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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.'"
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
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
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!
Scientists now how the power to turn people in to baby chickens? Delicious!
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.
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"?
There is no scientific consensus on when life begins, but most would agree that the thing is a living human whenever the egg is fertilized.
It appears we are now on a slippery slope that some of us have been predicting for a long time. From the article: "All you need are somebody's skin cells to create a human baby."
That isn't quite true yet, but it will be soon. The technique these guys are using injects reverted skin cells into an existing embryo, so you still need an embryo to start with. But that's just a temporary thing. At some point we will be able to revert skin cells to zygotes, and at that point all the crazy "life begins at conception therefore abortion is wrong" folks will go really nuts, because the completely nominal line between "ordinary somatic cell" and "living human being" will be entirely erased. Every cell in our bodies will clearly have the potential to become an independent, living human being, just like a zygote made the old fashion way.
Every human society has practised some form of defacto infanticide, and abortion is WAY better than any alternative, and pregnant women are FAR more qualified than anyone else--both on an information-theoretic basis and a moral basis--to decide what happens to their offspring and their body. Ergo, life begins at conception, and abortion is not wrong.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Whether life begins at conception depends entirely on what you mean by "life", and that's a matter for philosophy or religion, not science. Science can never change one's mind about what constitutes life, because life is life by definition.
Whenever necessary, the people who want to believe a certain thing will refine their definitions to suit what they want to believe. Take, for example, the loophole in some laws that forgot to mention that "marriage" must be between a man and a woman that anti-gay folks are trying to close.
While most might "agree that there is a living human at fertilization", the same most would probably not be willing to investigate every single miscarriage as an accidental death, or even potential murder case. Clearly, they're not quite fully "life", both morally and logistically.
Every cell is sacred! When a cell is wasted, God gets quite irate.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
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.
> 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 ;).