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.'"

Comments

Ethical challenges?

[phantomfive]

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.

Controversial?

[dov_0]

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.

Re:others trying to force their morales on us

[timmarhy]

"But lets say for a moment that a fertilized egg is a human being"

this is exactly what i'm talking about - i don't agree that a couple of cells constitutes a human being, so why should someone like yourself who this has zero impact on get to deny 100,000's of people potentially life saving treatments? i'd like to see these people against stem cell research look a kid dieing from organ failure in the eye, and tell him they don't believe cloned organs are worth looking into.

i think part of the problem is a lot of people have romanticised the idea of conception, if they were to actually go to a lab and see what they are protesting about they might alter their views.