be a future where sex is used exclusively as a way of having pleasure and people would be infertile in that regard.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
From TFA:
Of 37 stem-cell lines created by reprogramming, three yielded 27 live offspring. One of these pups, a seven-week-old male named "Tiny," mated with a female and produced young of its own.
Any more viable and he would have an never-ending copyright extension attached to him.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What has this to do with hentai?
I have yet to hear an ETHICAL reason why human cloning is wrong. There are certainly genetic issues -- the gene pool as a whole is better off if it's mixed up -- but people seem to freak utterly out at the notion of human cloning. Do they think we're gonna use them for food, or what?
I piss off bigots.
More importantly, we are on the threshhold of turning chickens into eggs, thus make the chicken-egg question one of quantum superposition. The chicken can be, both chicken and egg, and many chickens and many eggs *brian explodes*
n/t
Every cell is sacred! When a cell is wasted, God gets quite irate.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
I think your family should be closely scrutinized and regulated.. The way things are going in the Western world, it looks like I'll get my wish.
Though part of that is the fault of the original article.
In their study published in the journal Nature, scientists led by Qi Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing described how they injected reprogrammed mouse cells into an early-stage embryo to see whether the introduced cells contributed to the tissue of the eventual fetus.
In other words, they did not take a skin cell and turn it into a baby mouse. They took a skin cell and decided to see if an already existing mouse embryo would accept the stem cells created from it.
It would have to be what a "moral code" is, as is illustrated in his example. The AC is pointing out that "murder is wrong" is merely a part of our moral code as well and that doesn't play well with your directive.
This is eerily similar to one of the fake news stories in .hack//G.U. Makes one appreciate how realistic the writing was.
eventually. All of the wonderfully humane things we do like assisting difficult childbirth, lowering child mortality, vaccination, corrective surgery etc etc etc. are great. Great for us in the here-and-now as individuals. I wouldn't have it any other way. Longer term however, these behaviors change the survive-and-breed criteria for humans. Like-it-or-not, this will weaken the gene pool. We will end up with more and more people than can not survive without expensive medical intervention. I don't think anybody fancies eugenics. The only way out that I can see is that we must eventually start introducing germ-line fixes to the gene pool. Fix things permanently rather than just in a single generation. The folks crying out that we're playing god should recognize that we're already doing that by way of the medical interventions we already do. We're just being slightly incompetent gods.
I mean, dood, like how do all these mice always manage to get researchers the world over to do their bidding. Why can't humans get them to do research on them, huh???
The only time we hear about human research, it's like that exploding head problem in Scotland (sidebar: a bunch of male subjects heads started rapidly and painfully expanding while undergoing a non-protocol type drug experiment in Scotland, by a German pharmaceutical company, using British subjects and American researchers. Anything about this sound suspicious to anyone???)
Anyway, how do those mice manage to dominate the planet???
Tasty, tasty murder!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woo_Suk_Hwang
Is it potentially possible this article may not be real? Pics or it didn't happen.
I can tell by the skin cells, and because I have seen quite a few suss things in my time.
Screw the ethical concerns
I want them to grow a clone of me and start replacing the parts of me that are wearing out.
They can start with my teeth, eyes, and knees.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
According to the article reprogrammed stem cells were injected into an embryo. An embryo which would have turned into a baby mouse without them.
I exepct this is interesting in the context of assertaining how flexible these reprogrammed stem cells are.
BUT since there was already a viable embryo involved it is hard to separate the signal from the noise.
Well, it seems to me the genetic issues you bring up could ALSO be considered an ethical dilemma, because someone is (rather arrogantly) assuming they're making the "superior choice" by creating clones of a particular human being, despite the negative ramifications the lack of diversity will ultimately cause the human race.
Additionally, while no, I don't think most people are really concerned we'd clone humans to "use them as food", we very well *might* regard cloning as a "more acceptable" way to fight wars. Create human clone soldiers, so if they die, the "original people" they were cloned from are still around?
