Slashdot Mirror
Facial Bones Grown From Fat-Derived Stem Cells
TheClockworkSoul sends in an article up at Scientific American, from which we quote: "Stem cells so far have been used to mend tissues ranging from damaged hearts to collapsed tracheas. Now the multifaceted cells have proved successful at regrowing bone in humans. In the first procedure of its kind, doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center replaced a 14-year-old boy's missing cheekbones — in part by repurposing stem cells from his own body. To create the new bones, which have become part of the patient's own skull structure and have remained securely in place for four and a half months, the medical team used a combination of fat-derived stem cells, donated bone scaffolds, growth factors, and bone-coating tissue. The technique, should it be approved for widespread use, could benefit some seven million people in the US who need more bone — everyone from cancer patients to injured war veterans."
This is really cool. I can't wait 'till stemcells can finally regrow whole bodies! Imagine! Immortality at our doorstep!
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
Is there really a use now for embryonic stem cells now that we can do just about everything with adult stem cells? Really, if we could move some of the less informed political activists for more funding for adult stem cells perhaps we could do a lot more.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Now he really has a "fat head"
"To create the new bones...the medical team used a combination of fat-derived stem cells..."
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
" The technique, should it be approved for widespread use, could benefit some seven million people in the US who need more bone" Isnt that what those Ashly Madison commercials have been about?
Adipose Industries is acting up again!
Hmmm just like Skele-gro from Harry potter. Adds another check-mark for the old contra: "Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
I'm not fat! I'm just big boned!
The surgeons had to build the shape and structure of the desired bone, the scaffolding, from cadaver femur bone tissue.
From the popular media I've been lead to believe the promise of stem cells the ability to grow specific bones, tissues, and organs, using information encoded in the cells, rather than just growing the generic tissue and shaping it artificially.
What needs to happen for us to go from growing cheek bone tissue around scaffolding, to implanting stem cells and instructing them to build cheek bones?
Tell me again why we need embryonic stem cells.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
He is an American of Anglo-Saxon ancestry.
So? What have you accomplished?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
the usual excuse of racism might have held water a hundred years ago. now that "racist" is about the worst thing that could happen to your reputation, especially if you are an organization, and now that there is affirmative action, we are hard pressed to explain the lack of achievement of black people. if they are in fact equal to whites and asians, then where are their achievements??
>
Of course this does not begin to explain nations in which the vast majority of people are black, in which racism is a non-issue. Why have those nations not been the bastions of peace and stability, if in fact racism is the main thing holding back black people?
This technique will be a great boon for people with a massive amount of dental damage - where the jaw has been eaten away from disease, or injury has made it impossible to even use dentures. It'll likely be expensive for a long time, but for people who are facing a life of eating through a straw, and having massive facial deformities, this would be a huge change in their lives.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
The same two reasons they were always needed:
1. For people in the embryonic stem cell research business to cash in using government money.
2. As a political wedge issue. Embryonic stem cells are needed in order to portray anyone religious (or anyone else who values human life before birth) as standing between the diseased and their inevitable cures.
They need to keep telling the story about the miracle cure that's always only a few years away in order to get out the votes, raise funds, spread hatred, marginalize religious minorities, and get the government to write them checks to fund it all again next election.
Americans of African descent invented the technique for preserving blood plasma, pioneered open-heart surgery, the advanced shoe lath, and a slew of peanut-derived products including paints, plastics, and dyes.
If it comes from our own spread? Why the long face?
Say good bye to this sort of innovation when we have government health care.
I call jimi hendrix a pretty good accomplishment
We know that Japanese IQ is about 20 points higher than African IQ. Could this IQ difference explain why all societies dominated by Africans are gross failures?
If politics had something to do with intelligence instead of interests, you might have a point. But even in that case, you're wrong. In societies with a large amount of inequality, such as China, the USA, and most African nations, IQ is much less inherited than it is socially determined. Only when you get to societies where everyone has equal access to education, regardless of income, you see that IQ is related more to the person than to his circumstances.
So IQ being higher in Japan could well mean that access to education in Japan is available to everyone and not restricted to a fairly wealthy subset of the population, such as in the USA.
Ofcourse, your argument was bullshit to begin with: you had to restrict it to the USA and Japan to start with, then you had to restrict it to only the physics and chemistry nobel prizes because including literature or a peace prize (Obama) would have destroyed your argument right off the bat. And ofcourse you had to ignore the fact that a lot of those contributions came about when the African Americans were still enslaved or had just left slavery - slavery tends to reduce your chance of becoming a Nobel prize winner a bit.
In other words: you had to put on a blindfold in order not to see the gaping holes in your argument. Well, good luck in your cosy little world. It must be pretty peaceful when you only see things you want to see.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Jaw bone replacement from stem cells was done in Finland already two years ago, although I am not able to comment on the procedure itself..
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fi&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsuomenkuvalehti.fi%2Fjutut%2Fterveys-ja-tiede%2Freino-leisti-sai-kantasoluista-kasvatetun-uuden-ylaleuan
I suspect a lot of us on /. could contribute.
Once again another non-embryonic stem cell cure. Adult stem cells: 458, Embryonic stem cells: zip.
How far are they from growing me the last phalanx that i lost in an accident? Sorry, i'm on my cellphone
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Here are before and after photos of the teen.
Phalanges is the plural of phalanx. [1]
Okay, I'll bite.
That first year textbook will also tell you that embryonic stem cells are now harvested just fine without causing any harm to viable embryos
Citation please. Maybe it's because IANA cell biologist, but I am not aware of any mechanism outside of SCNT that provides an avenue for ESC treatment that wouldn't result in severe tissue rejection by the patient.
Are you hinging the weight of your statement here on "viable"? If so, how is a SCNT embryo not "viable"? If so, those embryos are quite viable, and the usefulness of the stem cells largely depends on their viability. Who wants to take stem cells to cure a disease if the stem cell has bigger problems? I mean, seriously -- whole companies are founded based on cloning dead pets through SCNT. Your statement is false, and you're spreading mis-information. Citation, please.
and are otherwise acquired from ALREADY DISCARDED and nonviable embryos
You word this as if it's such a slam dunk. If it's a point not worth debating, then would any reasonable person object to the non-consentual harvesting of organs from death-row criminals? I mean, they're already discarded anyways.
So no, it doesn't require the destruction of an embryo any more than recycling newspaper's people have already thrown out requires the destruction of trees.
So what happens if you run out of newspapers? You give a faulty analogy, because newspapers are fairly common -- IVF leftovers, while they do have a surplus supply of tens of thousands, is a supply that has built up over the last thirty years. And as we have gotten better at IVF, we create and save fewer and fewer embryos with every treatment. If ESC with SCNT reaches the point of actually having a viable treatment available, we would burn through our IVF reserves incredibly quickly. A simple look at the numbers will show you that the demand for embryos will far outstrip the supply, and we will have to start farming human eggs.
All that to say, I'll call your bluff. Citations, please.