Well, as I promised, the article. Sorry for the delay, heh. Have been really busy. After this article, I will only update either the end of this month or next month. Sorry everyone, coz I'm having my prelims this month and 'A' levels in november. Yep.
"You don’t have to destroy an embryo to create stem cells for medical research. An American biosciences company has succeeded in deriving the cells from embryos without killing them, raising hopes that President Bush will reconsider his veto on federal funding for such work.
Last year, Bob Lanza and his team from Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, demonstrated that stem cells could be harvested from mouse embryos without killing them (see Are all human embryos equal?). Now they have done the same in human embryos left over from IVF treatment.
The researchers employed a technique used in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in which a single cell or “blastomere” is removed from the ball of eight to 10 cells that comprise the early embryo. The researchers were able to grow a stem cell line from just one or two cells from an early embryo - leaving that embryo viable. The cells are “pluripotent”, meaning they can grow into the three major tissue types (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature05142).
Lanza hopes that because the method does not involve destroying embryos, it will lead to the lifting of the veto on federal funding for stem cell research. “We need to jump-start the field – it’s been crippled by a lack of funding,” he says. “This will hopefully solve the political impasse and bring the president on board, as no embryos will be harmed with this method.”
IVF embryos that have been biopsied for PGD have grown into normal babies, says Alison Murdoch of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. “However, it is not true to say the biopsy is not detrimental to the embryo,” she says. “Some embryos do not survive.”
Lanza says that until the safety issues have been examined more closely, the procedure should only be used on a cell already taken from an embryo for PGD."
This would be quite a good news to embryonic scientists throughout the world. With this technology, many controversies abt killing a life would be less critical and with safety issues examined by these scientists, there shouldn't really be much problem.
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