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guess you missed this:
With Few Factors, Adult Cells Take On Character Of Embryonic Stem Cells
With the introduction of just four factors, researchers have successfully induced differentiated cells taken from mouse embryos or adult mice to behave like embryonic stem cells. The researchers reported their findings in an immediate early publication of the journal Cell, published by Cell Press.
The cells--which the researchers designate "induced pluripotent stem cells" (iPS)--exhibit the physical, growth, and genetic characteristics typical of embryonic stem cells, they reported. "Pluripotent" refers to the ability to differentiate into most other cell types.
"Human embryonic stem cells might be used to treat a host of diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, and diabetes," said Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan. "However, there are ethical difficulties regarding the use of human embryos, as well as the problem of tissue rejection following transplantation into patients."
Those problems could be circumvented if pluripotent cells could be obtained directly from the patients' own cells.
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Further, the researchers who take the ESC from an embryeo do NOT KNOW if it damages it or not. As you point out, anyone doing this probably plans to discard the embryo anyway.
It could happen that, if used the resulting human being would be damaged. no one has done the work, and indeed, it would be un-ethical according to the Japanese researcher above, to do such an expirement.
"Lets just damage these human embryoes in varying degrees, then implant them and see what happens if they go to full term. We could even follow them thru to adulthood and see if they're normal adults."
Sounds like something out of Nazi Germany.
b0b
[Posted by: b0b at August 25, 2006 10:35 AM]
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