Haven't I've seen this movie before? Only that time, if a drop of water touched the skin, baby gremlins would start popping out in the form of fur balls.
Life is not for the lazy.
We don't need no more rodents.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
Apart from the somewhat dubious argument regarding chances of pregnancy and the motivations for abortions, the linked video is completely unrelated to the link text.
a) At no point in the video is there any evidence of a 6 week old baby ( or, to be precise, a fetus ) fighting scissors.
b) The video attempts to appeal to religious types right away. The first reason offered for abortion being wrong is "Most of the worlds religions are against abortion".
c) It attempts to appeal to emotions by quoting a letter apparently written from an unborn child to her mother.
> Where do we draw the line?
I'm sure most of us agree we'll have to draw the line somewhere.
The first problem as you say is "Where?".
Whatever we choose will seem rather arbitrary, stupid and unsatisfactory to most people, but it's going to be even more stupid to not draw a line. Or worse- to draw many lines on a case to case basis.
Analogy: when you invent cakes, sooner or later someone has to draw the line and decide what can legally be considered a cake. It be seem silly, and the line may be redrawn later, but it will still have to be drawn. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Cake_or_biscuit.3F
Once we give ourselves a "power", it becomes our responsibility.
Which brings us to the next big problem. To me it seems like the scientists etc are merrily giving us "powers" way before we are ready.
To me, certain areas of research should be postponed till we are ready to draw the relevant lines.
Right now scientists and many other people keep saying stuff like "do it because we can", "don't stop progress", "don't be a luddite".
BUT this is NOT the same as being luddites or sticking our heads in the sand, this is in fact the opposite. This is seeing a potential issue in the horizon, and choosing to not charge at it, until we have a more well thought out plan of what to do when we get there.
The power to make "Jaffa Cakes" and biscuits is not a real biggie, but what should we do with human/animal/machine hybrids?
What makes you legally human? Killing a stray aka "free" dog and unplugging a brain dead human are considered different things legally.
At what points do we consider something human? Be very careful where and how the line is drawn, or many of us may end up not being legally considered human. If we draw the line another way, we might have to stop eating pigs, dogs, etc. The pigs might be happier (or not - since pig farmers will just close down their pig farms and leave them to fend for themselves aka die). It is no trivial matter. We already have enough problems convincing people what can and cannot be done with human embryos, imagine the problems with hybrid human-animal embryos.
If we are not prepared to draw certain lines yet, "don't go there yet" then. If we charge into things, the judges may not have enough understanding when they draw the first line, could then be a long and troubled wait till it is next redrawn.
There are plenty of other areas to do research in first (and limited resources anyway). Areas without such problems.
Lastly, even if a human embryo isn't much in the early months (or weeks), for symbolic reasons we could draw a more cautious (early) line. After all we for various reasons have chosen to elevate humans and human life above all other creatures. If we are going to value humans so highly, giving special value to a near brainless human embryo doesn't seem that stupid to me.
Plus if we don't, it might be harder to convince the future AIs or advanced hybrids to value humans and their embryos as highly ;).
They didn't create an embryo. They added reprogrammed skin cells to an already existing embryo and the reprogrammed cells "contributed to the tissue of the eventual fetus." Still interesting, but not as cool as just taking a few skin cells and growing a whole new mouse.
Damned popular press covering science stories...
"All you need are somebody's skin cells to create a human baby.""
And, you know, an embryo. Which will become a human baby all by itself anyway.
beside the fact that a cell isnt a self-consciencious living thing (and i think that's the right description, morale usually forbids killing a innocent *SELF CONSCIENCIOUS* living form) there's more to it..
to live, we kill. we kill cows, and other animals and eat them. And fish. Wow! such an horrible thing!
we eat eggs also.
we also "kill" fruits, and vegetables. they're not consciencious so its less of a moral problem right? and they're living as well.
oh and if we don't do that and eat we basically cannot live.
there was a time, when killing one another was considered "ok". bad, but part of life. Now it's all about saving every single live and living as long as possible.
here's the truth: im glad we die. from old age or not. I wish, that everyone dies with the less pain possible, but that isn't the point.
death is the only thing that permit new generations to make something better with the world we have. if people with power would live forever we'd have a damn problem.
in my mind, nature is well done on this area. we die, everything dies, to evolve. basically, we die so that we can survive.
