There's no control over aborted embryos. A scientist won't know exactly how long it has been developing, what stage it is at, and whether the cells will be of any use at all. I'd much rather spend my time working with things where I can reproduce my results due to strict guidlines than work with some mystery concotion where no one else may ever get the same results.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) don't ever come from abortion clinics. They come from fertility clinics where a whole batch of eggs are fertilized in a dish. Then the workers pick out the best candidates of the batch (4 or 5) and implant them in a momma to be. The rest of the fertilized embryos (blastocysts) are frozen or tossed out. Some of them are not "good candidates" meaning that they haven't formed right, like they don't have a well defined inner cell mass. These will never develop into a person. Those are the ones that scientists want.
Look at it this way. The only way to study development of tissues and developmental disorders and diseases is to use ESCs. No other cells can make every tissue. Adult stem cells (which I work on; principally Mesenchymal Stem Cells or MSCs from bone marrow... donating bone marrow HURTS! I've only done it twice) are great but they don't have the library of ESCs in that they cannot replicate development. I'm not talking about organs or arms or anything like that, but more like tissues such as muscle and skin and neurons etc... The only way to study development without using ESCs is to use.... real babies! Just line up a few hundred pregnant women and section their babies to find out what signaling proteins may be malfunctioning in a thalidimide baby. And why do we care? So we don't have another "thalidimide baby" with the next consumer drug that gets shoved out.
Man I'm rambling. Cheers
Slashdot Mirror
There's no control over aborted embryos. A scientist won't know exactly how long it has been developing, what stage it is at, and whether the cells will be of any use at all. I'd much rather spend my time working with things where I can reproduce my results due to strict guidlines than work with some mystery concotion where no one else may ever get the same results.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) don't ever come from abortion clinics. They come from fertility clinics where a whole batch of eggs are fertilized in a dish. Then the workers pick out the best candidates of the batch (4 or 5) and implant them in a momma to be. The rest of the fertilized embryos (blastocysts) are frozen or tossed out. Some of them are not "good candidates" meaning that they haven't formed right, like they don't have a well defined inner cell mass. These will never develop into a person. Those are the ones that scientists want. Look at it this way. The only way to study development of tissues and developmental disorders and diseases is to use ESCs. No other cells can make every tissue. Adult stem cells (which I work on; principally Mesenchymal Stem Cells or MSCs from bone marrow... donating bone marrow HURTS! I've only done it twice) are great but they don't have the library of ESCs in that they cannot replicate development. I'm not talking about organs or arms or anything like that, but more like tissues such as muscle and skin and neurons etc... The only way to study development without using ESCs is to use .... real babies! Just line up a few hundred pregnant women and section their babies to find out what signaling proteins may be malfunctioning in a thalidimide baby. And why do we care? So we don't have another "thalidimide baby" with the next consumer drug that gets shoved out.
Man I'm rambling. Cheers