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Scientists Turn Skin Into Blood
Breakthru writes "In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012."
In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin.
So not only will it clot, it can tan?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That whole "walking around with no skin" situation could be a bit of a problem.
Seems to me they invented the reverse of the process that's really needed. It's a lot harder to get enough skin for grafting than it is to get blood for transfusions. Wouldn't blood-to-skin be a better conversion?
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.
No, no, no. No even wrong. However, the idiot FA is so devoid of information that yours is a reasonable assumption. A better intro.
Useless note to Slashdot editors: Stay away from University PR Blurbs. A bigger waste of electrons than Fox News.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Oops, sorry, a real link.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Indeed. Now just to get the MEDIA to stop mixing them up. :(
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
Even if it is a replacement, we're still years behind where we would be if the hicks didn't insist that we throw out the unused embryos. The reality is that we've got plenty of embryonic stem cells available without creating any more. Which really ought to be where the morals come into it. As it stands we're destroying the extra stem cells from IVF instead of using them because the right won't allow scientists to use them.
So they'll be able to grind up people and use them for blood transfusions, right?
Both sides of that argument had a lot of wrong impressions and misunderstandings. Using embryonic stem cells wan't directly about treatment, it was about research, there were properties that they wanted to understand. The biomedical community needed to learn how they work so that that knowledge can be used as a baseline to compare treatments. Interviewees on Science Friday did a pretty good job of explaining what they were looking for and why embryonic stem cells were desired for research. As for treatment though, I don't think ESC were ever going to be used in treatments except for very limited trials.
Now if we can just get the Crips to turn into bloods we may actually have something useful.
______ Eagles may fly but monkeys don't get sucked into jet engines.
When scientist act like ad execs, can you blame the Kansans?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
No, because most of that is water. Anyways, if you read the actual article in Nature, you will find out how much skin it takes. The information you want is in the supplementary information and they don't put that behind the paywall.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nature09591-s1.pdf
While this is an interesting discovery, scientific history is littered with interesting discoveries that led nowhere. The practicality is dubious until we find answers to quite a few questions. Like how much skin it takes to produce a half liter of blood. A half liter is the standard volume of one bag of packed red blood cells (RBC). To be precise - 450 ml. If you need the entire skin to produce that much, then it's not exactly practical. And if you can grow an RBC supply from just a little bit of skin, how much time will it take and how much money in resources to develop AND store an adequate quantity? And will doing so compromise the stability or functionality (O2 carrying capabilities) of the RBC's produced by such a method?
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Even if it is a replacement, we're still years behind where we would be if the hicks didn't insist that we throw out the unused embryos. The reality is that we've got plenty of embryonic stem cells available without creating any more. Which really ought to be where the morals come into it. As it stands we're destroying the extra stem cells from IVF instead of using them because the right won't allow scientists to use them.
Yes, because research is only done in the USA, no one else has the will or facilities to do any experiments.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Cut off a patch of skin. Yeah, that'll stop the bleeding!
Then you should probably shower more often.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Dear Pathetic Concern Troll:
Sorry about your butthurt.
I suppose I should be sorry to tell you this, but America's founders were Deists, Unitarians, Atheists and Freemasons.
Scarcely the creme of "christianity".
Oh, also. Most Americans have no beef about using embryos for research that will help humanity. The research IS being done, despite your butthurt, in Europe and Asia, where christian lunatics have no say in the matter.
So, here's the deal. People like you are dying out. Every generation more and more people reject your 'religion'. Your book of the collected myths, fables and superstitions of bronze age nomadic desert herders and the death cults they belonged to, is ignored and rejected.
Sucks to be you.
For the rest of us, not so much.
kthnxbai!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Your last point is incorrect. True that much of the interest was in basic research (human ESCs were first isolated in 1998), but genuine therapies using ESCs are underway and more are imminent. Due to the ridiculous controversy, progress was made to develop induced pluripotent cells from autologous sources (say from skin) but the methods used rendered them unsuitable for the clinic. Recently developed iRNA techniques make them safer and more efficient, however the iPSCs tendency to revert back to their original tissue type still makes clinical use uncertain.
For now ESCs remain the gold standard for clinical and research use, despite the allograft challenge. I am hoping to participate in a trial myself.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
We don't really need to do anything. Our survival stems from our evolved ability to correctly attribute cause to effect, and therefore be able to control effects by controlling causes. As soon as you remove this ability (by claiming simply that the cause is "god dun it") you remove the ability to control reality, which means removing the ability of self preservation. This is why countries where religion isn't rampant are able to run themselves in a more sustained way, right across the board, you'll tend to find fewer boom/bust cycles, fewer wars, fewer enemies, more renewable energy sources. This is because you can't expect somebody to be irrational only when it comes to their religion; their ability to believe things without reason infects their entire decision making process, as does the ability to escape personal responsibility (submitting to "god's will" rather than exercising ones own will to solve problems).
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Actually, this doesn't reprogram the cells to be IPS cells. It's a direct conversion, per the actual article from the actual source.
One advantage of direct cell conversions is that unlike embryonic stem cells or IPS cells stuck itno a human body, they're pretty sure these cells wouldn't be likely to cause tumors.
You should probably be aware that not all Christians are Catholics. There are plenty of Christians who believe in birth control (including many Catholics who disagree with their church over it).
Most of them don't believe in abortion as a convenient form of birth control, though. Contraception is much easier, safer, and cheaper for the mother than abortion, even if you do think abortion is grand.
