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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 01/18/2008 : 05:31:56
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According to this, human embryos have been created from skin cells. If this is correct, I look forward not only to medical benefits, but the reactions from Dobson/Perkins/Land/Robertson/Huckatwit/Bush, and all of the other Dark-Agers.
Cloning Said to Yield Human Embryos
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: January 18, 2008
Scientists at a small biotechnology company say they have used cloning to create human embryos from the skin cells of two men.
The work represents a step toward the promise of creating personalized embryonic stem cells that could be used for medical treatments. Although the embryos grew only to a very early stage, the work could also theoretically be seen as a step toward creating babies that are genetic copies of other people.
Scientists at the company, Stemagen, which is based in San Diego, said Thursday that they were the first to use human adult cells to create cloned embryos that advanced to the stage known as a blastocyst, from which embryonic stem cells typically are extracted.
However, the researchers did not derive embryonic stem cells. That left some experts skeptical.
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This has the potential to get really good in more ways than one. If indeed these blastocysts should viable to implant, the Hallelujah Chorus will be deafening. And maybe, just maybe, something can be done for 'Mooner's stroke Siberia's arthritis, and my spine.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 01/18/2008 : 06:18:46 [Permalink]
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I think the best thing to be done for my stroke is to grow a replacement for me.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/18/2008 : 07:23:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
I think the best thing to be done for my stroke is to grow a replacement for me.
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Sit around chanting the Hare Krishna long enough and it just might happen; albeit you might not like being a toadstool.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 01/18/2008 : 07:49:58 [Permalink]
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from the article:
| “It's an important step toward the ultimate goal of making patient-specific stem cell lines via nuclear transfer,” |
This is what Korean scientists Hwang claimed a while back, and had to later retract when the investigation into his work revealed his outright fraud.
This technique has been used to clone many different mammals though, so there is no reason it shouldn't work with humans. The main problem, from what I have read, is one of efficiency. In the sandcat cloning project its somewhere around 2%. So 2% of the embryos created with SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) actually become viable. I think the mice cloning has a better efficiency, but that has been ongoing for quite a while now.
Collecting human eggs is not a risk free process to the donor, and (as the article mentions) comes with its own ethical problems.
I can understand the rush to create cloned stem cells, but I personally think we need to work out the efficiency issues in an animal model first. Chimps seem like a good choice.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/19/2008 : 02:58:26 [Permalink]
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Well, if the Vatican hates it.... A leading Vatican official on Friday condemned a US company's announcement that it had created cloned human embryos from adult skin cells.
The medical breakthrough could ultimately lead to the development of cures for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and other untreatable ailments.
The experiments carried out by Stemagen Corp., a private company based in La Jolla, California, are the "worst exploitation of the human being which thus becomes an object of research," said Elio Sgreccia, who heads the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Sgreccia stressed that the experiments had "so far not been successful" and were also "a product of the past" as other recent experiments with human cells had been carried out without destroying embryos.
Stemagen Corp. used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to create the embryos.
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.... it can't be all bad.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 01/20/2008 : 06:39:58 [Permalink]
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IF this technique could produce a viable embryo and IF said embryo were brought to term, would the resulting baby be the AntiChrist? Where would its soul come from? Would it be a human since no conception took place? Would the religious fold have no problem strangling said baby since it would not be "human"?
I want to hear some fundies answers on this. I don't have my Sunday comics page yet (though down here there is hardly any amusing ones left). Meanwhile I have to read about some imbred pig fuckers putting a Confederate Battle Flag on private property by I-10 outside of Mobile, AL 80 feet tall for all the world to see. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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| Edited by - pleco on 01/20/2008 06:42:56 |
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Whereaway now?
