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Rudimentary Liver Grown In a Dish

ananyo writes "Japanese scientists have coaxed stem cells into forming a 5-millimeter-long, three-dimensional tissue that the researchers labelled a liver bud — an early stage of liver development. The bud lacks bile ducts but has blood vessels, and when transplanted into a mouse, was able to metabolize some drugs that human livers metabolize but mouse livers normally cannot. The work is 'the first report demonstrating the creation of a human functional organ with vascular networks from pluripotent stem cells,' the team claims."

3 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Burn in Hell! by Dishevel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What God wants and does not want are things that can be up for discussion.
    If God does in fact exist though I can most assuredly tell you that nothing can interfere with his will.
    If something human can interfere with Gods will it would not be much of a God.

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  2. Re:Burn in Hell! by SomePgmr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a distantly former, semi-active "turbo-religious type" (Baptist), from a major metropolitan area that's not in Alabama, I'll second his observations.

    There was nothing terribly rare (and certainly not insignificant) about viewing cutting-edge medical science as a meddling denial of God's will. The talking points would probably be a bit more... flowery... and go something along the lines of them being, "desperate attempts to cheat your mortality, to foolishly tell ourselves that we're our own masters, to deny our place as God's children, and that only Jesus' sacrifice can truly save us from suffering." You'd have to talk to a professional preacher to get the exact form of wackiness... I'm a little rusty.

    So in this case, if I revisited my old religious groups today I wouldn't be at-all surprised if growing new organs for transplant, however they're presently derived, is considered the fruit of an evil science pioneered in infanticide.

    We need to be honest about the underlying issue here... there's no real regard for reason in an institution that depends entirely on a lack thereof. Pretending otherwise (when you're out in public, anyway) is little more than a PR strategy.

  3. Re:Burn in Hell! by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem was that if a discovery was made with them, there would be an incentive to create embryo "farms" to produce more.

    So, prohibit the non-incidental production of embryonic stem cells. Banning the research is nothing more than deliberate ignorance.

    It's similar to how most people have no problem performing an autopsy, but will get somewhat annoyed if you start creating dead bodies to do so

    Which is why we have laws prohibiting people from doing anatomy on cadavers. Oh wait, we don't.

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