MIT Team Creates Cancer Stem Cells

MIT scientists and colleagues have found a way in the lab to create large amounts of cancer stem cells, the cells that can initiate tumors. The work, reported in the August 13 issue of Cancer Cell, could be a boon to researchers who study these elusive cells. Labs could easily grow them for use in experiments.

Scientists are the real moral crusaders

[HumanSockPuppet]

This actually brings up an interesting idea.

I've always been a proponent of the idea that scientists were the true moral crusaders of our age, not protesters, demonstrators, and certainly not religious zealots.

Think of it this way - when scientists have perfected a means for reproducing reliable and testable human cancer cells in a laboratory, there will no longer be any need to use lab rats in cancer research. Cancer will be closer to being cured, and rats will be spared. What has the Animal Liberation Front done on that magnitude, apart from burn medical research facilities?

I imagine that when we are able to create vehicles that produce no pollution, it will be considered excessive and morally repugnant to drive gas guzzlers. I imagine that we have developed a means of engineering meat that it will be considered immoral to kill living animals to get it. The idea here is that immorality is scaled and determined in terms of gross excess of what is necessary for survival, and that our technology makes survival easier (thus altering the scale).

Re:New biological weapon?

[BlueParrot]

fusion on the desktop

The Oil industry has used desktop-sized fusion devices for prospecting for decades. They are also commonly used as neutron sources for various scientific experiments. Heck, there are even teenagers building their own fusors in the basement. Now if you were talking about fusion devices capable of yielding a net power output at prices competitive with existing energy sources, then that is quite a different thing, but I don't think anybody has ever claimed to have achieved this, not even the cold-fusion crowd...

Re:Scientists are the real moral crusaders

[Aladrin]

While I disagree with your statement that "scientists were the true moral crusaders of our age", I find the notion that 'morality depends on science' to be intriguing.

But if that's so, why is it okay to eat meat right now? You can adequately survive on plants and medical supplements right now. Does this not mean that killing animals is wrong already, or does personal comfort/quality of life mean alter morality also?

Personally, I don't find it immoral at all to eat animals, no matter the situation. I will admit that if I was the one that had to kill them, there'd probably be less meat on my plate each night, though.

Re:Tag: Bioweapon?

[dmclap]

Assassination weapon? Cancer tends to take years to kill you. Sure, while this might speed the process up to several months or something, that still gives the person in question plenty of time to spill everything that they know, or otherwise cause serious damage to the cause that the assassins are trying to protect.

No, there are much better and more clever ways to do these things. Like how they iced Georgi Markov [wikipedia.org] (always a classic).