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Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Beating Heart Muscle
An anonymous reader writes "By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers at Technion Israel Institute of Technology were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first. 'We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born,' Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine said."
By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells as the precursor to other cell lines that match the patients genetic makeup. are you increasing the chances of cancer?
In my certainly uninformed view, skin cells are exposed to more radiation, thus more likely to have replication errors in their DNA, then adding the stress of modifying the cell to another form, I wonder what that does to it from a replication standpoint. It is nice to have fresh heat muscle I am sure, but to suddenly find yourself with melanoma in the heart would be a bummer.
Silence is a state of mime.
Overpopulation is not a problem. That is a myth that has been perpetuated since the latter half of the 18th century. Do the math.
Perhaps even the brain... someday. There's nothing inherently mystical or supernatural about the brain that must make it impossible to transfer knowledge and identity from one to the other. We just don't know how... yet.
Without a doubt. I anticipate that it will start becoming a regular occurrence for people to augment their physical and even mental abilities with machines well before the end of this century.
Personally, I'm hoping that we get back on track with space travel, and then I can upload myself into an interstellar space probe. If nano-tech gets good enough, you could maybe even reconstitute a physical body if you find someplace interesting to land. With an electronic mind, you could alter your perception of time so the boring parts of floating between stars for years would only last a few minutes subjectively.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
My head is ugly. I want all new please.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
they cloned him as Mitt Romney and he is on the way, patience.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
The toggle for the host computer's perception speed had better resemble a 386SX-16 turbo button or I wouldn't even bother.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!