DISQUS

Mr. Gunn · 2 years ago

Let me quote the last line of the actual paper for you:

Human iPS cells, however, are not identical to hES cells: DNA microarray analyses detected differences between the two pluripotent stem cell lines. Further studies are essential to determine whether human iPS cells can replace hES in medical applications.

So, no, he wasn't. He's made lots of very smart people waste great amounts of time, energy, and money for something of questionable utility.

Carrick · 2 years ago

Mr Gunn:

So, no, he wasn't. He's made lots of very smart people waste great amounts of time, energy, and money for something of questionable utility.

My, how catty.

Embryonic stem cells have limited or no medical utility, as you admit on your own website.

First there's the issue if scalability to general treatment protocols: How do you harvest the 10's of thousands of stem cells needed to treat one patient?

Secondly the complete totipotency of ESCs is a huge problem for implanting them into a host, simply because they become cancerous (teratocarcinoma).

Third there is the issue of how you suppress the autoimmune response from the foreign DNA of so many donors.

The best medical option is the conversion of ordinary cells into more limited types of t-cells (e.g., neural t-cells to treat nerve damage) from the patient being treated.

Limiting how much federal money goes into human ESC studies is probably beneficial to pushing research in the direction it needs to go. But even if neither procedure yields medically significant treatment options, so what?

There is still good science to be learned from it, so your suggestion that it needed to have "utility" for it to not be a waste, frankly is rather ignorant on your part.

There is a lot to be learned from the study of ESCs, but one must balance that against the ethics questions, no matter how much people want to turn this into another campaign issue.

Bat One · 2 years ago

Carrick,

Wow!!! I bow to your superior wisdom... as should "Petey."

Game... Set... and Match!

Jan · 2 years ago

My main problem with the press coverage is remarks like

Dr. Thomson said straightforwardly, "By any means we test them they are the same as embryonic stem cells."

I see this as adding to the confusion that already exists. There has to be kept a clear definition of embryonic and adult stem cells. They are defined according to where they come from - not according to the way they behave. This procedure uses stem cells from the skin (ADULT) not from an unborn (EMBRYONIC).

Dr. Thomson's remark should have been, "By any means we have tested them they appear to be able to turn into every type of cell in the human body as embryonic stem cells do under the ideal conditions of the womb."

We must insist on the definition of embryonic and adult stem cells as being defined according to where they come from so that legislation isn't passed to support this new procedure with wording that would allow funding to inadvertently go to embryonic stem cell research.

The Scientific Activist · 2 years ago

No mention of President Bush? Good God, are you crazy? Bush was all over the article that you linked to. In fact, it looks like you pretty much included every paragraph except for those that mentioned him by name. And, did you miss this one, which slobbers over him every chance it gets?