Stem Cells 2.0: Scientists Make Revolutionary Advance

A while back scientists were making revolutionary breakthroughs in stem cell research.  Unfortunately they fell foul of interpretations of thousand year old texts in foreign languages, and a government with the scientific understanding of a squashed grape said "Sorry, our kind and loving God requires that people continue to suffer from Parkinson's, anemia, and various other horrible ailments."  Luckily, scientists are awesome and did the obvious thing - make ANOTHER revolutionary breakthrough to get around the problem.

 

The previous problem with stem cells was that they came from aborted or otherwise unviable fetuses.  Note that these fetuses had been terminated anyway, and the only issue now was whether it was more moral to chuck the goo in a bin and burn it, or use it to help cure the sick.  The ethical answer, apparently, isn't what you think.

This issue can now be sidestepped with the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS) from any kind of tissue.  Researchers at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research have pioneered a way to convert any old cells into the undifferentiated wonder-stuff with unprecedented stability and efficiency.

Previous efforts to induce pluripotency were based on viral reprogramming of genetic code.  If you think injecting viral mutant cells is a bad idea, then congratulations, you don't understand biology - not all viruses are necessarily negative, and they are vital tools in genetic research.  Unfortunately you're also right in this one case, as the resulting mutant cells were all too keen to continue mutating, leading to cancerous outbreaks in generated tissue.  Generally regarded in medical circles to be a bad thing.

The new work uses much stabler viruses and is already working to eliminate them altogether.  By synthesizing drugs that perform only the desired effects of the current viruses, and work on any cell, a one-stop-shop for high volume IPS production can get on with revolutionizing medical science.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

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Source:

Stem Cell v2.0

Comments

[Dave]

"Sorry, our kind and loving God requires that people continue to suffer from Parkinson's, anemia, and various other horrible ailments." ....

You do like to stir up the hornets nest don't you?

Keep up the great posts Luke.

Regards
Dave

[Mooey]

While I agree about the problems of religion dictating policy, I think we could do without affirming the fundamentalists belief that scientists and science-supporters will make scathingly judgmental statements about religious people.

And for the record many atheists were against the use of embryonic stem cells. It's not just a relgious-based thing, it was also about the precedent that could be set if in the future we could tell (like in Gattaca) how a fetus will develop long before it is born. "Oh look, 50% chance of parkinsons.. let's abort it and use it to cure other people" can be sticky moral and legal ground for many people, not just religious ones.

[Great article.]

Great article. I particularly enjoyed the jab at ignorant people.

[Agent66]

Nehhh... - Luke, I generally like your writing, but this one borders on being a *little* too narrow-minded, and superficial. Your government (and I'm assuming your American since this is an American site) never forbade research into Stem Cells and in fact does fund research using existing embryonic Stem Cell strains. It doesn't, however, support research that would require the creation of new Stem Cells strains from aborted fetuses or where the fetus would be killed through the taking of the Stem Cells. That said, it doesn't restrict private funding of such research should private individuals and companies choose to pay for it (so I suppose their response would be: put your money where your pen is). This was the policy both of your recent Democratic and subsequent Republican administrations under Clinton and then Bush.

Finally, this isn't a uniquely American situation. No first world nation I'm aware of currently funds research with Stem Cells drawn from "destructive" sources without a lot of angsting and research justification. I believe the British and French have the most liberal rules, and they're still quite strict. Using cells from fetuses killed for the purpose of providing the cells doesn't seem to sit comfortably with just about anyone, and not for exclusively religious reasons. Some people find it ethically distasteful. Some see it as the thin edge of the wedge that would lead to situations like saying it would be ok to run medical experiments on the mentally or physically challenged because "they aren't quite fully people either", or like the previous writer pointed out we start "genetic engineering" in the womb. It hits too close to a nerve, especially after seeing in the 20th century what people are capable of down that line of reasoning.

Anyway, generally quite like your style and selection of topics and think you're doing a good job, just think there needs to be a little more depth applied to this topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_controversy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_research_policy

[rizzo]

"If you think injecting viral mutant cells is a bad idea, then congratulations, you don't understand biology" With all the mountains of info gathered for biology I would say that our knowlege of biology is at 1%. Take a look at "I AM LEGEND" although *highly* unlikely that a viral strain could infect humans of that magnitude it is not totally impossible.