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest. However, I know that making it illegal wouldn't stop it. It'd just drive it underground and make everybody involved -- mothers, fathers, doctors and nurses performing -- worse off. I think it should be, as President Clinton said, "legal, safe, and rare".
Now, about the difference between IVF and abortion... IVF is not abortion. The embryos from IVF used for ECS research have not been implanted then scraped out by a surgeon. They are the spare embryos that were never implanted in the uterus. These are left over from women and couples trying to get pregnant and have kids, not preventing it. It's not about birth control in the common sense of the phrase, which is preventing births.
Your argument seems to confuse quite a few topics. You also generalize quite a few groups into one you clearly disagree with the most. In your quest to vilify people as simpletons who don't grasp the issues at hand, you have oversimplified the topics and (probably intentionally) failed to even acknowledge the issues at hand are much more complex than you mention.
Next you're going to tell me masturbation should be illegal.
Yep, that's probably next on the agenda. Especially if it's for commercial or research purposes.
Even if it is a replacement, we're still years behind where we would be if the hicks didn't insist that we throw out the unused embryos.
First sentence: bigoted language. Sounds like we're off to a good start.
As near as I can gather you are intending this post toward the 'life-begins-at-conception' branch of the American pro life movement. In which case you are a bit confused in saying they "insist we throw out the unused embryos" given that they fight tooth and nail specifically to prevent unused embryos from being discarded. They often oppose IVF itself precisely because excess embryos are thrown out.
As it stands we're destroying the extra stem cells from IVF instead of using them because the right won't allow scientists to use them.
That's quite an uninformed statement. There really is no restriction on what can or cannot be done with embryos (apart from I believe in the state of Indiana). They are thrown out largely because there is no use from them. The restrictions which have existed (until Obama overturned them) regard limiting federally funded research to certain pre-existent lines.
The reality is that we've got plenty of embryonic stem cells available without creating any more. Which really ought to be where the morals come into it.
Where, exactly? At the point you align morals with "doing what's convenient and what we would have done anyway" I don't think you've really addressed a moral question at all.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I'm fairly sure a lot of the /. readership would like to participate in the creation of ESCs.
[Giggedy]
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Most US Christians are either OF the religious right, or more importantly will never oppose it.
The few on Slashdot aren't representative. The MANY who just voted the Teapublicans into power ARE representative, and just proved it yet again.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
How about in the case of a 15-year-old girl whose Christian parents who wouldn't talk about sex at all with her for fear that her hearing about it would encourage her to do it? So the girl doesn't know the fundamentals and trusts her new boyfriend who insists "condoms don't feel good" and "I'll pull out".
What I'm asking is: how do you feel about unwanted and highly personally destructive pregnancies ultimately enabled by ignorance due to religion?
"Oh no... he found the
Never mind can it help... Will It Blend?
Most of them don't believe in abortion as a convenient form of birth control, though.
I've never met anyone who thinks abortion is a convenient form of birth control, including women who have had several of them.
Contraception is much easier, safer, and cheaper for the mother than abortion, even if you do think abortion is grand.
It's also far from perfect.
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
[...]
Now, about the difference between IVF and abortion... IVF is not abortion.
I am fascinated to hear how you've managed to justify that little mental disconnect to yourself. What's the moral difference between creating an embryo in a test tube and then destroying it, and creating an embryo in a uterus and then destroying it ? By what measure can destroying an embryo that was almost certainly an accident be considered a greater crime than deliberately creating dozens (if not hundreds) of them with the absolute foreknowledge they would nearly all be destroyed (ie: creating them to destroy them) ?
I was able to turn quite a lot of skin into quite a lot of blood, with nothing more complicated than a length of aerial cable and a Peugeot Boxer van. Feed aerial cable down through the roof, slide hand between headlining and door frame to retrieve cable, and voila! Lots of blood and no skin on the back of your hand!
I'm fairly sure a lot of the /. readership would like to participate in the creation of ESCs.
I know you are being funny but your comment reminded me: research shows that the average sexually active straight woman not using birth control will shed fertilized eggs on a regular basis (entirely naturally) because they fail to implant or because her period arrives too quickly (not enough hormones build up to trigger the "I'm preggers" alarm and stop the monthly cycle). Of the ones that do implant, a significant number miscarry due to errors in the DNA, cell replication, or other developmental issues. Sometimes the woman is even unaware that she was pregnant to begin with, she may just believe her cycle was "late".
Warning: metaphysical discussion follows...
If life/humanity/soul/etc begins at conception, then God is the biggest mass murderer of all time. That's not an image of God I can buy, so I must conclude that the human idea that "life begins at conception" must be entirely incorrect. Ergo there can be no legitimate objection to the study of stem cells nor can there be objection to birth control or even at least some types of abortions.
As a man of science and of faith I must believe that anytime scientific discovery and faith appear to be in conflict they are not - it is merely my misinterpretation or my preconceived ideas about God that cause the conflict. The facts are what they are and do not bend themselves to fit my worldview, something I wish more people would acknowledge.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
What kind of woman has several abortions without it being a (convenient) form of birth control?
Umm if you follow the Bible, God was willing to personally kill everything on the earth save a handful of people and animals. I don't see why a few billion embryos would be a issue for him, since he's not actively killing them but just allowing a natural process. If you want to place blame on him for his design then I think that opens up much bigger list of issues in human design.
Incoming down-mods! You just brought Bristol Palin into this!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel