Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells 198
Amenacier writes "Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the use of fat stem cells in repairing cardiac damage, or fixing such cardiac problems as holes in the heart. It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle through signals from the rat cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells, without any danger of rejection by the body. Quoting: 'The next step is to implant the human heart cells onto the damaged heart of a laboratory rat to see whether they repair the heart. Then they would be trialled in higher species such as sheep and pigs before human applications could be considered. Clinical application could be five years away ...'" The Age has a multimedia treatment (Flash) of the discovery.
Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah. We've already got those.
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Interesting)
I ask that all rat lovers mod parent down for such an insult to rats everywhere.
Pretty much off-topic, so I've foregone my karmic bonus. Mods, please be gentle.
Rats rock. Best pets I've had. They're clean, loyal, friendly, and low upkeep. Terrific. They've even potty-trainable with less that 1-month of effort - I used to let mine run loose and kept ramps up so that they could return to their cages to crap.
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On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?
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On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?
People afraid of cloning
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What the hell is a "loyal" rat? Come to that, why the hell do I want to know?!
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A "loyal" rat is one that will not bite even if you coat your finger with peanut-butter, prefers your company to people that he doesn't know, and will jump in front of a ninja's throwing star to save you should the occasion arise.
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Insightful)
On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?
The goal of the field is to use stem cells derived from the person being treated. The idea is it would run something like this: take a few vials of blood or a bit of adipose tissue (subcutaneous fat), send them to the lab to be turned into stem cells or precursor heart / kidney / pancreas / brain cells, inject into or near the appropriate tissue (maybe just give as a transfusion), and things will Just Work.
The only -- ONLY -- reason people are in an uproar about this sort of work is because fetal stem cells are being used by many researchers in the field, and obtaining fetal tissue is politically charged. (There's good scientific reasons to use fetal stem cells that have to do with host rejection.) Once we can take adult cells and turn them back into pluripotent stem cells (fixing the telomeres along the way, even), or barring that can get the equivalent naive stem cells from placenta or umbilical cord tissue, we won't require fetal tissue any more and the whole issue will fade quietly as it should.
Unfortunately, I'm on vacation, so don't have my references handy, but there are lots and lots and lots of people working on creating stem cells from adults, and there has been remarkable progress.
So, this is a long-winded way of saying that I doubt anyone in research team from the article is considering the application for their work to be to use xenograft stem cells (from a different species), but to instead use human fat cells to create new heart tissue.
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Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a bit over 70 treatments using adult or cord blood stem cells (list here [stemcellresearch.org]) with embryonic cells being used in zero treatments. The plasticity of embryonic stem cells is a disadvantage it seems due to the tendency towards tumor formation.
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The plasticity of embryonic stem cells is a disadvantage it seems due to the tendency towards tumor formation.
Tissue rejection is a bigger issue from what I've heard. In plenty of cases, it's possible to take embryonic stem cells and turn them into mature cells which will be less likely to make tumors, but it would still be foreign tissue you would reject.
Of course, if you are not a woman who has given birth and saved your cord blood, that's not an option, and it doesn't appear that adult stem cells can fill all our stem cell needs, so we need IPS cells or embryonic stem cells. And also we've already learned a l
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We don't actually know that adult stem cells cannot fit all our needs. That's why there's ongoing research, it's not a mature field. The difference between the adult and the embryonic cells is that we know how to make the adult cells work in real treatments, we just need to extend what we know. With embryonic, we hope to get past the rejection and tumor and other problems and we've got no actual record of success to support that hope.
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I would be a terrible scientist if I didn't preface this with the disclamer: I could be wrong in every word, current theories may be wrong and I could also not be current. Having said that...
The evidence suggests that adult stem cells are not pluripotent and are fate restricted. An adult stem cell population that could give rise to any cell type would be a big liability to the organism, as that would be a population of cells much closer to producing tumors than a fate-restricted stem cell.
It is unlikely t
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Google does provide [sciencedaily.com] if you know how to ask. We've known that bone marrow can be induced to make CNS cells since at least 2002. You are, indeed, out of date.
