Stem Cells And Micheal J Fox
- Thread starter jimmoyer
- Start date
My biologist friend put it this way -
"Think of this when thinking of stem cells:
We could grow potatoes on the Moon. We could fly everything needed to the Moon, we could set up a biodome with an artificial atmoshpere and we could fly water to the Moon. The process would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Scientists, astronauts, engineers and politicians would build their careers around the project and the media would report on it every day.
or we could grow those same potatoes in our backyard............."
"Think of this when thinking of stem cells:
We could grow potatoes on the Moon. We could fly everything needed to the Moon, we could set up a biodome with an artificial atmoshpere and we could fly water to the Moon. The process would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Scientists, astronauts, engineers and politicians would build their careers around the project and the media would report on it every day.
or we could grow those same potatoes in our backyard............."
With all due respect why are you so afraid of research? We need our governments to develop logical and practical legislation to this research. Legislation that lets our sceintists investigate the posibilities for our future generations. If no benefit to this field was found after the same amount of time researching embryonic stem cells as spent on adult stem cells, then I may agree with you. With any major research there has always been nay sayers.....would you have been one who figured the world was flat?
The thing is, all research starts out that way. Do you think doctors 100 years ago could have ever imagined we would be doing successful organ transplants? Now some of them are almost seen as routine. Just 30 years ago, no doctor would have thought a baby born at 24 weeks could survive. Now it happens. Those advances save countless people every year and it takes the dreamers to give us those advances. I can't agree with restricting them as much as some people would.
You're missing the point. If both are capable of accomplishing the same thing and the easier version is already showing more success why is everyone stuck on embryonic? 99% of cord blood is thrown out and no one would give a damn about using it for this reason if a politician or celeb spoke up and educated people.
Good thing 100 years ago they didn't get stuck on brain transplants and fail to see the forest through the trees.
October 18, 2006
'Embryo Project' studies societal impacts on science
An ambitious group of historians, philosophers, bioethicists, scientists, lawyers and policy experts from ASU will be taking a detailed look at the history of embryo research to understand how society, culture and technology have affected the course of science.
Biology & Society: Where Dr. Frankenstein meets Dr. Maienschein
When Mary Shelley wrote her novel, Frankenstein, present day research on topics like cloning, stem cells, the human genome, and nanotechnology would have seemed as fictional as her protagonist Frankenstein’s creation of his monster. Still, Shelley’s 19th century parable about man’s ill conceived creation – plundered from gravesites, imbued with life – which ultimately destroys him, carries a warning as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.
While the rapid pace of scientific discovery offers advances for technology and medicine, this pace often outstrips public understanding and social policy. Lacking regulations, restrictions, and responsible conduct in research, scientific discoveries could present Frankenstein-like hazards for present and future gnerations. To help assure that they do not is where individuals, like Jane Maienschein, ASU School of Life Sciences Regents’ Professor and Parents Association Professor, and institutions, like the Center for Biology and society, step in. Read more
ASU professor Jane Maienschein and her colleagues have been awarded a three-year, $750,000 grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the project as a part of the NSF Human and Social Dynamics program.
Maienschein, the director of ASU’s Center for Biology and Society, will lead a diverse group of researchers in examining how the study of embryos has developed, especially from the 19th century to the present.
Research leaders in the project are members of ASU’s School of Life Sciences. They include professors Manfred Laubichler; Gary Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Technology; and Daniel Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes.
Under the “Embryo Project,” Maienschein and her ASU collaborators have assembled a group of undergraduate and graduate researchers, who will work with two dozen investigators from six countries to examine the different scientific, social, cultural and organizational contexts that have affected the development of embryology as a science.
“Embryo research serves as an ideal candidate to investigate the intersection of biology and society,” Maienschein says.
Stem cell research, a recent development in the study of embryos, provides a good example of how ethical, legal, political and religious factors can affect science and its role in society.
Goals for the project include providing a rich description of embryo research over key periods of its history, analyzing and comparing each period for agents of change, and “developing materials for scholars and the general public to address any questions related to embryo research,” Maienschein says.
In the project, researchers will develop a “collaboratory” where a database of documents and interpretive materials is compiled and linked together, Maienschein says. Research articles developed through the project will then link to the database to produce an interpretive encyclopedia. The tools are being developed in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science’s Virtual Laboratory, which Laubichler has helped organize.
Investigating the legal, religious, political and technical factors involved in the development of embryo research requires the expertise of a wide range of researchers. “The project is interdisciplinary and multidisciplined, in that it is establishing the best available scholarly study of a variety of different factors at different intervals of time,” Maienschein says.
