I have been relying more and more on Google+ as my unified source of news, from friends, family, and the news media and tech sites, in the latter case replacing most of the RSS feeds I used to read. For instance, the BBC's posts on Google+ are as good as their RSS feeds. I also follow/. on Google+, but wish that, as in their RSS feed, posts contained the story summary instead of just the title and link. Nowadays, I only use an RSS reader for the sources that are not yet available on Google+. (So I guess Google's strategy to push people to use Google+ is working, at least in my case.:-)
Currently much more work is being done with adult stem cells than with embryonic stem cells. Therefore you will get much more results from the adult cell research than the embryonic one.
I beg to differ. I think we are seeing fewer successes with embryonic stem cells because it is turning out that it is harder to control their rejection by the recipient and slow down their accelerated replication (hence their tendency to turn into tumors) than it is to make adult stem cells be less specific about the tissues they can turn into. But we can't draw a conclusion on this without some real numbers on how much is being done on each of the two lines of research.
Actually, your point about rejection and cancer tends to point to the solution of using cloned embryonic stem cells. Which will combine the advantages of both techniques. Perhaps, but I don't see how cloning an embryonic stem cell is going to make the cloned cells less likely to be rejected or to replicate more slowly.
Looking for scientific backing for a moral arguement actually weakens it. An immoral act is an immoral act, irrespective of whether it adds to the scietific body of knowledge or not! Agreed. It was not my intention to look for scientific backing for a moral argument. It is just that, when I see people pursuing a line of action that seems questionable to me, I tend to ask myself about their ulterior motivation, be it in science, politics, foreign policy or marketing.
There is no need to wait till one area of research is exhausted to work simultaneously on others.
If there are two similar lines of research and one is ethically questionable to a significant percentage of the population while the other is ethically sound and has clear technical advantages (in this case, not causing rejection and being less likely to produce tumors), then I think it makes sense to favor the latter over the former.
As far as I know, the main argument for the use of embryonic stem cells is that they are more malleable and can be turned into any type of organic tissue. But these researchers have turned adult stem cells from fat tissue into nerve cells. I mean, how more malleable do you need to get?
It seems all the successful new treatments with stem cells that we keep hearing about use the adult type, which also have the great advantage of not causing rejection. It makes me wonder why there is so much pressure to use embryonic stem cells, when the research with the adult type is so promising and is far from being exhausted. Perhaps it is because the adult cells, being collected from the patient him/herself, don't need to be bought, so there is no profit incentive, while embryonic stem cells hold the promise of a very lucrative new pharmaceutical/medical market?
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I have been relying more and more on Google+ as my unified source of news, from friends, family, and the news media and tech sites, in the latter case replacing most of the RSS feeds I used to read. For instance, the BBC's posts on Google+ are as good as their RSS feeds. I also follow /. on Google+, but wish that, as in their RSS feed, posts contained the story summary instead of just the title and link. Nowadays, I only use an RSS reader for the sources that are not yet available on Google+. (So I guess Google's strategy to push people to use Google+ is working, at least in my case. :-)
If there are two similar lines of research and one is ethically questionable to a significant percentage of the population while the other is ethically sound and has clear technical advantages (in this case, not causing rejection and being less likely to produce tumors), then I think it makes sense to favor the latter over the former.
As far as I know, the main argument for the use of embryonic stem cells is that they are more malleable and can be turned into any type of organic tissue. But these researchers have turned adult stem cells from fat tissue into nerve cells. I mean, how more malleable do you need to get?
It seems all the successful new treatments with stem cells that we keep hearing about use the adult type, which also have the great advantage of not causing rejection. It makes me wonder why there is so much pressure to use embryonic stem cells, when the research with the adult type is so promising and is far from being exhausted. Perhaps it is because the adult cells, being collected from the patient him/herself, don't need to be bought, so there is no profit incentive, while embryonic stem cells hold the promise of a very lucrative new pharmaceutical/medical market?