Superior Stem Cells

[billroper]

According to this article, two different groups of researchers have cracked the problem of creating embryonic stem cells from human skin cells. Obviously, that's a solution that's looking for applications still, but -- if you believe that embryonic stem cells are likely to be useful in treating human diseases -- this is wonderful news.

Whatever your beliefs about the morality of harvesting embryonic stem cells from embryos, the stem cells that we'll get from this process (if it all works out) have the distinct advantage of being able to carry the same set of genes as the target recipient. This eliminates nasty problems with rejection and immunosuppressant anti-rejection drugs.

And it looks like a process that works around moral objections for almost everyone. (I say almost, because there are people who have moral objections to any form of medical treatment. But for the vast majority of Americans, this method of generating stem cells should be just fine.)

Better living through biology. :)

Comments

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

I've been following this.. VERY exciting stuff. If it plays out, it will lead to great great things.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Scientifically, this is very interesting, and in either refining the technique to something that could be be done on a production scale and proving that the stem cells are actually viable for more than basic research, or in seeing what keeps us from achieving one of those, we stand to learn a lot.

I am extremely concerned, however, that it is way too soon for this reserach to be influencing policy. If the anti-abortion lobby succeeds in using this to pull the plug on research using cloned embryos, and two years from now we discover that this technique is a dead end -- if some difference between mice and humans means that the human cells won't self-organize into tissues, or if the new cells are prone to cancer and they can't figure out a way to stop it -- you and I might be dead of things that we'd have been able to cure if we'd continued doing embryonic stem cell research.

Speaking as someone who sees destroying a human embryo as less ethically fraught than killing a lab rat -- the rat has the capacity to feel both pleasure and pain -- even if this works as well as anyone could hope, there's still a long-term down side to this. If the debate over embryonic stem cell research goes away because embryonic stem cells have become obsolete, those who would subordinate science to their wrong-headed (my opinion, of course) belief systems will remember it as a victory and feel empowered to block even more scientific progress. That doesn't bode well for future fights over teaching evolution, genetic repairs and improvements on humans, or direct brain/computer interfaces. We lose an important way of forcing people to confront the difference between "human" and "person" and thus learning to stop trying to project the rights of thinking beings onto unthinking collections of cells.

You know, your post makes it sound

[capplor.livejournal.com]

as though you favor suppressing the science, because you don't like what people MIGHT do with it. How does this make you any different from the Bush administration, which suppresses embryonic stem cell research because people MIGHT create embryos for the purpose of research alone (though there is no need to do so)?

Re: You know, your post makes it sound

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I guess I can see how you might get that impression. I think it would be a net positive for humanity if it works completely, but like any non-trivial development, there is a down side.

The only thing I'd actually favor suppressing is sensational pseudo-journalism.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I'm not doing the happydance about this just yet. There have been other reports of creating stem cells from adult cells, and the reality turned out to be much less than the news media were making of it. I'm cynical enough about the news media to suspect that this report, like the others, exaggerates the usefulness of the "breakthrough".

[carolf.livejournal.com]

Scientists aren't doing a happy dance, either. But so far, this looks more real than the previous Korean announcement.

Or at least, that's what I keep reading in what I consider reputable sources. The cautious optimism is actually reassuring.

[mdlbear]

"But for the vast majority of Americans, this method of generating stem cells should be just fine." Right up to the point at which somebody discovers that the process can be modified to produce a cloned embryo. Then all hell breaks loose.

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would do it. It's occurred to me that what we really need is to get a simple law on the books, right now. "Any human embryo, produced by cloning or any other method, has exactly the same rights as one at the same stage of development produced naturally." Totally leave out what those rights are. I don't think we could get it passed, everyone would want to stick their own little beliefs in, but we need it.

I dunno, you might get the pro-life lobby in on it.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Ought to. One of the hypothetical applications of cloning is just to get a child.

In truth, if the stem cell thing pans out, I don't see a problem. Given that technology, you would not be creating a clone for spare parts, and in all other particulars, a clone is just your identical twin born some years later. We have multiple births now and society doesn't fall apart.

Re: I dunno, you might get the pro-life lobby in on it.

[kizoku42.livejournal.com]

Right, I just want it law that it IS an identical twin before someone does use it for spare parts. But you're right about the right-to-life folks. They'd want to phrase the law to give more protection to embryos than exists now.

Re: I dunno, you might get the pro-life lobby in on it.

[mdlbear]

Far too easy to amend to make it aggressively pro-life. Not advisable.

Re: I dunno, you might get the pro-life lobby in on it.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Well, that is what compromise is supposed to be about. Everyone agrees on so much, then argues about the rest.