Scientists Take Step Toward Creating Artificial Embryos (reuters.com)

An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life. From a report: Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future -- a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development. The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain's Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow. But in new work published on Monday in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the scientists developed the structures further -- using three types of stem cells -- enabling a process called gastrulation, an essential step in which embryonic cells begin self-organizing into a correct structure for an embryo to form.

Comments

We should be playing God!

[Gravis Zero]

Since some coward has mod points and felt the need to post as AC and mod his own posts up just to say we "shouldn't be playing God," I felt it was only right to balance this by claiming we should be playing God.

Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can. If you think science is playing God then you should go back to the jungle with the other monkeys.

this doesn't solve any moral dilemmas

[cascadingstylesheet]

This doesn't solve any moral dilemmas. If you can induce human embryos to come about then those are still human.

Re:this doesn't solve any moral dilemmas

[Rick Schumann]

Did you not ever watch the Blade Runner movies? Replicants were obviously based on human DNA, but even if our biotechnology isn't at the level where we can create Replicants, we already have corporations that patent DNA sequences, even if they're naturally occurring, and GMO foods are most certainly patented and copyrighted, so how is it any stretch of the imagination at all that some company could take stock human genes, tweak them in specific ways, patent and copyright them, and since they're not 'born of woman', call them a 'product' and since they're sufficiently different genetically from humans, say they're 'not human beings'? Granted it would be the Supreme Court ruling of the millennia, but it's theoretically possible if our biotech reaches the level where we can do that. Note we're already at the level where 'designer babies' to one extent or another are possible, and it's just mere laws and ethics that are preventing it from happening (assuming that somewhere in China, for instance, it's not already happening).

Re:Should not be playing God

[Anonymous Coward]

Then maybe the people who want to stop abortions should spend their time educating people about birth control and distributing pill and condoms...

Because those are the only things that have been demonstrated to reduce abortion rates

Re:Great news for Planned Parenthood!

[hyades1]

The only things needing to be tracked back to their lair and killed are a drooling conservative morons pretending to give a shit about babies.

Re:Playing God

[cascadingstylesheet]

Well, if scientists cannot experiment with real embryos due to ethical concerns, the logical thing is to experiment with simulated ones.

Progress needs to be made and the "shouldn't be playing God" mentality cannot have it both ways by ever expanding what's considered a real embryo.

"Simulated"?

These would be real human embryos, created by an unusual method.

A "simulated" embryo would be a computer simulation or something.