She adds that the project brings together “researchers who would normally be working in their separate fields,” in an effort to break down the boundaries that separate different academic disciplines.
“Often the best work comes when researchers have to speak to an audience that doesn’t share their assumptions,” she says.
Funding for the grant will begin in January, but Maienschein and her colleagues already have gotten a head start on the research and scheduled a workshop for this month. The workshop will examine embryo research from 1940-1970 in an effort to interpret patterns of change in that scientific discipline, Maienschein says.
Workshops will continue twice a year for the duration of the project. Each time, experts from their respective fields will come together to work on an interpretation of what factors are driving change in embryo research during a certain period of time.
Dan Jenk, daniel.jenk@asu.edu
(480) 965-9690
http://www.asu.edu/news/stories/200610/20061018_embryoproject.htm
'Embryo Project' studies societal impacts on science
An ambitious group of historians, philosophers, bioethicists, scientists, lawyers and policy experts from ASU will be taking a detailed look at the history of embryo research to understand how society, culture and technology have affected the course of science.
Biology & Society: Where Dr. Frankenstein meets Dr. Maienschein
When Mary Shelley wrote her novel, Frankenstein, present day research on topics like cloning, stem cells, the human genome, and nanotechnology would have seemed as fictional as her protagonist Frankenstein’s creation of his monster. Still, Shelley’s 19th century parable about man’s ill conceived creation – plundered from gravesites, imbued with life – which ultimately destroys him, carries a warning as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.
While the rapid pace of scientific discovery offers advances for technology and medicine, this pace often outstrips public understanding and social policy. Lacking regulations, restrictions, and responsible conduct in research, scientific discoveries could present Frankenstein-like hazards for present and future gnerations. To help assure that they do not is where individuals, like Jane Maienschein, ASU School of Life Sciences Regents’ Professor and Parents Association Professor, and institutions, like the Center for Biology and society, step in. Read more
ASU professor Jane Maienschein and her colleagues have been awarded a three-year, $750,000 grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the project as a part of the NSF Human and Social Dynamics program.
Maienschein, the director of ASU’s Center for Biology and Society, will lead a diverse group of researchers in examining how the study of embryos has developed, especially from the 19th century to the present.
Research leaders in the project are members of ASU’s School of Life Sciences. They include professors Manfred Laubichler; Gary Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Technology; and Daniel Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes.
Under the “Embryo Project,” Maienschein and her ASU collaborators have assembled a group of undergraduate and graduate researchers, who will work with two dozen investigators from six countries to examine the different scientific, social, cultural and organizational contexts that have affected the development of embryology as a science.
“Embryo research serves as an ideal candidate to investigate the intersection of biology and society,” Maienschein says.
Stem cell research, a recent development in the study of embryos, provides a good example of how ethical, legal, political and religious factors can affect science and its role in society.
Goals for the project include providing a rich description of embryo research over key periods of its history, analyzing and comparing each period for agents of change, and “developing materials for scholars and the general public to address any questions related to embryo research,” Maienschein says.
In the project, researchers will develop a “collaboratory” where a database of documents and interpretive materials is compiled and linked together, Maienschein says. Research articles developed through the project will then link to the database to produce an interpretive encyclopedia. The tools are being developed in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science’s Virtual Laboratory, which Laubichler has helped organize.
Investigating the legal, religious, political and technical factors involved in the development of embryo research requires the expertise of a wide range of researchers. “The project is interdisciplinary and multidisciplined, in that it is establishing the best available scholarly study of a variety of different factors at different intervals of time,” Maienschein says.
She adds that the project brings together “researchers who would normally be working in their separate fields,” in an effort to break down the boundaries that separate different academic disciplines.
“Often the best work comes when researchers have to speak to an audience that doesn’t share their assumptions,” she says.
Funding for the grant will begin in January, but Maienschein and her colleagues already have gotten a head start on the research and scheduled a workshop for this month. The workshop will examine embryo research from 1940-1970 in an effort to interpret patterns of change in that scientific discipline, Maienschein says.
Workshops will continue twice a year for the duration of the project. Each time, experts from their respective fields will come together to work on an interpretation of what factors are driving change in embryo research during a certain period of time.
Dan Jenk, daniel.jenk@asu.edu
(480) 965-9690
http://www.asu.edu/news/stories/200610/20061018_embryoproject.htm
Cloned cells -- Frankenstein or savior of humanity?
