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Stem Cell Solutions…
With the big controversy over how to farm stem cells without touching an embryo, scientists are looking for other ways to harvest these little pots of gold. Just weeks after San Francisco was awarded the headquarters for California’s stem cell research labs, more information has come out about how to get stem cells through tumors.
The proof is projected on the screen. The x-ray shows a teratoma, a naturally occurring tumor that grows from an egg or sperm cell. Like an embryo, a teratoma produces stem cells. But the teratoma does not have the right balance of gene expression to create a fully integrated organism. So it grows into a dense ball of teeth, hair, and skin, a ghastly grab bag of organs like some randomly constructed Frankenstein. Hurlbut points to the x-ray. “They’re about the ugliest thing in medicine,” he says, “but they might offer us a solution to our stem cell dilemma.”
Find out more about this at Wired.com, which also features a photo of a Teratoma. Ew.
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One Response to 'Stem Cell Solutions…'
That’s an interesting article. Unfortunately, the religious right is going to stop at,
Hurlbut advocates genetically altering cloned embryos
As soon as they see “embryo”, they’re going to call it life – as the article says, they consider life to begin at conception, not the development of a nervous system, and I doubt they’ll ever drop that view. I’m sure stem cell research will happen in the near future, just not until its opponents let a few more million folks suffer awful deaths to Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis…