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In a Cloning First, Scientists Create Stem Cells From Adults
Trax3001BBS (2368736) writes in with news about a breakthrough in creating stem cells perfectly matched to a person's DNA. "...Lanza's group used caffeine to prevent the fused egg from dividing prematurely. Rather than leaving the egg with its newly introduced DNA for 30 minutes before activating the dividing stage, they let the eggs rest for about two hours. This gave the DNA enough time to acclimate to its new environment and interact with the egg's development factors, which erased each of the donor cell's existing history and reprogrammed it to act like a brand new cell in an embryo.'"
Is there anything caffeine can't do?
LOL, last week it was vinegar, now its caffeine, will it be a good cuban cigar next week?
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Once that's done, we can proceed to the next step - actually doing useful medical research to provide cures and treatments. So far, we have high hopes for stem cells. It would sure be nice if we could actually make the current theories and experimental research into something more than just the search for pure academic knowledge (*gives the religious fundamentalists a dirty look for slowing us down for so long*)
... But Continue Destroying Test-tube Feotuses For Personal Enjoyment
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Selling immortality treatments means: profit.
People living longer means: they buy more products.
People being healthier means: they can work longer:
More products/industry: more profit!
I don't see how capitalism is inherently anti-science...
The implications of this research are huge, from mammoths to saber tooth tigers. I'm excited to see what they add to the zoo next! But they can't try to control it too tightly... life will find a way...
at least it's not an under-age pron site.
You don't want to CURE anything, including aging, if you're capitalist. You want to relieve the symptoms.
There is more money to be had in people feeling less horrible while they die than there is in just flatly curing them their ails.
Additionally, children are gigantic sources of profit, particularly for their ability to demand cheap plastic baubles and infecting eachother with anything around. You want a steady stream of replacements popping out of half the population, as many as possible. Not as likely when everyone's less worried about their lack of immortality.
Actually, this is an independent reproduction of an experiment from Oregon in, I think, 2007. This would seem to be the real deal.
... or will be totally allergic to it.
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Is to make stem cells that grow into ovaries so that they can have an endless supply of eggs.
Idiot these are unfertilizedd eggs that could never grow into a human being.
as a biologist, let me say... do you have ANY idea what you are talking about? lol
i find it hilarious when people spout so much bullshit about something they know absolutely nothing about. honestly, if you had just spent 5 minutes googling stem cell research, you would come across as 1000x more informed.
Do the cells not form a blastula? The article was a bit fuzzy on the details. If these form embryonic stem cells it just seems like a matter of degree to outright produce a whole embryo, which of course means the possibility of human cloning.
So, did the stem cells all flip out, pull their shirts over their....uhh...whatevers...and start asking "Arrrre you thrrreatening me?"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
jesus stated in the new old testament that ALL stem cells are murder. this shit will not get past him
please say 'NO' to progress and enjoy the easter weekend
ROFLMAO.
I am not familiar with biology but from what I read stem cells supposed to be able to be "programmable" and can grow into any type of body part.
Now, what if the stem cells carry a male donor's DNA ? Can the stem cells be grown into ovaries ?
Are you kidding? Capitalism has proven itself all about destroying markets if it can make a quick buck. It is all about eating each other's lunch. If you make a cure you get the entire treatment market for the condition instead of just a share of it. And that is ignoring the other fringe benefits of it like good publicity building your brand.
The interesting thing is that most scientists thought that embryonic stem cells would be more promising, but reversing a persons own cells to stem cells should provide a much better path to treatments. You can actually thank the fundies for forcing this kind of research instead of embryonic stem cells.
You know, you might want to do a little research before launching on a rant. Then you might discover that there are already 80 diseases which are treated with stem cells. So, we have already moved beyond theories and experimental research to something more than "the search for pure academic knowledge." In addition, it appears that the misinformation spread by supporters of embryonic stem cell research has done more to delay the development of stem cell treatments than the relatively minor limits that George W. Bush put upon the use of federal funds when he became the first President to allow ANY federal funds to be used for embryonic stem cell research.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Private sector is not willing or able to put in the time and funding needed to perform necessary basic research. It just takes too much time, risk, and money for a company to support the basic biological research, which is what generates the big discoveries.
