Stem Cell Breakthrough Uses No Embryos

AP :

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It's a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

Read the whole story: AP

Comments

[Cunningham]

Great! Now the republicans will have NO excuse to ban federally funded research. Won't it just chap their asses when they have to do something which actually improves peoples' lives?

[wired]

Children are a society's hope and optimism for the future. A society's strength can be measured in its compassion and love for the weakest among its members.

Fascists set standards for the "value" of human life. Standards described for example in economic, social and material terms. Love has no real meaning for such people. Fascists cannot tolerate imperfection; they are constantly trying to "improve" life based on materialistic / scientific definitions. Any moral questions or conscious purpose are seen as irrelevant.

[Pdubya]

What Scientists and who funded them?

Glad we're making progress, but I want to follow the money on this one.

[BoBoBolinski]

Further proof that perhaps God is leading President Bush in his decisions. GW you are right again by being firm. First the surge is now working and now this. Mt. Rushmore may yet have a spot for you.

[NuAgeDok]

I hate to burst everybody's bubble but the announcement that human somatic cells can be reprogrammed to be "stem cells" will prove to an observation of very little impact on the "holy grail" of stem cells experiments - that is replacement of damaged or diseased cells of the body with normal functioning cells. Thus diseases like Parkinson's, Type I diabetes, and even spinal cord injury will not benefit from today's MSM's over-hyped Science and Cell paper reports (in a slow news cycle just before a major holiday).

Read between the lines and all of the hype and you will discover that to make human or mouse skin cells "de-differentiate" it took the transfer of no less than 4 other genes using techniques that rely on random gene insertions (which may cause their own mutations)and potentially cancer causing viruses and genes. When you put such cells back into mice, 20% of the resulting animals develop cancerous tumors.

When you have to rely on gene transfer techniques to change a cells behavior or characteristics, the resulting complexity and unpredictability of the experiment is increased many fold and the chances for success are concomitantly reduced. Witness the abject failure of the vast majority of attempts to perform gene therapy using transferred genes. We just do not have enough knowledge and expertise to pull off experiments of this complexity and won't for a couple of more decades, in my opinion. I am not saying that the results announced today will not help basic researchers create new cellular models to study in the laboratory but none of those cells would have been able to help Christopher Reeves or will be able to help Michael J. Fox.

So go back to your shopping and turkey thawing and those of you who would really like to see the benefits of therapeutic cloning come to fruition, vote Democratic in 2008 or move to California.

[humuhumunukunukuapuaa]

Score another one for the scientists. Well done! May this discovery help usher a new era of quality-of-life improvement for humanity and help settle the moral issues on stem cell research once and for all.

[GeorgiaLiberal]

Not to be a downer, but the media reporting on this one is a bit exaggerated. While important, this only HINTS normal, therapeutically useful stem cells might be derived without embryos. The cells were made like stem cells by transformation with a cocktail of transgenes, including c-myc, an oncogene.

"However, a big mistake now
would be to consider human ES cells
obsolete. There are still many hurdles
to overcome before we fully understand
pluripotency and before we have human
iPS cells in hand that are suitable for
therapeutic application. For example,
a significant proportion of mice derived
from mouse iPS cells develop tumors due to reactivation of the c-Myc retrovirus..."

www.cell.com

[WARisEVIL]

That might shut those god damn idiot Christers up.

[CountryBeforeParty]

This really is great news.

Let's keep in mind that it is because of "embryonic" stem cell research that these scientists were able to reach this new breakthrough. That's what science and research is all about.

Hopefully this will lead to bigger discoveries, and the religious zealots can feel good about themselves knowing that those frozen, unused embryos can stop being used to save lives, and go back to being discarded in the garbage, as they were before.

[AntonBursch]

Honestly, I'm kinda dissappointed that HuffPost didn't put this up all day as the primary story. This is HUGE news for humanity. This is up there with conducting electricity and the wheel.

This is a win/win for everyone. And as a ncie side benifit, this can help eliminate a wedge issue in the 2008 elections. Cause Stem Cell Research needs to be taken off the playbook for Democrats for this 2008 election.

With Gulianni likely to be the Republican front runner who is not against abortion and gay rights... the Democrats could get more and more votes from the religous folks if they can eliminate barriers like Stem Cell Research as an issue.

[godlessclif]

Holy Cow!!!

Antibiotics without mold are also possible.
I am glad these crazy bastards were not around in the 1950s trying to ban penicillin because mold was sacred and we had sulfa drugs. Penicillin saved my brothers life.

Maybe we should ban all hamburgers because it offends Hindus, who find the cow sacred, because veggie burgers are now available.

[blooddoc]

I believe everyone (except perhaps the right-wing whackos) would like for this technique to work. But before we can throw the big celebration, scientists doing the research will have to show that their findings hold up (i.e., work consistently in humans) when compared with embryonic stem cells and that potential treatments won't be so horribly expensive as to prevent access. If they can accomplish this, the next stop is Stockholm.

[andyboy]

It's an abomination. Men were meant to get sick, suffer & die. It gives you character.

As Ernest Hemingway once wrote:

"You see, Andy boy, you can't win. You started too late. You can't win."

[AntonBursch]

WOOOHOOOO!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!

Science KICKS ASS AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!

I KNEW it could be done!!!

I am so excited right now I feel like a Lord of the Rings fan who just won a cameo in the making of the Hobbit!!

For those who are saying this is going to be too expensive... what is that thing you are using right now? A computer? In your own HOME? Maybe portable????

This is amazing news. Now the bullshit can be over and the work toward cures can move forward!! And the people who've been fighting for Stem Cell Research can move on to fighting to make sure that this new tech is made available for all!! Or work on any one of thousands of worthy causes.

I haven't been this excited since the day the human genome was mapped. I still have the cut out from the newspaper in my box of stuff to keep forever. I'll have to go buy a newspaper today for this one too.

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!

[Mormondude]

I've been predicting­/expecting this for some time now.

It's no wonder that the pro-abortion groups were so anxious to ram through all sorts of legislation on this issue in the past couple of years. They only had one small window of time where they could latch onto something 'scientific' as an excuse to further devalue human life. Now that time has passed, and they can't use this excuse any longer.