We, I hope ya’ll heard the good news
We can get stem cells from skin cells and more easily tailored to individual reqirements.
Of course some caution is in order due to lack of peer review, but I think any time our society finds a way to remove divisive issues is cause for celebration
How is a “carbon calculator” good news, and what does it have to do with stem cells?
Ha ha, he’s a secret environmentalist! Betcha he was working out how to offset that new SUV…
Thankyou, unfortunately its too late to edit.
Lets try again http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/science/27stem.html?ref=science
It is, of course, good news. Are there advantages to stem cells that come from the skin other than the fact that they avoid the ethical concerns of those who believe embryos have souls?
Well if that isn’t enough for you, consider that you (and me) as a man Richard now have as equal opportunity as a woman to develop identical DNA stem cells to cure your ailments. If it wasn’t for the religous right lobby, this resaearch might never have taken place !
I doubt that the research wouldn’t have taken place but for US federal restrictions. If that is so, it would tend to indicate that there is no benefit to the research aside from avoiding those restrictions. If that’s true, it will have been a pretty inefficient way to spend research money, IMHO.
I think an interesting question would be this: how much additional research money are we prepared to spend in order to develop a technology that is functionally identifical to an existing technology but avoids the religious qualms of some segment of society? I’m not sure I know the answer, though I don’t think it would be zero. But it probably wouldn’t be in the hundreds of millions either. (Which is not to say that this question applies here, as I said, it isn’t clear to me whether there are other advantages to using skin cells.)
Avoiding the ethical/political issues is obviously huge, but creating stem cells from somatic cells also has exciting implications for tissue engineering.
If you can take a terminally differentiated cell (a skin cell for example) and create a stem cell from it, it still has the same genetic composition as the skin cell. If we were able to induce that new stem cell to differentiate into a tissue or organ that somebody needs–for example dopamine-secreting neurons for a patient with Parkinson’s disease, or beta cells for someone with diabetes–that tissue could potentially be transplanted into the person from which the original cells were taken without the need for immunosuppression. The new tissue should not be recognized as foreign as all the markers which are used to determine self versus foreign would be the same as in the host and would be tolerated.
Very interesting. Thank you. Do you know if this technology was investigated because of the US pressure against embryo use?
There are stem cells and there are DNA identical stem cells. and the latter will have way more value to you in the future than embryonic stem cells unless further modified by expensive technology like cloning.
Yes, I hear the religious right is all the rage in Japan.
The other point to note is that somatic cell based stem cells avoid the need for human eggs - a resource that is hard to get at safely or in volume.
So researchers can do more research with these sorts of stem cells, and thus can get closer to the ultimate goal of organ replacement. Roll on the liver replacements 
Si
Beat me to it. The groundwork for this latest breakthrough was done on murine cells in Japan.
According to this map ESC research is largely kopasetic in Japan.
Anyway, I’m happy for any new findings of the sort. Scientists still seem to see need for bona fide ESC research though and I still hope that Congress will get the funding pushed past the administration or that the next administration will be more open to it. This isn’t Great Debates though so I’ll leave it at