STEM-CELL UPDATE: Here’s some good news:
Imagine being able to reprogram the cells of your own body to produce fresh heart cells, regenerated nerve cells to heal spinal cord injuries, pancreatic cells to stop diabetes — or any other type of tissue to cure what ails you.
This may sound like a widely exaggerated vision of the future, based on the politically controversial use of stem cells extracted from made-to-order human embryos. But that assessment would be wrong on two counts: First, somatic cell reprogramming avoids the political controversy. And second, it’s sounding less and less like a wild exaggeration with each passing month.
In fact, experts on both sides of the stem cell debate say the scientific hopes for somatic cell reprogramming, also known as dedifferentiation, are rising sharply — although they caution that much more work remains to be done.
FuturePundit observes:
Lanza is a very credible source for such an optimistic assertion as Lanza and ACT colleagues were the first to clone a human embryo in 2001. In other words, he’s an accomplished stem cell researcher and has a major human embryonic stem cell research achievement to his credit.
Even if you resent or disagree with the religious folks who morally oppose the harvesting of embryonic stem cells from human embryos you should see Lanza’s latest claim as good news. If fully pluripotent stem cells (i.e. capable of becoming all cell types) can be created without destroying embryos then a larger fraction of the populations of Western countries will support research into uses of pluripotent stem cells. Increases in public support for stem cell research of any type are beneficial to the cause of developing rejuvenating therapies and disease cures.
He notes that even Leon Kass is on board with this. I certainly hope that this pans out. But before the anti-embryonic-stem-cell crowd rushes to say “so it’s okay to ban research on embryonic stem cells!” I think I should add a cautionary note: We don’t know if this will pan out yet, and making it work may well depend on, or be sped by, research on embryonic cells.