Monday, August 28, 2006

Stem cells without loss of embryos...

An editorial in the New York Times, explains how a small biotech company has been able to produce human embryonic cells without destroying an embryo ! Apparently, this is not enough to satisfy the people who want to put a stop to all stem-cell research.

Some excerpts...
The standard way to produce colonies of stem cells is to let an early human embryo grow to a size of about 150 cells, at which point its stem cells are extracted, and the embryo is destroyed in the process. But researchers at Advanced Cell Technology have now demonstrated that a colony can be grown from a single cell removed from an embryo that has only eight to 10 cells, using a process that should leave the embryo unharmed.
Apparently the President's Council on Bioethics, this approach has also been declared as being "ethically unacceptable".

It seems like this issue about stem cells will become one of the frontiers for a scientific battleground, based on ideologies, in the twenty-first century...

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