Copyright 1998 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
The following news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of Reuters Ltd.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - They said it was coming and now it has happened -- the technology that started with cloning Dolly the sheep has led to the cloning of an adult human cell.
"They should never, ever have done this," said Jeremy Rifkin, a writer and activist on biotechnology issues. "We don't know what kind of creature could develop from that."
"It's part of a larger biotechnology question that we are going to have to address about what proportion of genetic material makes something one species and not another," said Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and an expert on the issue of the ethics of cloning.
Scientists at the Massachusetts-based biotech company Advanced Cell Technology Thursday said they had fused human cells into cow eggs to grow stem cells for tissue transplants, not to grow an embryo that would essentially be a human clone.
Stem cells are capable of growing into any kind of cell in the body. Scientists want to harvest them as tissue transplants to treat ailments ranging from Parkinson's disease, caused when certain brain cells die, to the type of diabetes caused when the immune system destroys pancreatic cells.
James Robl, Jose Cibelli and colleagues took some of Cibelli's cells, either from inside his cheek or from his leg, hollowed-out cow eggs and used a pulse of electricity to get the nuclei of the human cells to fuse into the cow eggs.
\
The cells started developing just as if they had been fertilised. "We grew them up as an embryo for about a week, about eight or 10 days, and then grew them as an embryonic stem cell cluster for about two weeks," Robl said.
Other scientists at the University of Wisconsin beat them to the punch last week, by growing such stem cells from embryos donated at fertility clinics. They, too, hope to grow tissues for transplantation.
Critics say both groups have already gone too far."I think there should be an immediate ban, that Congress should immediately move on this company," Rifkin said.
In April Rifkin and cellular biologist Stuart Newman of New York Medical College applied for a patent to cover human-animal chimera technology in the hope of preventing just such experiments.
"The developing embryo is a human embryo inside a cow egg.
That means it is going to share with the cow cytoplasm as it develops," Rifkin said.
"We don't know what kind of creature could develop from that.
There is no precedent in history. It will be mostly human as it develops but it will share information and biological matter from the cow egg," he added.
Robl says the human genes would take over and only a little bit of mitochondrial DNA from the cow would remain. Dolly the sheep, cloned in Scotland in 1996, is similarly not 100 percent a clone -- she carries a little bit of such mitochondrial DNA from the donor sheep egg used to make her.
Last January, Neal First and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin said he had cloned animals of several species using hollowed-out cow eggs, although none were successfully implanted into an animal and grown.
Many animals already exist that carry human genes. Cows have been made that produce human proteins in their milk, as have sheep, pigs, rabbits and mice. All sorts of mice used in research carry human genes.
But Andrews says Advanced Cell's creation is different.
"When you insert a human insulin gene or make an oncomouse, you have created an entity that doesn't have the potential, doesn't have the genetic information to make a whole human being," she said in a telephone interview.
"But by using the entire genetic makeup for a human being, what you have done is to create a potential human embryo."
In many states this is already against the law.
Dolly was cloned by a Scottish company in July 1996. Cloners at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh used electricity to fuse the nucleus from one sheep's cell to another sheep's egg, and then to reprogram that new egg so it started growing into a lamb embryo.
Last April Dolly gave birth to her first lamb after being naturally mated with a ram.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1998 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
The following news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of Reuters Ltd.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - They said it was coming and now it has happened -- the technology that started with cloning Dolly the sheep has led to the cloning of an adult human cell.
"They should never, ever have done this," said Jeremy Rifkin, a writer and activist on biotechnology issues. "We don't know what kind of creature could develop from that."
"It's part of a larger biotechnology question that we are going to have to address about what proportion of genetic material makes something one species and not another," said Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and an expert on the issue of the ethics of cloning.
Scientists at the Massachusetts-based biotech company Advanced Cell Technology Thursday said they had fused human cells into cow eggs to grow stem cells for tissue transplants, not to grow an embryo that would essentially be a human clone.
Stem cells are capable of growing into any kind of cell in the body. Scientists want to harvest them as tissue transplants to treat ailments ranging from Parkinson's disease, caused when certain brain cells die, to the type of diabetes caused when the immune system destroys pancreatic cells.
James Robl, Jose Cibelli and colleagues took some of Cibelli's cells, either from inside his cheek or from his leg, hollowed-out cow eggs and used a pulse of electricity to get the nuclei of the human cells to fuse into the cow eggs.
\
The cells started developing just as if they had been fertilised. "We grew them up as an embryo for about a week, about eight or 10 days, and then grew them as an embryonic stem cell cluster for about two weeks," Robl said.