This is not my field either but I cared enough to spend 90 seconds doing the search before I hit reply. You might ask why didn't you? In case you're wondering, the string I used was:
adult stem cells central nervous system
Finding this sort of thing isn't brain surgery. Perhaps pro-life people who you think are being unreasonable are merely better informed
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Perhaps pro-life people who you think are being unreasonable are merely better informed?
I'm going to call foul here. I never said anything about the pro-life movement, which I happen to agree with to an extent, certainly I didn't call them unreasonable, nor do I think they are. Don't know why you're getting so hostile. If I were to have a low opinion of pro-life people, you wouldn't exactly be helping it with your tone. This is a casual discussion.
I didn't do a google search, but I think I did a pubmed search with a similar string. Pubmed is an index of primary literature, the actual rese
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I used to let mine run loose and kept ramps up so that they could return to their cages to crap.
Don't they chew your cords?
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Insightful)
So those people will eventually die off because they're unwilling to receive the help they'll need, while those of us that would be happy to use a lab-grown replacement heart/kidney/left-leg with no possible chance of tissue rejection would continue the human race...
Sounds like a win-win to me...
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That would be nice, but chances are quite good that they've procreated before they would need a replacement part that they can't get.
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The end point of the research is to use your own tissues to create a fix. There is no objection to using common animal tissues for testing along the way in order to speed up progress.
PETA, on the other hand, would protest because the rats had not given consent.
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there are plenty of people out there who believe in the sanctity and purity of the human body.
If they were sincere, they'd refuse to breathe tainted air (smog, CO, might've been exhaled by $MINORITY) and would die immediately. The rest are moralizing hypocrites that you can make fun of before moving on.
its only fair (Score:5, Insightful)
my fat cells are killing my heart cells
might as well sacrifice a few of them to give back what they took
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Maybe the problem is most of those stem cells are being convinced to change to fat cells instead of heart cells
Seriously though, are fat and heart cells from the same "germ layer"? I'm too lazy to look it up.
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I don't.
Especially since:
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-skull-stem-cells,0,5876836.story [newsday.com]
While the above is not proof and more anecdotal (but I'm sure everyone was happy that the skull finally healed for whatever reason), it is also claimed to have worked with rats before:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4873 [newscientist.com]
And also they've been coaxed into smooth muscle:
http://www.physorg.com/news72983041.html [physorg.com]
So, just another step, not a leap. Useful step no doubt :).
I think there are plenty of p
Re:its only fair (Score:4, Interesting)
Soon there will be mobile liposuction centers every few blocks.
"Donate your fat, save lives!"
Not to mention "Drink beer, so you have fat to donate"
Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
That from the fat of the overweight American comes the cure for heart disease brought on by his poor diet!
With two thirds of Americans overweight, this is promising news.
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:4, Funny)
That from the fat of the overweight American comes the cure for heart disease brought on by his poor diet!
With two thirds of Americans overweight, this is promising news.
for THEM..
what about thin people like me.. they'll live forever now and have more fat daughters >: |
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
And we shall harvest them, oh yes the time of the great fat farm is at hand.
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Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
Meh.
I want my stem cells the right way, derived from the tortured souls of aborted cherubic foetuses. Enough to fill the dancefloor atop the head of a pin.
The immortality of one can not be achieved but by the suffering of many.
This is just dishonest.
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not vegging out on the couch. I'm building up my stem-cell reserves.
Tuesday is my Fat-Heart group... (Score:5, Funny)
the first rule of stem cell research is you don't talk about stem cell research.
Adult stem cells vs. foetal stem cells (Score:2, Informative)
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Not realistic (Score:4, Informative)
There's a lot of questions that have to be answered here - it's not as simple as they say it is. Adipose-derived stem cells are definitely nothing new - adult stem cells are widely studied and commonly used in bioengineering labs. The problem is that translating this into a clinically useful tool is far from reality, and there are a lot of fundamental issues that have to be resolved before something useful can be made:
In Australia things might happen faster, but for the US, getting this particular system running is full of regulatory issues and problems that aren't going to be easily addressed - 5 years is frankly impossible. I'd say 10 years, and that's AFTER they get all of the animal studies up and running. Ah, and it will cost tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions.
