Scientists with the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at UCLA were able to produce from human embryonic stem cells a highly pure, large quantity of functioning neurons that will allow them to create models of and study diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, prefrontal dementia and schizophrenia.
Researchers previously had been able to produce neurons – the impulse-conducting cells in the brain and spinal cord – from human embryonic stem cells. However, the percentage of neurons in the cell culture was not high and the neurons were difficult to isolate from the other cells.
“Previously, the system to grow and isolate neurons was very messy and it was unknown whether those neurons were functioning,” Yi Sun said. “We’re excited because we have been able to purify so many more neurons out of the cell culture and they were, surprisingly, healthy enough to form synapses. These cells will be excellent for doing gene expression studies and biochemical and protein analyses.”
Another significant step forward. Imagine what might be achieved if ethically proportionate sums were dedicated to medical research instead of _________. You fill in the blank.
instead of financing coal and oil projects.
Apparently, it’s becoming common practice in the US to save the placenta of newborns, for stem cell farming later.
Who has info on that? Any recent parents reading?
Not mentioning NASA, because mining the Moon for H3 might be the world’s best bet for a clean energy source.
So humanity needs to go there ASAP.
So humanity needs to go there ASAP
Lets send robots … its cheaper.
This is truly great news!!! I’m very impressed not only with the great work of the scientists that made it happen but that they made it happen in the U.S. in the current political climate. How did that happen??!!?
I was seriously expecting (from the headline) to see that this had taken place in China.
Oh, and for the fill in the blank game any of the following do it for me.
Iraq, coal, oil, gas, nuclear, Iraq, faith based initiatives, privatized health care (at 15% of GDP), Iraq, corporate welfare, propping up foreign dictators, or Iraq.
how about this, why don’t we do medical test on death row inmates, oh that would be unethical, why don’t you get ethics out of the way of science.
Why is the above wrong? it is the willful killing of one life for resurch. Be the person preborn or on death row, or at death door.
If killing the pre-born is not wrong, then maybe we could just infect those on death row with AIDS, think about a lot of subjects we can test AID treatments on, they are going to be exicuted anyways so why not.
#4 – Michael P. O’Connor,
Is killing a mosquito wrong? Certainly, there are more brain cells in a mosquito than the total number of cells in a blastocyst.
How about this?
By the time any medical technology is ready to be tested on apes, just find human volunteers and leave the other apes out of it. That would be a reduction in cruelty. If a technology does not get enough human attention to find volunteers by then, it probably isn’t worth the level of cruelty required to get the technology to production.
“Ethically proportionate,” what a great throw away line! Packed with all sorts of assumptions, sort of like “you’re either for me or you’re for terrorism.”
I want to see ethnically proportionate funds to provide medical care to the sick.
>>killing the pre-born
If you are going to equate devising life-saving strategies using stem cell research (ie “killing the pre-born”) with infecting prisoners with HIV, you need to start working on a Constitutional amendment to let Dumbay run for a 3rd term. I’m sure he could steal another election; third time’s a charm.
Good news here for the “post-born” from scientific research with stem cells, and the Holy Rollers start in on how this is tantamount to the Holocaust. Sometimes I wonder if the Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t right after all. With the level of idiocy the human race has sunk to, the End Time MUST be near.
#7 – MM,
We may disagree about religion, but we seem to come to a lot of the same conclusions on just about everything else. Interesting. But, be careful here, you’re skirting Godwin’s Law in your last post. It’d be a shame to lose the argument on a technicality.
# 8 Mr. Scott – Just because I profess a belief in a power higher than myself, please don’t confuse me with those fucked up holy rollers who want to criminalize birth control, stem cell research, abortion, and make your kids read the Bible and recite the Ten Comandments in school. All the while getting fucked up the ass by some dope-up male prostitute, jerking off in a Motel 6 with a 30-minute hooker, fucking my next wife while my current one is dying of cancer, or offering to blow the undercover cop in the next crapper stall for $20. My relgion is, to paraphrase Pappy Bush (by far the shining star in THAT family), a kinder, gentler religion.
And my apologies if I have skirted too close to the Law of Godwin. I thought that applied to Nazis and the Holocaust, not Jehovah’s Witnesses and stem cell research. Or were you referring to MY referral to the holy rollers as comparing stem cell research to the Holocaust? I agree, that’s coming close to the law, but they have actually said that.
#4. Guess what, my fine RC friend, the VAST majority those frozen ‘preborn’ are going to wind up thawing in the dumpster.
But if they have the right to life, presumably they also have the right to liberty and the government would be right to conscript women to be forcibly implanted with them so they could be freed from their wrongful imprisonment in various fertility clinic freezers.
(After all, isn’t it the position of the pro-lifers that an unwanted pregnancy is – at most – merely a minor inconvenience for the mother?)
Those logical conclusions are a real bitch.
Could some one please define “ethically proportionate” and who would determine when we had reached its limit? The government perhaps?
this is perhaps the scariest phrase/term I have herd in a long time.
The hang up over using embryos is going to go away once these kinds of discoveries are leading to cures being using in hospitals. Thankfully we’re not too far away from it.
BTW: would a possible definition be that Pres. Bush was “ethnically proportionate” when he funded the embryonic stems cells lines already in existence but not any new ones?
oops forgot what blog I was on and who posted the story
[/sarcasm]
double oops misspelled “ethically” sorry
What, not one post yet about how all the cures come from adult stem cells, not embryonic ones?
Kind of like all those creationist posters who went missing after the Reps lost Congress.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Ethically proportionate funding might mean more funding for adult stem cell research that has shown better results, and is more ethical.
Ahh MikeN. I knew some of you guys worked for free. Going to be hard on you losing the next three elections.
Yes yes I know you aren’t a Republican etc. etc.
Feels like the dweebs who worry about ethically proportionate have most of their problem with “ethics”. More used to making their political decisions grounded in corporate butt-kissing or which corrupt politico is taking the lead.