Basic research (not applied or "translationsal research) in biology leads to knowledge and new techniques. It is not feasible to make a profit off of these unless you can keep the knowledge a secret up to the point of it leading to a product. By definition, for basic research the lag time and uncertainty between investment in research and conversion to a profit making product is too great to realistically expect even large companies to absorb.
Look at the giant drug companies. They have huge research budgets. But, they can support only research that is directly applied to diseases, and only those diseases that will make a profit.
While "fundies" may like the results that human ES cells are not used as much because of cellular reprogramming, they played absolutely no helpful role in "forcing" iPS research or any type of reprogramming research for that matter. Trying to block useful ES cell research is not the same as stimulating reprogramming research. The reprogramming research was initiated by and made possible by the scientists who were interested in the concepts and by the funding agencies that supported their efforts.
TLDR: It will probably be about a year to replicate it in humans. Therapy will be several years even assuming it's perfectly safe and assuming no political interference.
It's not a complete departure from previous stuff, though it looks like it is a new technique, so it will need to be independently replicated. Induced pluripotent stem cells took over a year to be reproduced, so there's that.
The next steps are longer, making sure it's safe, and finding a way to harness it.
Clinical trials for stem cell therapies are underway, but I'm not aware of anything so far that is a stunning success, where you put in stem cells and get a regenerated heart, liver, whatever, so we're not quite ready to hit the ground running. Of course, a lot of that was held back by the lack of stem cells which the host's immune system wouldn't reject, so theyr'e a lot closer now. Work on ESC or IPSC advanced being able to harness it, but I don't think there are any clear-cut treatments we know of that were simply waiting on a good source of cells. Spinal cord injuries in mice, I know they're not there yet, you inject cells you've directed somewhat to differentiate into neurons and the recovery rates in mice are nothing miraculous yet. They're improved, but there's the added complication that mice tend to recover from spinal cord injuries better than humans: they're a lot younger than us and can naturally recover better than we can. So it doesn't look like this immediately opens doors to treatments in humans, though it definitely speeds it up a lot. (And I could be wrong about there not being treatments ready to go in humans right now).
On safety, cancer is always an issue with pluripotent cells. Injecting pluripotent stem cells, which can make anything, makes teratomas, which are tumors of mixed cell populations. That's actually a test of stem cells: inject it into a mouse, if you get tumors that have several types of cells in them, you know you've actually got pluripotent stem cells. Teratomas can be complicated to treat though, so injecting pluripotent stem cells into a patient is a terrible idea.
Induced pluripotent stem cells have the additional hazard that you're explicitly turning on cancer-causing genes in the cells to make them that way. They appear to be turned back off, but it's still a concern. Furthermore, there have been suggestions that reverting cells back to a pluripotent state increases the likelihood of mutations. Obviously if the rate of mutation during the process is too high, that can also cause cancer. I haven't been following that literature, so I don't know if that's been discarded with IPSC. And I don't think it's been done with this new technique, though I haven't read the paper.
So there's no clear timeline, which is disappointing, but whatever the timing was going to be, it's shorter now, so yay.
Selling immortality treatments means: profit.
People living longer means: they buy more products.
People being healthier means: they can work longer:
More products/industry: more profit!
I don't see how capitalism is inherently anti-science...
Selling immortality treatments means: burial costs increase exponentially.
People living longer means: as they age the retirement system totally collapses (Social Security, Medicare, etc) .
People being healthier means: medical insurance skyrockets.
More products/industry: more draconian laws for the government enforce due to being 'purchased' by said corporations.
FTFY
I'm not cynical, just realistic. :)