Safe Stem Cells Produced From Adult Cells 207
hackingbear writes "Wired, citing a paper published in Science magazine, reports that Harvard scientists may have found a safer way of giving a flake of skin the biologically alchemical powers of embryonic stem cells by turning adult cells into versatile, embryonic-like cells without causing permanent damage. The technique involves 'adding cell-reprogramming genes to adenoviruses, a type of virus that infects cells without affecting their DNA.' Four-month trials on mice demonstrated that the resulting stem cells are free from unpredictable cancer-inducing mutations. This is definitely a breakthrough in stem cell research."
Additional coverage is available at Yahoo, and Science hosts the research paper, although you'll need a subscription to see more than the abstract.
Hmmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
This is obviously a variation of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.
Doesn't matter (Score:0, Insightful)
The timers on cells cannot be reset. These are older cells. You can attempt to use them for repairs, what-not. But they will never be the same as actual stem cells.
Also not sure how good a thing it is for researchers to be making viruses with gene-altering payloads that target humans. Things could go spectacularly wrong.
The whole you-cannot-use-stem-cells malarkey is just like PETA saying Ben & Jerrys should use human breast milk instead of cows milk. You know, you use the right tool for the job. Not something else because a book of fairy tales says so. (And it doesn't.)
Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Whoah relax guy - I actually prefer uncited references for cases like that. Citing cultural/literary references is like explaining the punchline of a joke right after you tell it. It's a secret handshake. It's not like he's ripping off material.
'"I know I should have taken the blue pill!1!" --- this is a quote from neo from the matrix.'
^^ annoying.
I think you're making much ado about nothing (Shakespeare)...
You're my density! (Score:1, Insightful)
"Similarly, the embryos are already being created and destroyed en masse by fertility clinics. (And yet, for some reason, pro-lifers never complain about that.) "
You're kidding, right? You're seriously trying to claim the anti-abortion crowd doesn't complain about... abortion! Wow....
The point you so studiously ignored is that many people find it sickening to create a life for the purpose of destroying it.
As far as the orgran transplants in China goes, maybe you're unaware of the moral hazard of having a system where some powerless peasant with healthy organs can be jailed and subsequently executed by an oppressive state to harvest their body for some politician or powerful business figure.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you see how this practice encourages the killing to be done in the first place?
Re:not reinventing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not too far unlike the the reason why labor laws generally do not allow you to opt-out (minimum wage, lunch, etc). While it is understandable that workers may want to on their own accord, it becomes extremely difficult to prove that they weren't encouraged to by their employer.
Similarly, if we're allowed to harvest organ from people we killed on purpose, how can we be sure that the person was killed for legitimate reasons? So we look to legislation to minimize any positive side effects to a person's death.
And likewise, while embryos might not count as human life, they are human. By allowing people to harvest stem cells from them, you are putting utility in destroying human could-be-life. The end result is not awfully far from _farming_ human could-be-life since, as above, proving things like 'abandoned' is difficult. This doesn't sit well with a lot of people, and especially so with those that view embryos are full fledged human life.
Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Insightful)
>...With this new breakthrough, it could be possible to save many lives without killing a potential human life.
Yep, all those unneeded fertilized embryos now go straight to the incinerator, no stop for any life-saving harvesting in between.
Re:Hopefully (Score:2, Insightful)
There's also another, broader question, which last I heard nobody quite agrees on, namely "Is an undifferentiated ball of cells a human being?". If the answer is "no", then it sidesteps your question entirely. It doesn't seem entirely proper to debate that question, in relation to this issue, when there's broad division on whether we even need to answer it.
Re:Hopefully (Score:1, Insightful)
You're going to have to give us a reason why you think they should be destroyed if you want anybody to change their mind, dude.
Re:Hopefully (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not really a debate between life and death, it's "do we put its remains to good use or do we just throw them in the trash" because the cells are taken from surplus embryos during an artificial insemination which are going to die anyway (in the process lots of embryos are created because it's likely that the injection will fail to some degree and they want to make sure they get a healthy embryo to implant). Kinda like arguing that involuntary organ donations (not the Monty Python kind) kill people when the organs are only taken from bodies that are dead anyway but still have usable parts.
Re:You're my density! (Score:1, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? You're seriously trying to claim the anti-abortion crowd doesn't complain about... abortion! Wow....
Off topic but anyway. The grandparent is claiming that the fertility clinics are killing embryos that are "created" during the in vitro fertilization not during abortion. Check this in vitro fertilization stats [advancedfertility.com] and you will see that for every artificially fertilized child born there was many embryos that just didn't make it to the end. And probably there are many embryos waiting frozen in case the pregnancy goes wrong. If you have 4 in vitro embryos and the first pregnancy results in a child and parents decide that one child is enough, what do you? You discard the other embryos.
I wonder if the number of these embryos is not higher than the number of abortions.
Re:Hopefully (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe Biden (candidate for the Office of the Vice President of the United States, and a Catholic, even) disagrees.
Abortion being wrong, abortion being a necessary evil to prevent more deaths, and the united states government having a right to dictate to women what they can and can't do to their own bodies are three totally separate issues. Most everyone feels that abortion is a bad thing, but anyone rational sees that there are more issues than than that which aren't so simple of "is it wrong."
Drinking yourself into oblivion every night is bad, but prohibition didn't work and was a stupid move to begin with because the government isn't there to stamp out everything unpleasant.
Only for contrarians. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's plenty of material and interpretations for anyone who wants to find controversy.
Only if you're being a sophist. The people who are upset at fetal stem cell research aren't just making up clever arguments to dump all over people's hard work and potential medical salvation -- they genuinely believe in the whole "life starts at conception" argument.
You may not agree with pro-lifers, but you're not going to convince them to change their minds or find middle ground with the ones that are on the fence about fetal stem cells with ridiculous straw man arguments. And you're never going to make a difference if you have nothing but contempt for the other side's beliefs and the honesty with which they hold them.
Really, that applies to all of politics, faith, taste, and any other subject with an emotional element that can't be reduced to a simple proof of facts.
Re:Further Research (Score:3, Insightful)
The real fight has between the adult stem cell people and the embryonic stem cell people over how to divvy up the stem cell money. All of those "neanderthals" in the pro-life community that got slapped with the anti-stem cell label were always for adult stem cell research. They just didn't like embryonic research.