Other scientists at the University of Wisconsin beat them to the punch last week, by growing such stem cells from embryos donated at fertility clinics. They, too, hope to grow tissues for transplantation.
Critics say both groups have already gone too far."I think there should be an immediate ban, that Congress should immediately move on this company," Rifkin said.
In April Rifkin and cellular biologist Stuart Newman of New York Medical College applied for a patent to cover human-animal chimera technology in the hope of preventing just such experiments.
"The developing embryo is a human embryo inside a cow egg.
That means it is going to share with the cow cytoplasm as it develops," Rifkin said.
"We don't know what kind of creature could develop from that.
There is no precedent in history. It will be mostly human as it develops but it will share information and biological matter from the cow egg," he added.
Robl says the human genes would take over and only a little bit of mitochondrial DNA from the cow would remain. Dolly the sheep, cloned in Scotland in 1996, is similarly not 100 percent a clone -- she carries a little bit of such mitochondrial DNA from the donor sheep egg used to make her.
Last January, Neal First and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin said he had cloned animals of several species using hollowed-out cow eggs, although none were successfully implanted into an animal and grown.
Many animals already exist that carry human genes. Cows have been made that produce human proteins in their milk, as have sheep, pigs, rabbits and mice. All sorts of mice used in research carry human genes.
But Andrews says Advanced Cell's creation is different.
"When you insert a human insulin gene or make an oncomouse, you have created an entity that doesn't have the potential, doesn't have the genetic information to make a whole human being," she said in a telephone interview.
"But by using the entire genetic makeup for a human being, what you have done is to create a potential human embryo."
In many states this is already against the law.
Dolly was cloned by a Scottish company in July 1996. Cloners at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh used electricity to fuse the nucleus from one sheep's cell to another sheep's egg, and then to reprogram that new egg so it started growing into a lamb embryo.
Last April Dolly gave birth to her first lamb after being naturally mated with a ram.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frankenstein was a "monster" created from stolen body parts from graves, and infused with life via an electrical current and various alchemical provisions. Now, all of this was done illegally and more importantly immorally as viewed by the area residents , whereas stem cell research is not illegal, and the aim is not to create a new life but help cure various ills and diseases. Frankenstein's actions which lead to his monicer of "monster" was brought about by an unsympathetic world which antagonized the poor misunderstood creature.
I would generally suggest that today the public are unaware of the science involved, much like the citizens in Shelley's novel. But the scientists who are working in this field have vastly differing motives than Victor Frankenstein, and I doubt very much that those who would be cured by this science would be treated as pariahs, or wish to retaliate aginst the scientists.
With any new technology there are always going to be people who reject it, those who believe it is immoral, and those who believe we are destroying humanity. Embryonic stem cells are very new, as such it would be foolish to think that they would not get the same treatment, in fact even more so as this is a touchy area for so many allready. Debates about when are we humans and the like. As the public begins to understand more, I'm hopefull they will see the benefits of diverse reasearch and resulting benefits for humanity. This is not some science being conducted in dark laboratories, just to see if in fact it can be done. It has a direct impact on our humanity, prolonging lives, curing disease, removing pain and suffering from so many. I cannot see this as Franknsteinian science.
About the stem cells in other animals. There has been new research, not the ten year old stuff you posted, but brand new. Some of this stuff is indeed very controversial. In California, researchers implanted human embryonic stem cells into a mice as they developed in the womb. The cells survived and after two months, the cells had undertaken mouse characteristics. The researchers doing this found that the human cells did not alter the mouse brains in any way. The cells became part of the mouse nervous system, and comprised less than one tenth of one percent of the total number of mouse brain cells. I will agree that this type of research makes me a little uneasy, that is why we need government oversight on research.
Researchers in Australia have successfully grown human prostate tissue in mice through the use of ESCs. They combined human stem cells with mouse prostate, and grew human prostate tissue in the mouse. The aim of this study is to produce prostate tissue to test drugs on for prostate cancer.
I would generally suggest that today the public are unaware of the science involved, much like the citizens in Shelley's novel. But the scientists who are working in this field have vastly differing motives than Victor Frankenstein, and I doubt very much that those who would be cured by this science would be treated as pariahs, or wish to retaliate aginst the scientists.
With any new technology there are always going to be people who reject it, those who believe it is immoral, and those who believe we are destroying humanity. Embryonic stem cells are very new, as such it would be foolish to think that they would not get the same treatment, in fact even more so as this is a touchy area for so many allready. Debates about when are we humans and the like. As the public begins to understand more, I'm hopefull they will see the benefits of diverse reasearch and resulting benefits for humanity. This is not some science being conducted in dark laboratories, just to see if in fact it can be done. It has a direct impact on our humanity, prolonging lives, curing disease, removing pain and suffering from so many. I cannot see this as Franknsteinian science.