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Yes, yes. It wasn't realistic that we'd fly in airplanes either. It wasn't realistic that we'd be able to transplant organs. It wasn't realistic that we'd put men on the Moon.
Not one of the issues you list is insurmountable. You could say 'not ready' but 'not realistic' is just plain inaccurate.
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I can agree with that, but the '5 year' thing seems to be a pretty standard stance taken by technologists and scientists alike these days. I think it might be an attempt to attract capital. If you tell people something is 20 years away they are probably less likely to throw money at it. I'm not saying I agree with that; it is what it is.
Department (Score:2, Insightful)
Eh? Was there a beating heart in The Cask of Amontillado? Maybe "the beating of his hideous heart" from The Tell-Tale Heart would have been more appropriate?
OMG: Someone's been watching.. (Score:3, Informative)
Nobel Prize material (Score:3, Insightful)
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reading sideway... (Score:4, Funny)
Dual Operation (Score:2, Funny)
Liposuction + heart fix
Come out thinner and heart-healthy, all in one swell foop (without all that tedious dieting and exercise).
Someone is going to make a fortune.
Publication? (Score:2)
It seems to me though, that this is a massive discovery and a huge step forward in technology. So why is the only publication that they list a multimedia presentation on, The Age [theage.com.au]? Shouldn't Science and Nature be all over this? At least it should be in the Journal of Tissue Engineering [liebertonline.com].
Re:frosty piss (Score:5, Funny)
Re:frosty piss (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, I tried Pabst Blue Ribbon for the first time the other day, and it wasn't too bad. Everybody always talking about how bad it is, but they should just give it a try.
Beer, and this includes your favorite beer, is something you grow to like. In reality beer is nasty shit and we all know it. We just learn to tolerate a certain flavor, and we like to stick to what we learned to tolerate. Many may deny it, but in reality all we really want is the alcohol, or one to have the taste to remind us of the alcohol.
Yep, I just said that a beer didn't taste bad, and then went on to say that all beer tastes bad.
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Yep, I just said that a beer didn't taste bad, and then went on to say that all beer tastes bad.
Ah. I guess that means you're drunk :-P
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Just say NO (Score:2)
Budweiser, PBR, Hamm's, etc. are perfectly drinkable, tasty beers. Sure if I could drink Celebrator or Delirium or microbrews every day, but why spend so much on beer if a cool, crisp brewski is all you want?
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Preach it. I'm not a beer snob (because it's hard to be snobbish about something you only get to drink once ever other month or so), but I don't bother with anything "lighter" than Sam Adams. If I'm going to have a beer, I'm going to have one that tastes good.
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Viva la difference!
Re:Better hope (Score:5, Informative)
That McCain/Palin don't get elected if you want this kind of research to continue.
no matter who gets elected in the USA, future research won't be effected by this. Unless said president decides to attack Australia. Please do more research next time before making off-hand comments about politics.
Re:Better hope (Score:5, Funny)
When "research" includes such things as "discovering that other nations exist," we are well and truly fucked.
Re:Better hope (Score:5, Informative)
Even more so, since this is not embryonic stem-cell research (to which McCain, Palin, and many other Christians object), but rather adult stem-cell research (to which only Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists object, as far as I know).
Personally, I have yet to read of truly successful research with embryonic stem cells (because they are generally rejected by the recipient), whereas many large advances have been made with adult stem cells (since the donor and the recipient are the same person, rejection is eliminated) -- for men at least, pluripotent cells have been found in the testicles, so that any type of cell could be produced without having to use embryonic stem cells. I also recently saw a report about a person with congenital heart disease who was apparently cured by an injection of his own bone-marrow stem cells.
So I suppose my question would be why the intellectual elites want to spend their research monies on embryonic stem-cell research that is more expensive, less successful, and morally questionable to a large sector of society, rather than on research in areas where successes keep coming, the cells are available without moral complications, and the costs are in general lower. A cynical person might think that it's all about getting drug patents and getting money out of the consumers and padding their own checkbooks...
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Even Jehovah's Witnesses don't have an objection to banking and reusing their own personal blood. A lot of people are trying to make religious objections larger than they actually are in an effort to make religious people seem foolish or weird. Don't get taken in.
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So I suppose my question would be why the intellectual elites want to spend their research monies on embryonic stem-cell research that is more expensive, less successful, and morally questionable to a large sector of society, rather than on research in areas where successes keep coming, the cells are available without moral complications, and the costs are in general lower.
Well, human embryonic stem (HES) cells have already proven invaluable in research. Notably it was by studying them that we found out how to make induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS), basically how to make any cell into personalized embryonic stem cells without the embryo or the tissue rejection. That's not something you can say about adult stem cells: they won't ever be able to make new spinal cord cells. IPS cells can, and if we hadn't been researching HES cells, we never would have figured out how to m
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If you only care about the results, then yeah, but in the real world, that's actually an incredibly sticky question of medical ethics.
I mean, take Mengele's research, for instance. Would you allow it because you didn't know where it was leading? What about the rest of the Nazi research? Some of it had the potential to save many lives, but would you have allowed it to take place just to get to the result? How
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Conservatives oppose embryonic stem cell research, not adult stem cell research.
Re:Better hope (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I wouldn't know what Christians are saying. As far as I can tell, they're not saying anything about adult stem cells. They were opposed to embryonic stem cells because of how they were harvested, and it wasn't just Christians who were opposed.
By the way, mocking Christianity on Slashdot for easy upmods is too easy.
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Actual christians (instead of the caricatures and straw men you see on slashdot and elsewhere) are rather happy about adult stem cell therapies and wholeheartedly support them.
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Actual christians (instead of the caricatures and straw men you see on slashdot and elsewhere) are rather happy about adult stem cell therapies and wholeheartedly support them.
Speaking as one of those fundamentalist christains you've been warned about, I support adult stem cell research.
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Why is that?
This isn't embryonic stem cell research at all.
Nobody has any problems with this research.
So
1. You don't know what your talking about.
or
2. You are using lies and fear to support your political viewpoint.
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Whether it's a ban, or simply withholding funding (which might as well be a ban) is irrelevant. The fact is US policy is impeding the progress of medical science at the behest of religious fanatics. That is despicable.
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Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells
Making the joke "hung like a mouse" a little more true to life.
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What do you mean? Step back as the opposite of step up to the plate?
here is a partial list of when they (have) work(ed) against progress
Christianity vs. Galileo & Copernicus
Fa Lung Gong vs. every frigging thing that is normal
Christian Science vs. modern medicine
Scientology vs. psychology
Islam (the fundamentalist variety) vs. gender equality and global harmony
But to be fair, religion *has* also stepped up to the plate on a few occasions. It is important to keep in mind that the concept of hi
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Oddly enough, Copernicus was a Catholic priest.
Also, I doubt seriously Galileo would have been sent to his house and told to stay there if he hadn't called the Pope (a personal friend of his) a fool in public.
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The religious problem of Galileo was that he was saying that the Church must change the way it taught Scripture so that it conformed to heliocentrism. The Church, reasonably in my view, said that Galileo had to either say it was a theory, prove it was a fact, or shut his pie hole. Within a few short years, Galileo's works were in free circulation in Catholic Christendom using the formulation that heliocentrism was a theory. The last actual scientific objection to heliocentrism was laid to rest in the mid 18
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One big advantage of using fat (or other adult) stem cells over fetal cells is that the cells could be harvested from the target patient, thus avoiding tissue rejection problems.
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Re:The easy way (Score:4, Insightful)
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We consider human testing on anything other than volunteers as inhumane. If I consider the unborn as human, what other position am I supposed to take?
You're supposed to consider why testing on humans is inhumane, and then consider whether those reasons apply to lumps of cells in a dish. There's a lot more to being human than just having human DNA. It's disingenuous to apply a simple syllogism (testing on humans is bad; fetuses are human; therefore testing on fetuses is bad) when "human" means different th
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No, it's trivial to demonstrate that the word "human" can mean different things in different contexts. Suppose I'm doing some tissue culture work in the lab. A co-worker comes by and asks me "are those cells human?". I respond, "yes, these cells are human."
