Breakthrough In Stem Cell Technology?

First, I just woke up and therefore not very elucidative. I'm still at the coffee drinking part of the day (before noon on the weekends), and haven't cracked a beer yet. Beer makes me more eloquent (or at least makes me think I am more eloquent or, moreover, just not care).

Second, please read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/opinion/01sat1.html
(Otherwise, you will not know what I am talking about.)

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• stem
• cells
• Japanese
• research
• fakesagan

[Bashfulll]

hmmmm....you sound interesting when your not mocking religion!

However, i do respect your views. I'm sure this debate that pro-life have, about is it ethical or socially moral will come to an end really soon.

There are alternatives from where you can derive stem cell....basically from the hosts own body! Still in research though

[CadicusTheDamned]

I wish you would have listened to the video...

The Japanese used a virus to convert skin cells into stem cells. The virus causes cancer.

The scientists that pioneered the research warned that it was not a "magic bullet" to sidestep the possible benefits embryonic stem cell research offers.

[CadicusTheDamned]

However, all that said, converted skin cells have shown promise. Mice were given sickle cell anemia and then their bone marrow was replaced with healthy bone marrow cells created from the skin cells converted to stem cells. The mice have not yet developed cancer.

The problem is that mice only leave a few years. People live many years.

[CadicusTheDamned]

A possible solution could be repeating the experiments on chimpanzees, but the ethics of doing so become problematic when it involves animals with fully developed (mature) nervous systems 98% similar to our own.

However, a blastocyst does not even have a nervous system. It's not a scientific ethics debate. It's about the imaginary concept of "souls."

[ProjectHelpHealChase]

Not sure if you tried, but we are persuing stem cells from umbilical cord blood. The FDA won't allow it in the US, but we are going into Mexico with American doctors. Check Stem Cell Biotherapy. We are sorry to hear your wife is sick.

[CadicusTheDamned]

Luckily, my wife's people are 80% atheists (basically, Buddhists or "lapsed" Shintoists) and are blazing ahead in the technology.

Perhaps the world's second largest economy can make up for the fact that the world's largest is ran by morons.

[CadicusTheDamned]

Yeah, Maki-chan is not supposed to live to see forty.

Then Christians wonder why atheists hate them so much.

The fuckers are robbing us of hope over an idea lacking any evidence or even scriptural support (such as the concept of a soul being created the moment a sperm joins an egg).

[CadicusTheDamned]

You're totally misconstruing what I am saying...

Do you know anything about stem cells?

When you put a stem cell next to another cell, it turns into a cell of the same type. *Perhaps* it would be possible to take hip bone cells out of a healthy person of the same blood type and then either grow or carve part of a hip that could be fused with the good portion.

Of course, she'd have to take cyclosporin for the rest of her life though.

[TheRealistCanuck]

I highly doubt we'd see anything close to what your saying in our lifetime. Is she supposed to wait 20 years to grow a new hip bone through stem cells? Think of what your saying.

[CadicusTheDamned]

No, that's not what I was trying to say.

I meant that maybe in ten or twenty years, the stem cell technology might be good enough that something like that MIGHT be possible. I made absolutely no predictions just a speculation based off the scientists' own speculations.