About the stem cells in other animals. There has been new research, not the ten year old stuff you posted, but brand new. Some of this stuff is indeed very controversial. In California, researchers implanted human embryonic stem cells into a mice as they developed in the womb. The cells survived and after two months, the cells had undertaken mouse characteristics. The researchers doing this found that the human cells did not alter the mouse brains in any way. The cells became part of the mouse nervous system, and comprised less than one tenth of one percent of the total number of mouse brain cells. I will agree that this type of research makes me a little uneasy, that is why we need government oversight on research.
Researchers in Australia have successfully grown human prostate tissue in mice through the use of ESCs. They combined human stem cells with mouse prostate, and grew human prostate tissue in the mouse. The aim of this study is to produce prostate tissue to test drugs on for prostate cancer.
Two points.
First one is your response to Dr Frankenstein:
For you to be so confidently sanguine, Tonington, is an irony
from someone so enlightened.
Your mixture of skepticism and belief in goodwell is interesting.
I understand that there will be many guideless and rules guarding the
process of discovery. I just don't trust the politics of either side
on the matter of embryonic stem cells, nor will mankind stop at re-engineering
its own evolution in its own concept of the perfect man or perfect woman.
We will make something in our OWN IMAGE. Heh heh.
You confident ?
Not me.
Second one, is this mono-focus on embyronic stems cells
vs adult stem cells or ambiotic or cord blood cells. I repeat Kreskin's response to Tracy:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tracy
The thing is, all research starts out that way. Do you think doctors 100 years ago could have ever imagined we would be doing successful organ transplants? Now some of them are almost seen as routine. Just 30 years ago, no doctor would have thought a baby born at 24 weeks could survive. Now it happens. Those advances save countless people every year and it takes the dreamers to give us those advances. I can't agree with restricting them as much as some people would. ----Tracy
Kreskin's response:
You're missing the point. If both are capable of accomplishing the same thing and the easier version is already showing more success why is everyone stuck on embryonic? 99% of cord blood is thrown out and no one would give a damn about using it for this reason if a politician or celeb spoke up and educated people.
Good thing 100 years ago they didn't get stuck on brain transplants and fail to see the forest through the trees.
First one is your response to Dr Frankenstein:
For you to be so confidently sanguine, Tonington, is an irony
from someone so enlightened.
Your mixture of skepticism and belief in goodwell is interesting.
I understand that there will be many guideless and rules guarding the
process of discovery. I just don't trust the politics of either side
on the matter of embryonic stem cells, nor will mankind stop at re-engineering
its own evolution in its own concept of the perfect man or perfect woman.
We will make something in our OWN IMAGE. Heh heh.
You confident ?
Not me.
Second one, is this mono-focus on embyronic stems cells
vs adult stem cells or ambiotic or cord blood cells. I repeat Kreskin's response to Tracy:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tracy
The thing is, all research starts out that way. Do you think doctors 100 years ago could have ever imagined we would be doing successful organ transplants? Now some of them are almost seen as routine. Just 30 years ago, no doctor would have thought a baby born at 24 weeks could survive. Now it happens. Those advances save countless people every year and it takes the dreamers to give us those advances. I can't agree with restricting them as much as some people would. ----Tracy
Kreskin's response:
You're missing the point. If both are capable of accomplishing the same thing and the easier version is already showing more success why is everyone stuck on embryonic? 99% of cord blood is thrown out and no one would give a damn about using it for this reason if a politician or celeb spoke up and educated people.
Good thing 100 years ago they didn't get stuck on brain transplants and fail to see the forest through the trees.
Last edited:
I am confident, but not so much to think that we can proceed without true oversight. Human ingenuity is a remarkable thing. Our ingenuity does require boundries and frameworks within which we can work. Without those limitations I fully agree that a Frankensteinian science could be rampant. The politics of the issue is definitely the problem. Remove politics and watch the reserach grow. It really is this simple. Those embryos are kept in cold storage. When they aren't wanted or needed any longer they throw them out. That is the very same fate that yields the stem cells from these embryos. If the patients choose to allow the cells to be donated, there is no issue at all. The science isn't being focussed on creating some kind of perfect man or woman. Thats more of an issue for genetiscists. We're talking about curing disease and ending suffering. That is fundamentally a humanitarian endeavor.