Now that I've admitted that those cells are human, does it follow that killing them is murder? Of course not.
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I'm implying that either there is a definite reason that we matter which is defined outside of ourselves, or there is no reason at all.
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If there's no objective reason anything matters, then what is the matter if I break laws and hurt people? What is the point for me to control my actions?
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People, great. Lumps of organic matter that in no way resemble an actual human being, no.
Your a lump of organic matter that in no way resembles an actual human being....Name calling is fun I see why you do it.
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Coma patients, the demented, the unconscious don't care either. Some may care in future, but that's true for unborn children too.
You very obviously haven't thought this through very well.
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Again, strictly speaking, coma patients are in a coma, and not brain dead, demented folk could quite possibly have life-preserving instinct. I won't argue the unconscious because, frankly, that's just ignorant.
I'm sorry, but genetics dictates that reproduction is a nearly boundless resource. Demen
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Unrelated? I don't think so. "Strictly speaking" you said in the GP. Well, strictly speaking it's true of all of my examples as well. All that is different is the time to a return to consciousness and its likelihood.
It is vastly more likely that your average aborted fetus would have woken up and achieved an opinion on their existence before your average long term coma patient.
We have an abundance of 20th and 21st century experience in the sort of morality that condones harvesting human parts as you advocate
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Well for one thing. Embryonic stem cell research really hasn't been very fruitful.
This is Adult stem cell research which frankly is exactly what where the anti embryonic stem cell people say most of the funding should have been going.
Second, Just a comment. Next time anyone you love or even care about has a miscarriage see what the emotional effect of them loosing the "baby" is. Would you tell them to just get over it because it wasn't a baby?
I am not what the Pro-Life people would consider pro-life but I
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Sorry to offend you with facts.
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1. I am not technically pro-life. I actually think that abortion should be legal.
2. Pro-life people don't want embryonic stem cell research. Adult stem cell research is just fine with them.
3. This break through is using adult stem cell research.
4. Embryonic stem cells have not really been very useful. problems with rejection and other issues.
You are clueless, you will not even try to understand people that disagree with you, and you are a zealot that keeps screaming because you feel your world view
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"3. This break through is using adult stem cell research.
Irrelevant to my point"
Ummmm.... THIS IS WHAT THE BLOODY STORY IS ABOUT!
"4. Embryonic stem cells have not really been very useful. problems with rejection and other issues.
Fine, but NO reason to stop research on it."
Gee lets see no success while adult stem cells seem to work better???? ... thats the only thing "
"Nope, I don't care about religious views
No you are an ass that doesn't care about facts or others options, you are off topic, will not post u
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Then find a a discussion that has anything at all to do with it, this one doesn't.
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Non-pro-life people should be terminated. If they don't care about life, we shouldn't be burdened with them.
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We can't just use the stem cells from fetuses right now because every time we try, we end up giving those people tumors and other nasty conditions. It's been tried. It doesn't work. Maybe, someday, they'll start figuring out how to make actual treatments using embryonic stem cells. They've got a lot of catchup to do. We've already got dozens of conditions that adult stem cells have been successfully used for.
So why are you pimping for a treatment path that, so far, doesn't work? Why not push for more fundin
Re:i wish upon a day when (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason you see these preliminary results everywhere is that there is a constant need of more good news to attract investors and sponsors.
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Yep. We Americans have been looking for a new invention to sell the world. Well, it's fat. We have the biggest supply of fat of any country. Start-up the liposuction machines, and start exporting those fat-to-heart organ replacements.
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I was just thinking the same.
Six months ago, fat was bad for your heart. Now it turns out it can (with a little engineering) repair a damaged one.
Kinda like the flip-flops on red wine and chocolate.
I don't think these "experts" know what the heck they're talking about.....
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Adults do have stem cells. The stem cells have been cultured and multiplied and have been coerced into differentiating into various types of tissue. Pluripotency is a red herring that has mostly led to tumor formation in attempts at embryonic stem cell treatments.