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Stem Cells Used To Grow Miniature Human Livers In Mice
ananyo writes "Transplanting tiny 'liver buds' constructed from human stem cells restores liver function in mice, researchers have found. Although preliminary, the results offer a potential path towards developing treatments for the thousands of patients awaiting liver transplants every year. The liver buds, approximately 4 mm across, staved off death in mice with liver failure, the researchers report this week in Nature (abstract.). The transplanted structures also took on a range of liver functions — secreting liver-specific proteins and producing human-specific metabolites. But perhaps most notably, these buds quickly hooked up with nearby blood vessels and continued to grow after transplantation."
Well... You eat your own cells all the time, and in practice you probably get a serving of other peoples' sloughed-off cells with every meal you have. I guess it's really more a matter of intent: If you're not getting the stuff from a human body (or arrange for the human to become "body" in the first place) then you may well decide this is not really cannibalism no matter what DNA the cells happen to contain. It comes from a mouse, so it's basically a mouse liver.
Why you'd want to eat mouse livers is another question of course, though chicken liver is delicious, so why not?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
As usual, any kind of clinical use of this stem cell stuff is "ten years away". These guys are as bad as fusion researchers.
I'm sure they'd love to try it in a human dying of liver disease. But between the FDA regs, the self-appointed Medical Ethics czars, and the malpractice ambulance-chasers there's a lot of hurdles to jump before they MIGHT be allowed to try it (let alone deploy it as a regular procedure).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
He's right you know. Here in Europe we're so backward that we still marvel at the germ theory of disease. Only last week I had to miss work due to the Black Death. Luckily for me it was only a mild case and I'm up and running again. well hopping really, what with the gangrenous leg and all.
Welcome our new rodent overlords
FTFY. Adjectives are always funnier.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The socialised systems in Europe (or several countries here at least) suffer from the same problem as ObamaCare, and your current health care system: a powerful oligarchy of insurance companies. These companies have no incentive to drive down health care costs, on the contrary. They'd much rather pay twice as much and double our premiums at the same time. On top of that these companies (at least in NL) are building their own health care bureaucracies to do stuff that has little to do with insurance but looks nice, like helping customers live more healthy lives... useful stuff to be sure, but paid for by our premiums and very, very, very expensive.
One of our ministers had the right idea (he's a socialist but a clever fellow nonetheless, and smarter than many of his colleagues). Insurance is this: you collect premiums, and if someone stubs a toe, you pay their medical bill. If (like in NL) everyone is insured for basic healthcare at the same rates and under the same terms... why then do we still need insurance companies? What are they going to compete on? Simpler to let the gov't self insure and cut out these horribly expensive middlemen who add no value, leave the insurers to offer us packages for additional coverage.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
What a load of bullshit.
I AM from Germany, we DO have a "socialized" system, and the solution to your bullshit scenario IS *regulation*.
So eat your heart out, you bumbling idiot!
Our government simply told the all statutory health insurance fund (is that the right term?) companies:
"This is how much money you can get. Period."
So to maximize profits, they *had* to drive down costs. And they did. It was so effective that we now also have to add regulation to prevent healthcare workers / doctors to earn too *little*.
And every big company has its own insurer / fund, which has no interests in profits, but in keeping the employees healthy and well. So they offer a load of non-required services like sports programs and other preventative things, but even pseudo-scientific things like acupuncture. Hell, I even get 200€ a year to waste on whatever shit I please. (I chose to replace the old dental fillings with a more modern material. Yes, 200â is enough for at least four such procedures!)
Now what, idiot?