Stem Cells
German doctors use stem cells to repair skull injury
I find that to be pretty exciting. I'm hoping someone on my friends list may have a better handle on the stem cell argument and can help me clarify my opinion - but for those of you who are still kind of in the tall grass on this issue, I'm going to try to summarize why this event is important. If I get anything wrong, feel free to smack me.
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they can potentially be coaxed into turning into entirely new and differentiated cells: i.e., blood cells, bone cells, and possibly entire organs.
Adult stem cells are assumed to be multipotent - meaning that while an adult blood stem cell could be cultivated into different subtypes of blood cells (which is useful for treating things like leukemia), they could not, for example, be turned into a brain cell.
While the people involved in that surgery are reluctant to say that the transplanted fat stem cell actually caused the bone cells to regenerate, I feel that the correlation is pretty convincing - which means that our presupposition that adult stem cells are not multipotent is pretty much wrong, no?
This adds fuel to the anti-embryonic research fire in the sense that embryos potentially aren't needed in order to harvest multipotent stem cells. It also cuts out, what seems to me, a complicated and assumedly expensive part of the process - not to mention compatibility issues.
Kinda sounds more pleasing too, doesn't it? I suppose I'd rather have fat cells from my own ass stitch a hole in my head than cells from some doomed proto-baby. Not that I'd be picky with a gaping hole in my noggin, but if I had the choice..
I don't feel that this, while definitely a cool development, alters my position on embryonic stem cell research - which I am wholeheartedly in favor of. This particular procedure doesn't seem to indicate that they could use these cells to create a replacement organ, for example - which I think would be incredibly beneficial.
Regardless, huzzah to all involved. Nothing like giving a girl a chance at living a more normal life.
I find that to be pretty exciting. I'm hoping someone on my friends list may have a better handle on the stem cell argument and can help me clarify my opinion - but for those of you who are still kind of in the tall grass on this issue, I'm going to try to summarize why this event is important. If I get anything wrong, feel free to smack me.
Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they can potentially be coaxed into turning into entirely new and differentiated cells: i.e., blood cells, bone cells, and possibly entire organs.
Adult stem cells are assumed to be multipotent - meaning that while an adult blood stem cell could be cultivated into different subtypes of blood cells (which is useful for treating things like leukemia), they could not, for example, be turned into a brain cell.
While the people involved in that surgery are reluctant to say that the transplanted fat stem cell actually caused the bone cells to regenerate, I feel that the correlation is pretty convincing - which means that our presupposition that adult stem cells are not multipotent is pretty much wrong, no?
This adds fuel to the anti-embryonic research fire in the sense that embryos potentially aren't needed in order to harvest multipotent stem cells. It also cuts out, what seems to me, a complicated and assumedly expensive part of the process - not to mention compatibility issues.
Kinda sounds more pleasing too, doesn't it? I suppose I'd rather have fat cells from my own ass stitch a hole in my head than cells from some doomed proto-baby. Not that I'd be picky with a gaping hole in my noggin, but if I had the choice..
I don't feel that this, while definitely a cool development, alters my position on embryonic stem cell research - which I am wholeheartedly in favor of. This particular procedure doesn't seem to indicate that they could use these cells to create a replacement organ, for example - which I think would be incredibly beneficial.
Regardless, huzzah to all involved. Nothing like giving a girl a chance at living a more normal life.