Bring on the genetically improved übermensch, the smarter-than-us AIs, the better-than-normal-limbs prosthetics, the longevity research, the clones. Everything.
I want a metallic right arm, a camera for an eye, a CPU in my head, augmented reality vision, live to see my 200:th birthday and go to freaking space!
Ok, how about free morning after pills for the women who like to have sex all of the time. Abortion up to the end of the 1st trimester = Free. The the Second trimester they gots to cough up some dough for it, say 500 bucks or so.
For the third trimester the doctor is not involved in killing the baby. The only thing the doctor does is to induce Labour. Once the fetus is delivered the mother has 10 minutes to strangle the life out of the lump of tissue with her own hands, no tools are allowed to be used. If she fails to do this she is fined 10,000 bucks or is imprisoned for 10 months. If she is rich enough to afford it she is given the prison sentence. It is taking a life, but it shouldn't be illegal, it is like a female bird tossing her eggs out of the nest. But why put the responsibility of snuffing out pre-life on some doctor, make the carrier of that life responsible for doing the deed.
I for one welcome our cute little baby mice overlords may their cuddly evil rayne last forever.
When every cell in your body can be turned into stem cells and "LIFE" then we have a NEW problem!
Its not strictly about reproduction anymore - your dead skin cells you shed by the millions are MURDER! Its not just sperm or eggs anymore. (Say, why don't I hear comments about women not trying to get pregnant every month being murder? Oh, men shed sperm inadvertently too. Neither one can avoid killing many potential humans.)
Should I feel sad when my dandruff doesn't have a fair shot at becoming a person?
We all know its only a matter of time when some rich people start having children that look too much like 1 parent. (GW Bush comes to mind.)
Hopefully successive generations of clones get dumber instead of more cancer prone... Pretty sick to think you extend your mortality with a younger version of yourself. Also, quite ignorant since its just a twin and likely to develop to look different and different upbringing will result in a person not unlike just having a child the normal way. I leave it to the reader to ponder the procreation motives of some people.
Organ donation is a moot point. by the time cloning is ready we will already be growing cloned organs in weeks or months (which is ALREADY being done today.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The correct link should be to the original article in Nature, but my post got modded down due to it's factual, straightforward wording. I'll make it more sensationalistic next time, maybe add a side story about ethics, or a love triangle that formed between the researchers involved.
The soul and abortions: as you stated with the abortion issue, its a matter of definition.
Well, the soul is also a matter of definition and application / interpretation. Similar problem even if IMHO, its more about application of soul than definition.
If the soul exists after death, it does not matter when the body dies because the soul can not die by probably every definition of soul out there. Soul is rather vague making it much easier to accept and harder to prove or argue about. A definition of soul may not includeÂmany details:
When it comes into "existence" or may not have any of our concept of time.
When it attaches to a body (1 week, 9months, 3 years?)
What happens to a soul before attaching, during (forgets past lives?,) and after detaching (death)?
Does it have a limited existence or can it exist in multiple bodies at the same time?
Is it unique or individualized or just a fragment of a single entity? (most likely this is partially addressed by the definition but not necessarily.)
Ha! Is there a soul soul? ... who wants lots of soles? (ok that was lame.)
I've been told that unborn children go to heaven; in which case, abortion is the the safest path to heaven - I suppose you don't get any reward when you are hell bound anyway and decide to abort, masturbate, kill infants - as many possible so they can surely get into heaven?
Wouldn't it all be easier if we used that the other definition... "He's got rhythm but no soul."
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
To go pass the edge, then sex with a women who isn't at her fertile point in her cycle is murder since if you had sex with a women who is fertile you would have had a child ...
My dreams of budding are realized at last!
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Those that want the benefits of stem-cell research should be able. Those that don't should decline.